Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

fearrann bhur sinnsear.
(Urging fight against the foreign soldiery
that holds your fatherland.)

    Eachtrann being foreign.
    Eachtraí being –
    Storyteller. Traveller. Exile.
    Storyteller. Traveller. Exile.
    One song is built on the ruin of another the way the swallow builds its mud saucer on a spotted flycatcher’s domed house.
    A song was quickly written about puppy-faced Fergal to the air of ‘The Merry Month of May’:
Was in the merry month of May
When flowers were a blooming.

In another version of Barbara Allan:

Since my love died for me today,
I’ll die for him tomorrow.

    Fergal’s song was made internationally famous by an American lady singer who wore headbands with patterns of snowshoe hares or lobster moths and by a scrannel-voiced American male singer with a gun-shot expression.
    The songwriter was best man at the Brookeborough column commander’s—Pearse column after the 1916 revolutionary—wedding and the song accompanied the songwriter to the grave because that Pearse column commander gave the oration at his graveside.
    A song was also quickly written about Seán South to the air of ‘Roddy McCorley’:
Young Roddy McCorley goes to die
On the bridge at Toome today.

    But that song, which was very often sung with ‘The Boys of Blue-hill,’ only had an Irish audience.
We are the boys who take delight
In smashing Limerick lamps at night.

    It was a Limerick song—‘The Boys of Garryowen’—that General Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Regiment sang as they left General Terry’s column at Powder River.
    Garryowen a district in Limerick city around St John’s Cathedral and an affectionate name for Limerick city.
    ‘The Boys of Garryowen’ a Royal Irish Regiment marching song.
    The Royal Irish Regiment celebrated for valour at the Battle of Namur in 1695 where one of William of Orange’s lieutenants used Capuchin friars as spies.
    Met, on the opposite side, some of their former comrades who’d opted to go with the Wild Geese—Irish soldiers who exiled themselves in Europe after the Treaty of Limerick, 1691—at the Battle of Malplaquet, 1709, during the War of Spanish Succession.
    Custer heard a Royal Irish Regiment emigrant sing the song while drunk at Fort Riley, Kansas.
    The United States had previously known the Royal Irish Regiment when they’d been garrisoned at the Illinois Country until they fought at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill during the American War of Independence.
    The Royal Irish Regiment was present at Yorktown, Virginia, 1781, when the triumphant Americans played ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ‘Redcoats’ and ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ a children’s rhyme from the English Civil War:
Derry down, down, hey derry down,
I am come to make peace in this desperate fray.

    Fergal O’Hanlon, born Candlemas Day—Candelmaesse—1936.
    Candlelight processions to the altar to commemorate the purification of Mary and presentation of Christ at the Temple began 381–4 AD.
    The following month German troops reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
    At the Christian Brothers’ School, Monaghan town, he learnt that a Monaghan-town man, General Don Juan McKenna, was one of the founders of Chile.
    A De La Salle brother from Limerick came and tried to take him to the De La Salle Brothers in Limerick when he was fourteen.
    But his destiny was to excel at Latin at St Macartan’s College.
    Caesar Augustus forbade boys to run during the Lupercalia festival, who hadn’t shaved off their first beards.
    Boys without their first beards played football in the black-and-amber jerseys of St Macartan’s College and in tube football togs—togs down to their knees met by black-and-amber calf socks.
    By the Blackwater the lesser celandine— grán arcáin (piglet’s grain)—grew.
    In the summer the foxglove in profusion.
Méirín puca.
Méirín sí.
Méirín dearg.
(Hobgoblin finger.
Fairy finger.
Red finger.)

    Boys whose first pubic hair was like the buff dust on the dark-brown wood argus butterfly’s wing swam in the Blackwater at Patton’s Mill.
    There was a school day trip to see the tympanum of Portland stone in the Cathedral of Christ the King in Mullingar, where the canal ended; of Pope Plus XI; the Most Reverend Thomas Mulvany, Bishop of Meath; Cardinal MacRory, Primate of All Ireland.
    Working for Monaghan County Council, Fergal would tie children’s shoelaces on the street, lift children on his broad shoulder.
    He trained with the FCA