Patrick Street: The Humours Of The King Of Ballyhooley

 

It being the time of year, sure 'n' begorrah we've been listening to lots of Irish music the past few days. This delightful ditty, the last track on the album Irish Times by the group Patrick Street, has become a welcome earworm. The tale it tells is a familiar one in folk music throughout the British Isles: a stranger meets a woman who catches his eye; he asks her to marry him; she says yes; and they live happily, producing a sizeable brood of children. The singer is Andy Irvine, whom I met in 1988 when he did a solo gig at the now long gone Eagle Tavern on West 14th Street. I was there with the now sadly late Zane Berzins, a native Latvian who was fluent in Irish Gaelic. She knew Andy, and kindly introduced us. I later learned that my future wife, Martha Foley, was also there. 

 It's a rollicking song for a celebratory day. Beannechtai na feile Padraig!

Donnacha Dennehy's "Land of Winter: I. December" by Alarm Will Sound

Thanks to the Irish Arts Center I've become aware of the composer Donnacha Dennehy and of his suite Land of Winter, the title of which is a translation of Hibernia, the Roman name for Ireland. It "is a gorgeous orchestral exploration of the subtleties of Ireland's seasons through twelve connected sections representing the months of the year." Evidently Dennehy followed the liturgical calendar because he placed December first in the progression of months. 

The audio clip above is of "December" from Land of Winter, performed by Alarm Will Sound, which the New York Times called "as close to being a rock band as a chamber orchestra can be" (I once wrote something similar about Repast Baroque), conducted by Alan Pierson, whom the Times has called "a musical visionary." The entire suite is available on Nonesuch Records. 

Peter Myers, Octogenarian

The photo above is of three stalwarts of the Bells of Hell, a Greenwich Village pub that served as my second home from the summer of 1977 until it closed in the fall of '79. On the left is Barry Murphy, who tended bar and provided lively conversation. In the center is Pierce Turner, who, along with Larry Kirwan, as Turner and Kirwan of Wexford (their Irish hometown), were the house band at the Bells during much of my tenure there. On the right is Peter Myers, half owner of the Bells from the time he and Tony Heyes bought it from its founder, Malachy McCourt until the late weekend afternoon in '79- I was present at the time - when Peter and Tony got into a physical scuffle, started by Tony and Gary Sellers, the first person I met after first crossing the Bells' threshold in '77, and which resulted in Peter making Tony the sole owner while he went on to found Myers of Keswick, Keswick being Peter's English hometown. 

The occasion of the photo was a party to celebrate Peter's 80th birthday, given at Myers of Keswick. It was a grand affair, bringing together a sizeable collection of surviving Bells alumni. Specialties of the house, including Cornish pasties, Scotch eggs, and sausage rolls, were in profusion, as were beer and wine. I was able to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in some years. The store is now managed by Peter's daughter, Jennifer Myers Pulidore, whom I remembered as a kindergartener. By all appearances she's doing an excellent job. I also had some pleasant conversation with Peter's wife, Irene, whom I hadn't seen since the Bells days. 

The photo was taken as the party was ending, and Pierce was singing "The Parting Glass."

The clip above is of an exquisite rendition of this beautiful song by Celtic Woman.

As I was leaving the party, I saw Peter and a friend sitting on a bench outside the store. I stopped for a bit of last minute chat. Peter reminded me that, after his unfortunate encounter with Tony, I had offered my opinion that Tony's words, "It's your f---ing bar!" were not sufficient to transfer ownership, especially given Tony's state of intoxication at the time.  Peter was happy with this advice. 

I then recounted an anecdote I'd read some years ago, about an anthropologist who visited one of the remotest of the Scottish Western Isles and sought someone who would have a long memory and knowledge of the island's lore. He was directed to an old man who, when asked his age, said seventy-something. The anthropologist asked if there were any octogenarians on the island. The old man said, "Octogenarians ... oh, yes, there were two. But my brother shot the one, and the other flew away." I suggested that Peter should avoid the Western Isles. "I go there all the time," he said. Good luck, Peter.

Pierce Turner, "Hail Glorious St Patrick"

Pierce Turner is an old friend from my days in the late '70s when I was a regular at a Greenwich Village club, the Bells of Hell, where Pierce and fellow Wexford native Larry Kirwan, as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band for some time, playing songs that "mixed traditional Irish folk music with full-blown progressive rock."  Later they added a bassist and a drummer (as Turner & Kirwan, Larry banged a drum using a pedal while he played guitar and sang; Pierce played Moog and sang) and became The Major Thinkers. In 1985 Pierce returned to Ireland and began a very successful solo career as a singer and songwriter. Larry remained in New York, became frontman of Black 47, and later conceived and co-wrote the musical Paradise Square, which was nominated for ten Tony awards, including Best Musical. 

The song "Hail Glorious St. Patrick" is "[b]ased on a hymn that was first published in 1853, with words attributed to Sister Agnes, of the Convent of Charleville, County Cork." The music, according to Pierce, "is credited with being 'ancient' -- an apt description, as the melody is as familiar as your mother's scent -- it slips on like an old woollen winter coat, there is no avant-garde challenge." For his version, Pierce kept the chorus and second verse of the original, and "rewrote the rest updating the song for the 21st century, for a world where 'a new kind of evil has blinded our minds.'" 

Pierce's old partner, Larry, has this to say:

Pierce Turner is an Irish national treasure. So, what better man to reimagine Hail Glorious St. Patrick. This is a track for the ages. But don't just take it out for the big day -- it will sound great on the other 364 too. I'll be playing it.

Beannechtai na feile Padraig!  

Sinead O'Connor - Oro Se do Bheatha Bhaile, an Irish Rebel Song

Thanks to my long time friend Dermot McEvoy for sharing with me and many more of the old Lion's Head crew this clip of Sinead O'Connor singing Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile. Dermot noted that the song was written by Padraig Pearse. one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. In a post in 2012 I gave a link to Sinead singing "The Foggy Dew," a song about the 1916 Rising, In the post, I told how Pearse, and thirteen other of the leaders of the Rising, were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol.

Looking for an English trnslation of Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile, I found there are two versions. of which Pearse's is the second. Pearse's version, written just before the Easter Rising, imagines an Irish army, led by the "pirate queen" Grace O'Malley (also known as "Grainne," 1530-1603), coming to free Ireland from British rule. The earlier Jacobite version evidently expresses a desire for "young Charles," grandson of the deposed Stuart (and Catholic) King James II, to come to Ireland "[w]ith French and Spanish volunteers" to overthrow British rule. Unfortunately for the Irish nationalists, Bonnie Prince Charlie's 1745-46 campaign ended in Scotland with his army's defeat at Culloden.

In my email to Dermot thanking him for the link to Sinead's version of Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile, I called it "poweful" and noted that it brought to my mind the concluding line of William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916": "A terrible beauty is born."

FourWinds FleadhTV TG4 The Rollicking Boys Around Tandragee

Four Winds is a band that does "Irish Traditional Music in a modern and creative context, while maintaining deep roots in the tradition." In the video above, they are, left to right, Daoiri Farrell, Tom Delaney, Caroline Keane, and Robbie Walsh. 

I wish you all beannachtaí na féile Pádraig, "blessings of St. Patrick."

Aly Bain with Jenna Reid - Sophie's Dancing Feet / Andy Brown's Reel

 

I had the pleasure, and honor, of meeting the great Shetland fiddler Aly Bain after a Boys of the Lough concert at Town Hall in the mid 1980s. My introduction was enabled by my date's having been his sister in law. In the video above he's joined by another fine exemplar of the Shetland fiddle tradition, Jenna Reid. They do a segue of two lively traditional fiddle tunes, "Sophie's Dancing Feet" and "Andy Brown's Reel." Backing them is a true all-star group of musicians: traditional Irish music stalwart Dónal Lunny on bouzouki, a Greek instrument that has become widely used in Irish music; Jerry Douglas, whose work on dobro guitar has spanned bluegrass, jazz, and Celtic music; Russ Barenberg, known for his contributions to old time and bluegrass music, on guitar; Phil Cunningham, a many talented Scottish musician known primarily as an accordionist but who here plays piano; and English multi instrumentalist Michael McGoldrick on whistle.

"Once in Royal David's City"

One of my favorite Christmas carols, performed by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. This was one of many hymns written by an Irish woman, Cecil Frances Alexander Humphreys. Most of her compositions, including this, were written with children in mind.

The Chieftains, "Mna Na hEireann" ("The Women of Ireland")

It's St. Patrick's Day, but it's also Women's History Month, so here are the Chieftains playing one of my favorites from the Bells of Hell jukebox so many years ago. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny, "My Heart's Tonight in Ireland"

Here's a wistful song for this subdued St. Patrick's day. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!
 

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Finnegan's Wake"

James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, reckoned one of the most difficult books to read, took its title and a tiny bit of its narrtive from an Irish comic ballad, author unknown, first heard in the 1850s. It tells the story of a bricklayer who, having had "a drop of the craythur" before work, falls from his ladder and dies. At his wake, "a row and a ruction" starts, until whiskey spills on his corpse. This revives him.

I heard the song first as "New Finnegans Wake" on a now out of print Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem vinyl album "Recorded Live in Ireland." What was "new" about it was Liam Clancy's announcement that, to introduce the song, his brother Tom would read the entire Joyce novel. Tom then read these connected excerpts from the first few pages:

Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen’s mau-rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar — back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers or Helviticus committed deuteronomy. ... During mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-fices in Toper’s Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the banks for the livers by the Soangso. ... A waalworth of a skyerscape ... entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing, ... with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down. Of the first was he to bare arms and a name: Wassaily Boos-laeugh of Riesengeborg. ... Hahahaha, Mister Finn, you’re going to be fined again! ... Hohohoho, Mister Funn, you’re going to be Mister Finnagain! ,,, But Dimb! He stot-tered from the latter. Damb! he was dud.

Here are the Clancys doing the song, with the introduction:

A "Celtic Appalachian Celebration."

On Saturday evening, March 11, my wife and I attended a concert billed as "A Celtic Appalachian Celebration" at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. It was sponsored by the Irish Arts Center and featured Mick Moloney (photo) as master of ceremonies, as well as being one of the musicians. Mick has been the recipient of a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Presidential Distinguished Service Award from the President of Ireland. I had the pleasure of meeting Mick, and hearing him play and sing, at the Brooklyn Historical Society several years ago.



The headline act for the event was Green Fields of America, a group, named for a song, that Mick Moloney formed in 1978 "to present and tour some of Irish America's finest musicians and dancers" (Wikipedia). Over the years, the membership of the group has changed. The clip above shows them playing an unidentified, very spirited Irish tune. The group at the time this video was made included at least three musicians that were part of the group that played on Saturday: Mick Moloney on guitar; Athena Tergis on fiddle, whose background includes being in the cast of Riverdance and touring with the late Clarence Clemons; and Billy McComiskey on accordion. Others who were with the group on Saturday were: Brendan Dolan on piano; Brian Fleming on drums; Liz Hanley on fiddle and vocals; Jerry O'Sullivan on pipes and whistle; and the immensely talented fourteen year old Haley Richardson on fiddle.



As mentioned above, Mick intended to showcase Irish American dance along with music. The clip above shows two members of City Stompers, Nicole Ball and Sara Rowbottom, dancing to the music of the Melody Allegra Band. The first minute and thirty seconds of the clip is all music, then the dancers take the floor. The City Stompers, led by their director and choreographer Megan Downes, took the floor often during Friday's concert. Their style is "Appalachian Flatfoot," which is characteristic of the Ulster Scots, or "Scotch Irish," who settled Appalachia during the late eighteenth century. They were descendants of the Protestant Scots who were "planted" in northern Ireland by James I during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in an effort to subdue the Catholic Irish. As Mick Moloney noted, the term "Hillbilly" comes from the popularity of the name William among the Presbyterian Scotch Irish.

Two other dancers, who doubled as musicians, also appeared on stage, sometimes with the women of City Stompers and sometimes by themselves. Jake James is a dancer and multi-instrumentalist who has performed with many groups, including one of my favorites, Black 47. Niall O'Leary is a polymath: dancer, musician, businessman, and architect.

 

Anna and Elizabeth are Anna Roberts-Gevalt (at right in the clip above) and Elizabeth LaPrelle. Elizabeth is a Virginia native who grew up in the Southern Appalachian musical tradition, of which "Little Black Train," the song they do in the video, is exemplary. Anna grew up in Vermont, which is also part of Appalachia. (Geologists will tell you it goes all the way to Maine and southern Canada.) During the concert, Anna and Elizabeth performed a couple of songs that Anna learned from older singers in Vermont, thus giving us a taste of a lesser known Northern Appalachian tradition.



Another taste of the southern Appalachian tradition was provided by the wife and husband duo Erynn Marshall and Carl Jones. "Tune Tramp," which they do in the clip above, was one of the songs they performed at the concert. They also did "Decatur Stomp," a tune Erynn composed that combines the old time Appalachian and Ragtime styles. You can hear it here.

The concert ended with all the musicians and dancers on stage doing a stirring medley of Irish and Appalachian music and dance. It was a fine warm up for the feast of St. Patrick.

Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma, "The Wexford Carol"

Bluegrass great Alison Krauss here joins with cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma to perform one of my Yuletide favorites, "The Wexford Carol", with lyrics dating to the twelfth century and a tune probably older than that.

That a bluegrass musician should sing an Irish song is no surprise; the Appalachians and the bluegrass country to their west attracted immigrants from Ireland, most of them Ulster Scots, or "Scotch Irish", descendants of Protestant Scots whose ancestors had been "planted" in northern Ireland in an effort by the British crown to subdue the Catholic Irish.



As for Maestro Ma, listen to him in the Celtic groove with Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer on "The Green Groves of Erin/The Flowers of Red Hill".

To my Christian friends, merry Christmas! To my Jewish friends, on this year when our holidays coincide, happy Hanukkah!

April 24, 1916: a day to remember.

April 24, 1916 was Easter Monday that year. On that day members of the Irish Citizen Army, a volunteer force led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, took control of Dublin's General Post Office (photo) and other nearby buildings, and proclaimed a Provisional Government. British response was initially slow; Britain was embroiled in World War I, and only about 400 troops were garrisoned in or near Dublin. After reinforcements were brought in, the response was overwhelming. The GPO was recaptured, the leaders arrested, and sixteen of them were executed shortly after.

The Rising did not immediately stir the Irish people to resist British rule, which had been in place for many centuries. The executions, however, did have an effect. Michael Collins led a successful guerrilla campaign, which gained popular support, and which led to the treaty, negotiated by Collins with Winston Churchill, that led to the foundation of the Irish Republic. These events are well described in Dermot McEvoy's The 13th Apostle.

Perhaps the best known remembrance of the Easter Rising is William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916", read in the video below by Tom O'Bedlam:

TBT: Black 47, "Livin' in America"; happy St. Patrick's Day!

I got to know Larry Kirwan (photo) in 1978 when he and Pierce Turner, as Turner and Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band at the Bells of Hell. The clip below is of their live performance of Larry's song "Livin' in America" at the Hudson Valley Irish Fest in Peekskill, New York. The song is by Black 47, a band Larry put together in 1980 and which I once described, with some poetic license, as "traditional Irish thrash metal hip hop punk," which is to say, I loved it. They disbanded on amicable terms last year. The song is about two Irish (legal) immigrants living in New York in the 1980s, before Ireland's economy took off, luring many back, only to be disappointed after 2008. He (Larry) works in construction; she (Mary Courtney) as a nanny. One of the things I love about this song is that the tune is that of the great Irish rebel song "The Foggy Dew":
:

Tomorrow (St. Patrick's Day), I'll be at B.B. King's to hear Larry and a partial reunion of Black 47, along with David Amram and others. I'm looking forward to a great evening.

 Photo: by Wes Washington (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Michael Davitt, a forgotten hero. Remember him this Labor Day.

For Labor Day, in celebration of my newly found Irish heritage, I'm posting a song by Patrick Street, with a vocal by Andy Irvine, about Michael Davitt, who organized the Irish tenant farmers in the late nineteenth century.

Three Irish tunes by the Boston Pops

The Boston Pops Orchestra, under the direction of Keith Lockhart, plays three traditional Irish tunes:"The Cat Rambles to the Children's Saucepan"; The Otter's Nest"; and "Richie Dwyer's." Thanks to WQXR.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Sure 'n' begorrah, I'm more Irish than anything!

And maybe a bit Spanish, too. Not at all what I was expecting when, at my wife's urging, I sent a sample of my saliva to the lab at Ancestry.com so they could analyze my DNA and tell me from whence my ancestors came. I was sure I knew. I believed all of my ancestors on my father's side were of English descent,* with the exception of one great grandmother, who had the Scottish name Napier.** She was born in Tennessee, which makes me think she was Ulster Scots, or "Scotch Irish," a descendant of the Protestant Scots who were "planted" in Ireland during the reign of James I in an effort to subdue the Catholic Irish, and many of whom later emigrated to America where they settled in Appalachia and the lands to the west.***

My mother's maiden name was Lane. Her father showed me what purported to be a family crest. Above the shield, topped, as I recall, with a knight's helmet, was the name "O'Leign." So, it seemed, the Lanes were Irish. My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Miles, which I assumed to be English, but which I now know to be of Norman French origin, and to be known in both England and Ireland. Other ancestral names on my mother's side are Mott, which could be English or German, Woods, and Rush, both of which seemed quite English.****

What I expected my DNA to show was that I was perhaps sixty percent or so English, maybe twenty five percent Irish (with some Scandinavian mixed in, thanks to the Vikings), and the rest a mixture of Scottish, German, and maybe a few surprises from some generations back (French? Native American?).

What I got as the sources of my genome was: Ireland, 34%; Scandinavia, 27%; Europe West (basically France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Low Countries), 14%; Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), 14%; Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales), 6%. The remaining five percent is divided among traces of Italy or Greece; Finland or Northeast Russia; Poland or Ukraine; and a less than one percent dab of North Africa, which I suspect came en suite with the Iberian Peninsula connection.

I was surprised that Ireland and Scandinavia together accounted for over sixty percent of my genome, and that Great Britain, which for Ancestry.com comprises England, Scotland, and Wales, contributes only six percent. I now know this was because of my mistaken belief about the origin of the name Scales (see footnote * below), which turns out to be Scandinavian, arriving in England by way of Ireland, where some Irish may have gotten mixed with it. It's also possible that my Miles ancestors on my mother's side were of Irish origin (see footnote **** below).

The Iberian connection just about floored me, as I know of no Spanish or Portuguese ancestors on either parental side. One suggestion from a co-worker is that some of my Irish forebears may have married survivors of the wrecks of Spanish Armada ships on the Irish coast. This often expressed theory about the origin of the dark haired and eyed "Black Irish" is, it is said, supported by very little evidence. My wife, whose late father could be described as "Black Irish," has no trace of Iberian in her DNA. Perhaps in her ongoing genealogical research, which includes my family as well as hers, she'll find where there's--to borrow a book title from John Lennon--A Spaniard in the Works.

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* When we were in England, from 1951 to '54, my dad got an historical map of Hertfordshire, the county where we lived. Not too far a drive from our house (well, nothing in Herts is too far a drive), according to the map, there was a dotted outline labeled "Scales Castle." We got into our Austin A40 and went there, finding nothing but a pasture. I now know that the castle belonged to the holders of the de Scales barony, descendants of a Norman nobleman who arrived in England with William the Conqueror. I also know that I am almost certainly not descended from the noble de Scales family (the barony was terminated during the reign of Richard III, as the family were at the time on the losing side of the Wars of the Roses, although there have been attempts to revive it).

During my first year of law school (1967-68), while on a weekend afternoon stroll, I went into the Widener Library, found the reference section, and in it the Century Cyclopedia of English Names. In the book I found "Scales" followed by the notation "A-S", which I took to mean Anglo-Saxon. It then said the name meant "dweller in the hut," a "scale" being a crude lean-to hut or shelter. A more recent source repeats that story of the name's meaning, but gives its origin as not Anglo-Saxon, but Scandinavian. Many Vikings settled in North-West England during the tenth and eleventh centuries after being expelled from Ireland by Cearbhall and Brian Boru. It's believed that these Viking immigrants from Ireland are the forebears of most, if not all, of the people named Scales in England.

** I've seen two versions of how the French word napier became a Scottish surname. The one I don't believe, because it is the more romantic, is that the first to bear the name so distinguished himself in battle that the King said, "Tha hast nae peer [no equal]."  The one I believe is that the family were linen keepers, perhaps for the royal family, and took the French word for such as their name. Napier can also be an English name, but my father believed that his grandmother was somehow related to John Napier (1550-1617), the Scottish philosopher and mathematician who discovered the principle of logarithms and invented the first crude slide rule (a device still used by my generation during our school years, but now supplanted by the electronic calculator), called "Napier's bones."

*** The term "Hillbilly" was given to Scotch-Irish settlers in Appalachia because of the popularity among them of the name William, a popularity stemming, no doubt, from the victory of William of Orange's army over the Catholic rebels at the Battle of the Boyne. King William is also the source of the term "Orangemen" for Northern Irish Protestants.

**** I've now learned that Woods can be either English or Scottish. Rush is commonly English, but is found in Ireland as a derivative of several Gaelic names, or may be an Anglicization of a German name. It's an oral tradition in my mother's family that we're descended, through my great grandmother Ellen Susan Rush Miles and her mother, Susan Woods Rush, from Benjamin Rush, physician of the Continental Army and signer of the Declaration of Independence. This was reported as fact in my great grandmother's obituary in the Tyrone Daily Herald. Unfortuntely, because of a lack of information available about Susan Rush, it's proved so far difficult to trace the lineage.

The 13th Apostle by Dermot McEvoy

One thing about historical fiction: if you know anything about the history, there are no spoilers. When I picked up The 13th Apostle, I knew how it would end. Michael Collins would die by an assassin's bullet. I knew it was because of a dispute that had torn the newborn Irish nation asunder, and that the dispute was over whether to accept the terms of a deal with Britain that would allow six northern counties to remain under the Crown. What I didn't know was Collins' role in negotiating that deal, and that he died defending instead of opposing it. What little I knew of Collins made me think he'd have been on the other side: an all-or-nothing-ist  instead of a pragmatist.

In his conduct of the struggle to free Ireland, in which his efforts were essential to bring about the conditions that brought Britain to the truce table, Collins was, as the book tells, a consummate pragmatist. He knew just what needed to be done, and how, to undermine the foundation of  British power. He was also, however, not averse to taking risk, sometimes with respect to his own safety. The lot of being the confidante who sometimes must try to talk sense to Collins falls, in the novel, on a fictional character, Eoin Kavanagh.*

The 13th Apostle is a novel told from two points of view. One is that of Eoin Kavanagh who, at fourteen, was a resident, along with his parents and three younger siblings, in a dreadful Dublin building called The Piles. The misery of his family--he lost a younger brother to diphtheria and his mother shows signs of the tuberculosis that will end her life early--makes him sympathetic to the Feinian cause. On Easter Monday 1916 he gets caught up in the excitement and joins the rebels. A bullet grazes one of his buttocks. Lying with the wounded he draws the attention of Michael Collins and of a nurse, Róisín O'Mahony, four years his senior, who tends to his bleeding bottom. From this inauspicious beginning he has an improbable but not inconceivable career. He becomes Collins' assistant, adviser, and a supernumerary member of his "Squad" who do the targeted killings necessary to advance the liberation of Ireland. The Squad were called "The Twelve Apostles"; hence, the novel's title. He marries Róisín, and after Collins' death they emigrate to New York. He settles in Greenwich Village, takes American citizenship (without losing the Irish, from the viewpoint of its government), gets into politics, is elected to Congress, and becomes a confidante of FDR (as Róisín becomes one of, and a ghostwriter for, Eleanor), but after the assassination of JFK decides to leave his adopted country and return to Ireland. There he's elected to the Dail (the Irish parliament) and supports the cause of liberating the Six Counties from British rule.

The other viewpoint is that of Eoin's grandson, Eoin Kavanagh III, called "Johnny Three" because Eoin, pronounced "Owen," is the Gaelic equivalent to John. He's a writer, lives in the Village, drinks at the Lion's Head, and is married to Diane, a Presbyterian who loves him dearly but is often amazed, and sometimes dismayed, by his and his family's Irish ways. Actually, Diane, along with Róisín, should probably be added as point of view characters, because their observations are vital to the development of the story.

The story begins with old Eoin's death, in Ireland, at the age of 105. As he was the last surviving veteran of the Easter Rising, as well as a distinguished statesman in his later years, his funeral is a major occasion. Johnny Three and Diane attend, and learn that the old man's legacy to Johnny included a set of diaries, kept from his participation in the Easter Rising through his years as Collins' assistant and Squad member, Collins' death, and its aftermath.

The novel's narrative shifts between Johnny Three and Diane in 2006, and Eoin from Easter Monday, 1916 to August of 1922, with a few snippets of his later life in America, including a meeting with FDR and Churchill on Christmas Eve, 1941, with the U.S. newly allied with Britain against the Axis. It's Eoin's second meeting with Churchill, his first having been during the 1921 treaty negotiations, when he served as Collins' bodyguard. With a little prompting, Churchill remembers this. Churchill and Collins, on whose head Churchill had once put a ten thousand pound reward, came to respect and like each other as men of action. The 13th Apostle includes a true anecdote featuring Churchill's rapier wit that I hadn't known before. I won't spoil it by repeating it here.

While the shifts in locale and time may sound disorienting, they provide a useful perspective. Johnny knew his grandfather had been a rebel, and an associate of Collins, but didn't know he had participated in the executions of British agents and their Irish collaborators. Diane found it hard to believe that the man she knew as a stand-in father-in-law (we learn little of Johnny Two, other than that he evidently abandoned his son) was a killer. When we see it from Eoin's perspective, we find how hard it was for him to square his moral convictions with his duty to Ireland and Collins, even when his first fatal shot is into the head of the man who tortured and killed his father.

I learned much history from reading The 13th Apostle, and got a sense of what it was like to have been in Dublin during the years that the Irish Republic, "a terrible beauty" in Yeats' words, was born. I also learned the words that must be said to make a Perfect Act of Contrition.** This book may yet be my ticket to heaven.
 
The 13th Apostle is published by Skyhorse Publishing, New York City (2014).
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*The character of Eoin Kavanagh seemed so realistic to me that I did a web search for the name, just to see if there was someone with that or a similar name who was prominent in the Irish rebellion. I found this article by Owen Kavanagh ("Owen" is an alternative spelling of the Gaelic "Eoin") giving the results of his research into the involvement of members of the Kavanagh clan in the Easter Rising and subsequent struggle for liberation. He mentions the brothers Michael and William Kavanagh as having participated in the Easter Rising and later in the fight for independence, a Sean Kavanagh as having been Collins' intelligence officer in Kildare, and a Seamus Kavanagh as having been among the rebels in the General Post Office on Easter, 1916. Owen Kavanagh's source of information was:

a set of six...CD’s contain[ing] Dublin Castle’s secret surveillance files, known as Personality Files which were compiled by the Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP).

His account ends with an "Author's Note" mentioning the execution of Alan Bell, a bank examiner sent by the British government to ferret out the accounts holding Sinn Fein's funds to be used in support of the uprising. In The 13th Apostle, the fictional Eoin Kavanagh is part of the team that captures and kills Bell.  In his Note, Owen Kavanagh describes how Constable Harry Kells of the DMP, who earlier had been tracking the Kavanagh brothers, was assigned to try to find Bell's killers. This brought Kells to the attention of Collins, who had him killed. There's no indication, however, that any of the Kavanaghs were involved in Bell's execution. None of the characters in The 13th Apostle is based on any of these Kavanaghs. There is, however, extensive discussion in the novel about the intelligence operations carried out by the RIC and DMP and the files they kept on actual  and suspected rebels, as well as Collins' ultimately successful effort to gain access to those files.

**"Oh my God!  I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of  heaven and the pains of hell.  But most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love.  I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life.  Amen."

Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, "The Green Fields of France"

Today, June 28, 2014 is the centenary of the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. This started a series of events that led, within two months, to the outbreak of a war unprecedented in its ferocity and breadth; one that would cause about ten million military and seven million civilian deaths. It may have created the conditions that led to the 1918 influenza pandemic that is estimated to have killed between fifty and 100 million people; perhaps as much as five per cent of the world's then population. The war's economic and political aftermath certainly contributed to the outbreak of an even greater war two decades later. It caused the breakup of two empires: the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire in central and eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire that encompassed much of the Middle East. The carving up of the latter by victorious Britain and France, as described in David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace, resulted in the creation of the existing national boundaries in the Middle East; many of which boundaries are contested today.

World War I also helped to precipitate two revolutions: the Russian and the Irish. British recruitment of Irishmen to fight in the war (see poster image above) was a factor leading to the Easter Rising of 1916. As the rebel song "The Foggy Dew" declared:

Right proudly high in Dublin town
Hung they out a flag of war.
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky
Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.

"Suvla" and "Sud el Bar" were  disastrous amphibious landings on the Turkish coast in which British troops, including many Irish, took terrible casualties. Another verse, not included in the lyrics on the linked post, has the words

'Twas England bade our wild geese rove
That small nations might be free.

The second line is ironic. One of Britain's appeals to prospective recruits was to fight for "small nations," in particular Belgium (again see poster above) that had been or might be invaded and occupied by German troops.  The irony is that Ireland was a "small nation" that wanted to be free, but Britain would not allow it to be. The term "wild geese" in the first line was originally applied to the Irish Jacobite army that was allowed to go to France following its defeat by the army of King William in 1691. It was later used for Irish soldiers who served in the Royal Army in European wars.


"The Green Fields of France," sung in the clip above by Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, is one of the saddest songs I know.  The line "Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'?" at first suggested to me that Private McBride served in a Scottish regiment, as "Flowers" is a traditional Scots lament, but the notes to this YouTube clip say it has become "[t]he traditional lament for the fallen in forces of the British Commonwealth." So, the song was co-opted, after excising the lines

Sad day for the Order,
What's happened to the border?
The English, by guile,
For once won the day.

We all live in the world the Great War (I still call it that; the Second World War was vastly more destructive, but the effects of the First include the Second and much more) created. I pray we do not have to see its like again.

Addendum: When I posted this, I speculated that Private McBride was likely Protestant, because William would not have been a popular name among Irish Catholics given the unfortunate role of King William in their history. Dermot McEvoy corrected me on this, noting that William was a common name in his (Catholic) family, and that Liam Clancy was christened William, later changing his name to its Gaelic version. William is a popular name among Ulster Scots Protestants, probably because they revere King William for his victory over the Catholics. Many Ulster Scots emigrated to America, where they became known as "Scotch Irish." Many of these settled in Appalachia, and the term "hillbilly" reflects the prevalence of the name William among them.