Chapter 1

"Bring down the lamp, a chailin", said the tired old voice from the shadows. 

Eily leaned the broom against the wall and started toward the big kitchen table in the center of the room.  A tall slender girl, she had no difficulty reaching the chain and pulling the oil lamp down from the ceiling.  Pulling a match from the pocket of her apron, she lit the lamp and adjusted the wick.  When she was satisfied with the flame, she looked toward the fireplace to where the old man was sitting back in the leather armchair. 

He answered her unspoken question with a nod, saying, "Go maith, go maith".  His eyes, Eily noted in the soft lamplight, had taken on that translucent, almost milky quality that characterizes old age.  Eily pulled on the chain again and raised the lamp so that the room was suffused with the soft glow of lamplight.  With a sudden burst of affection for her grandfather, Eily crossed the floor and laid a hand on his shoulder, bending close so he could hear her.  "Would you like tea, gran’da?"   As he nodded yes to Eily, he looked at her shining red hair and bright blue eyes, and his mind took him back to a time almost a century ago.

The pungent smell of tea, the shining red hair and bright blue eyes.  That was all James was aware of as he stood in the shop with his father, “the Boss”.  They were buying tea for his mother, "the Missus".  While they waited for the shopkeeper to finish mixing the tea leaves and measuring them into a brown paper bag, there was a movement from the back of the shop.  Out of the darkness appeared this vision of a little girl, with flowing red hair and blue eyes.   A decade later, they would find that both of them remembered this first meeting.  The little beauty from the shop eventually became Eily's grandmother, and old James felt that same dull pain in his chest as he thought about the last time he saw her, holding her hand as she lay dying in the big brass bed upstairs.

Looking into the dancing flames of the tangy turf fire, James traveled back in time to 1768 when he was a young lad of 13 and first laid eyes on Ellen Gilbert. It was a day that still stands out in his fading memory. 

James’ Story

A cool breeze is blowing up from the Shannon toward Corgrigg.  I’m a man already, at 13 years working the farm with my father and brothers.  A stiff breeze is blowing off the river toward the house, and my jacket isn’t warm enough for the weather.  Still, I’m lucky to have it – a hand-me-down, as my mother, the Missus, calls it, from her brother the Priest.  The tweed is rough and worn in places, but neatly darned and clean. The Missus places great store on cleanliness. 

“A bhuachaillin! Anseo!”, comes the call from my father, the Boss.  We’re going to Shanagolden, and he’s just finished harnessing the donkey.  I run over to climb up beside him on the high seat of the cart, he whistles, and the donkey sets off up the road at a trot.  She’s an old animal, threadbare like my jacket, and we have to get off at the foot of the hill and walk her and the cart up to the top.  The Boss likes her, calls her Mavourneen, and always goes in to the shed to say good night to her.  I point out the wild flowers to the Boss as we continue up the road, foxgloves and cowslips and the primroses just done.  He doesn’t say a lot, does the Boss, but I can tell he likes that I know these things, the Latin names of the flowers and such. 

The Boss gets mad when we talk about schooling because of the Penal Laws.  He makes sure that all of us get classes when the hedge school-masters come around.  Last month, Fr. Martin from Kerry stayed at our house and pretended to be working on the hay with the rest of us.  But he was really teaching us, giving us books to read in English and teaching us the English language.  Because he loves Latin, and loves being a priest, he tries to get the boys to learn it by telling us all the names of the flowers.  The Missus says it feels like she’s at Holy Mass when she hears me telling the names of the flowers in Latin. 

We come down the little hill into the village, and stop at the water trough so the donkey can have a drink and a rest.  The boss hands me the reins, nods and goes up to the shop.  Unspoken, I know I’m to let the donkey rest, then follow on up to the shop and wait outside.  I know the Boss will be having a drink in the shop – there are two counters in the shop.  You go to one for a shot of whisky, the other for provisions. 

“Seamus! “ I hear as Daithi Reidy comes barreling toward me.  “Conas ta tu?”

Daithi is a great friend of mine.  We love the summers, when we all go from farm to farm making the hay.  It’s hard work, turning over the dry grass until it becomes an even golden color.   “Daithi,” I say to him, “I’m minding the donkey until the Boss comes out of the shop.”   We chat away about things, confirming the time we’re going to meet for the hurling game on Sunday.  I love to play, and get into trouble with the Missus when I’m late home to milk the cows.  She doesn’t understand that I can’t just step away and come home.  Dave asks me if I want to go into the shop to get the Boss.  I do, so Dave holds her reins.  The Boss seldom if ever comes out of the shop unless I go in to get him.  As I push open the door, the little bell rings.  He’s over at the whisky counter, and throws the rest of his drink back when he sees me come in, asking old Tom Gilbert if the tea is ready yet.  We walk across to the other counter and it didn’t take us long, it being a small shop, watching the tea leaves being mixed and measured.  There was a noise from the back of the shop, and a beautiful child walked toward us.  She was dressed all in white, with a flame of red hair down to her shoulders, and the blue eyes of a china doll.  “Thanam an Dhul!” said the Boss, when he saw her gliding toward us, “ce tusa!”

Old Gilbert chuckled from behind the counter, saying to the Boss, “My grand-daughter, William.  She’ll be staying here with Mary and myself for a while.”  The two men leaned closer to each other, with the look of men exchanging confidential information.  I couldn’t hear what they were saying even if I wanted to. The blood was rushing in my ears and my heart was pounding as I looked at this vision before me.  I had never in all my 13 years seen the face of such an angel.  Before anything other than a croak could come out of my mouth, she was gone. Back into the shadows she came from, and I was left with feelings I’d never felt before.

The boss handed me and Daithi a toisin each of boiled sweets, and we set off up the hill, down the road to Corgrigg, past the graveyard and the farmhouses and the wild flowers, and I knew I would never be the same again. 

OH, MANHATTAN!

 By Margaret Mulvihill

New York, New York, everybody's dream. I hear this from people on the streets, in restaurants, in the workplaces I visit. People from countries all over the globe still flock to New York, and no matter if they end up working in the city yet living in the outer boroughs, all cling to Manhattan as the epicenter of their collective existence.

            Why? Just what is the attraction of Manhattan? Well, the energy level is palpable for starters. Put that many people on the streets and something has to happen! It’s easy to spot the out-of-towners. They are the slow walkers, who stop when they speak, who look up at the skyscrapers.  They don’t spit words out sideways as they half-walk-half-run along the sidewalk. They don’t pivot on the street corners impatiently taking whichever “Walk” signal happens to flash. They don’t weave in an out of the confusing mass of human traffic with that ease and flexibility that comes with actually living in Manhattan.

            So here we all are, struggling to survive in every imaginable way. Jobs are hard to come by these days, so even though rents are falling, it’s still tough to get by in Manhattan. Not that long ago, I came to Manhattan – flew in on a Sunday, went on a few interviews the next morning, and had a firm job offer by early afternoon. That’s no longer the case – recruiters tell me that not only are employers not hiring, the agencies themselves are struggling to stay in business. Several have closed their doors in recent months.

            On a recent weekday in Manhattan, I left my apartment for a visit to the Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. After a short wait a yellow cab came along, which proved to be ridiculously expensive. Prepare for an argument if you opt to pay by credit card and don’t select the maximum possible tip. The driver told me that the credit card fee comes out of his tip, which might or might not be accurate information!  Either way, I don’t know why I tipped him, maybe because he managed to get me there alive, in spite of his constant lane changing and mad darts into oncoming traffic.

            The Museum itself was an interesting experience. I hadn’t visited in years, and took the opportunity when an out-of-town friend expressed interest in seeing the ocean life exhibit. The slow-moving lines of people waiting to hand over the individual $15 just to get in were mind-blowing. My reaction was to go somewhere else, but the out-of-towner looked around and spotted a bank of computers against a wall with a very short line. Sure enough, those computers were more than happy to spit out a couple of tickets after being fed $30 with a credit card.

            We made our way to the ocean life exhibit, which was actually very interesting. More high-tech than I expected, but less than it could be. I would have thought any museum in New York City in the 21^st Century would be more interactive, but it was still interesting. The big surprise was the gift shop on three levels. I’m definitely going back there to do some Christmas shopping. I did not expect to find the selection of books, cds, artwork and jewelery, along with the usual touristy souvenir offerings, and all competitively priced.  My out-of-towner bought himself a new Indiana Jones hat, very becoming.

            Leaving the museum after a couple of hours, we took refuge in a very nice bistro on Amsterdam, with delicious dessert and wine served by a very friendly Romanian waitress. After a pleasant hour there, and with so many choices open to us in Manhattan, we cabbed it back to 96^th Street to recover.  Check back again to see what we did next!

An American Critic's Perspective on 21st Century and Pre-21st Century Literature in the English Language

The people who made money and a livelihood, even a career, by compiling anthologies of poetry for American students entering junior high school or high school sometime after 1950 made a point of including Robert Burns so that Alfred Lanier and Alfred Tennyson were not mistakenly believed to be the only type and/or nationalities of poems and poets available to English-speaking people in the then lower 48.

There was a sappy, drippy American poet-William Cullen Bryant- who was popular in the late 19th century who succeeded as an Americanized Tennyson-Three names-sounds like Edward Arlington Robinson but wrote earlier-a "plashy marge" type(referred to swampy reedy embankments next to a flowing river). I remember at Groton being reduced to stitches at the corniness-whoever spoke in real life about "plashy marges"?- of Bryant.

But back to Burns. Everybody who read around in these anthologies eventually read  about Burns' take on the Afton Waters in Ayrshire. We also knew about Burns' accent poetry--wee sleekit cownrin' beasties. Burns was widely, whether or not well, anthologized not just on the Atlantic shores but all across America.

I don't take any special credit for knowing these things, because by the time I was 14 I knew that literature was going to be a primary psychic and cultural environment for me throughout my life, and once I formally committed to majoring in English there was so much to continue to learn.

But until the 60s, the anthologists (e.g. Louis Untermeyer, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and those type boys) saw to it-abetted by schoolteachers who taught the English they were told to teach whether they knew any English or not-that every body stateside  got a feeling for Irish and Scottish poetry-as well as for the poetries that, each with its own flavor, began to emerge from the many sub-Americas.

The lifetimes of Baltimore's Edgar Allen Poe and upstate New York 's Walt Whitman overlapped, but their poetry did not converge in subject or in manner. The poetry of each might have been written on different planets by different species.

Much the same, I speculate, could be said about the relationship between Burns and his British and Irish contemporaies. I imagine that Burns was taken much more seriously in the USA than in England , and this is because of American anthologists wanting to prove their breadth, in order thereby to rout the stereotype of American provinciality.

There remains no question that Burns' Afton poem garlanded the dreamtime of many an American child for many decades, many fortnights, many moons....

On Martha’s Vineyard on a Budget. Seriously.

Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

NOT SO PRICEY Among the Flowers Cafe is a popular and not expensive option in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard.
By DAVID G. ALLAN

Map

It’s true that you have to pay for a ferry or a plane to get there; that many restaurants, inns and shops depend upon a steady flow of flush wallets; and that the cost of living on the island was nearly 60 percent higher than the national average, an April 2007 report showed. But the island also has relatively inexpensive dining and accommodation options and shopping bargains. And quintessential Vineyard pursuits like going to the beach and strolling through the historic towns are free.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/
travel/escapes/13martha.html