Fortnight Publications Ltd.

And They Hadn't a What?Irish Folk-Tales by Henry GlassieReview by: Martin J. McGuinnessFortnight, No. 254 (Sep., 1987), p. 21Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25551288 .

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Brilliant

at the

dribbling Sam McAughtry

John Morrow

Sects and other Stories Black Swan, ?3.95

THESE STORIES, or most of them, will be

familiar to Morrow fans all over Ireland. It is

good to see that he is going out to a much

wider audience. No doubt new readers in their

thousands will rejoice to make his acquaint ance. As usual, his work will appeal to them

as 'savage', 'black' and/or 'manic', to use the

terms favoured by his reviewers hitherto.

John Morrow is one of only two writers in

Ireland who can make me laugh out loud when

I read their work: the other is Bernard

McLaverty. when he's not having blocks. One

of the stories in this collection. The Humours

of Ballyturdeen. has a constituent part that was

eased out by Morrow once and read by the

author as part of an arts programme in which I

took part. I found it so funny that I had trouble

in composing myself to read my own piece when my turn came.

His work is crammed with self-contained

tales of this sort. They sit together, these com

ponents, within their parent stories, abutting -

with little or no mortar to hold them to the

parts on either side - and. if I must offer a

criticism, it is that this construction method

renders the finished product a shade too taut for

comfort.

If Morrow was a soccer player and I were

his manager I should advise him to make his

passes longer. He is brilliant at the dribbling. Thank goodness he has never involved himself

in journalism but has devoted his life to the

pursuit of fine writing, but nevertheless I

would commend to him the practice engaged in

by some of the best of the old-time news

papermen - the threading of so much silk

through the story that the copy simply had to

be left as it was filed, or the whole lot would

have fallen on to the sub-editor's lap once the

first cut was made.

The range of the stories will satisfy the

most demanding of his fans - the usual British

officer gets himself into the usual pickle in

Belfast: a boy falls into a sewer and comes out

all set for evangelistic filthy riches; a couple on a no-go estate are terrorised by a washing machine.

But if I might indulge myself here and take

a close juke at the finer texture of his work, I

would invite the student to consider Morrow's

preoccupation with World War I, compre

hensively illustrated in three stories in this

collection. There is evidence that someone

close to the author made it through the Great

War, came home, and talked about it at length to the boy Morrow, sitting with his chin on

his knees.

In Oul Cruelty the central character, home

on leave from the trenches. Fights a mad dog, kills it, and injures himself so badly that he

"spent the duration in Hospital Blues". That

phrase is pure bumper, bianco and Brasso. It is

the sort of material that Morrow throws across

much of his work like blinding on a finished

road.

In No Sundays on the Somme he chooses

the Boys' Brigade in 1940, at the time of

Dunkirk, as the window through which we

might see the winds of war ruffle the fine hair

of boys too young to enlist. The

Distinguished Visitor who is to inspect the

parade happens to be the colonel of the

Flintshires and the main character - who is the

young Morrow, or I'm the battalion bugler -

has no time for this mob, having seen them

march to quarters in the city. "Look at their

rifles, he says to a friend, "pigging. My Da

says that the Flintshires ran nearly as fast as

the Shitty Shirts on the Somme."

The truth is that we don't read these words, we hear them, carried on Woodbine breath,

spoken by an Old Contemptible with an open

spencer under his coat, talking through hurstles as a young lad listens, enthralled.

When Morrow takes the war and uses it to

make a story go, the result is less than

convincing. In Lonely Heart he has a central

character who is wounded in the trenches, who

is under pressure from his girl to marry her, who comes home to do just that, but who is

diverted at Kingstown to help in the shelling of Sackville Street. On his way back to

France, having lost the girl, he is taken out of

the ranks again and pressed into service in a

firing squad to execute "a man with long, grey hair, that fell down over his ears". (I don't

know about you but I made that Connolly.) After the war he drifts through life as a busker,

playing the "mouth organ" - it was a French

fiddle, in my time - to cinema audiences.

Finally, in the opening par, he dies when a

jeepload of drunken Yanks mounts the

pavement and runs him down.

Morrow loved this character so much that

he gave him a magnificent funeral: "The

longest in living memory in his home district ... the laid out wreaths covering a dozen graves

on either side of the pit. One bore a note that

said, 'For Lonely Heart, from the girls in

Murray's snuff room." More likely it was

John's tribute to the old soldier of his youth. John Morrow was born in 1930. World

War II beat him by a long neck. He would not

have been content to serve in it as an orderly room man, knowing him.

And, knowing him and his lovely work, I

can only cry on behalf of literature that he

missed the war. My God, what he could have

done with some of the dickheads that ran it.

John Morrow -just a pity he missed the war

'And they hadn't a whaft' Martin J McGuinness

Henry Glassie, ed

Irish Folk-Tales Penguin, ?6.95

THIS COLLECTION by an American folklorist takes us from the origins of interest in Irish

folklore with T Crofton Croker in the 1820s, through its flourishing in the late 19th century with Douglas Hyde. W B Yeats and Lady Gregory, bringing us up to date by including the

editor's own work in the field and stories he collected, many from Northern Ireland.

However Glassie opts for a thematic rather than chronological approach: the book is divided

into sections such as Wit. Mystery and History. There are tales of leprechauns and fairies -

"angels who fell with Lucifer after defeat at the War of Heaven" - or the Good People, who strike

fear into faint hearts when night falls on lonely country roads.

On the origin of such tales one of the story-teller, from Fermanagh observes: "The fairy tales

were a matter of entertainment. And I think again it was really to scare young people. Naturally

enough, a young person would like to get out. The same as your daughter ... She'd like to get

out at night, you know. Nature takes its course. That's the way it is." Thus the legends and tales

of sorcery were almost a form of social control.

In his lengthy introduction, Glassie points out the social significance of stories "through which the people of Ireland present to themselves that which is of enduring significance". Often

they refer to an idyllic past -

perhaps to provide comfort in a difficult present. Consider the

sentiments expressed in the story The Old Times in Ireland, collected by Lady Gregory: "There was a man in those times bought a cow for one and sixpence, and when he was driving her home

he sat down by the roadside crying, for fear he had given too little. And the man that sold him as

he was going home he sat down by the roadside crying, for fear he had taken too much."

Glassie also points to the similarities between the folktales of different countries. Thus, for

instance, the collection includes Irish versions of Cinderella and the adventures of Ulysses. Irish Folk-Tales makes for entertaining reading. Obviously, tales that arise out of an oral

tradition lose something on the printed page. However, says Glassie: "The distinctive textures of

Irish dialects of English remain in syntax and word choice." So we have phrases like "And they hadn't a haet; there was no food" and repetition of "do ye see". Through such means he has been

able to retain the original flavour of the tales -

though problems of understanding could arise for

people outside Ireland.

Glassie has a deep regard for the subject. Commenting on his sources, he writes: "One book I

did not plunder for texts is the best of them all, Sean O'Sullivan's Folktales of Ireland. I left

it undisturbed in hopes that our collections might be read together." Admirably reverent, he has

assembled a fine and comprehensive collection.

Fortnight September 21

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