Studs Terkel....."Curiosity didn't kill this Cat!"

So farewell then Studs....

When I first came to this country, I was in Borders & there in the discounted books, I discovered a gem...."Will the circle be unbroken...".

In summary, it was a reflective work. Studs doing what he did so best & so effortlessly- putting ordinary Americans at ease & acquiring their lifetime of insight on the topic in hand...this particular topic was on life, death & faith...as we get older we tend to focus on our destiny & ultimate journey.

It was a comment on American Society of that snapshot in time then that such a book be discarded & ignored so easily , to be put in the “marked down” section so soon after publication.

The humanity of Terkel's prose & his ability to let the true America speak....softly, quietly in these pages....away from all the chattering classes & masses, the talk-radio clan - the diatribes, the wingnuts of either side - made me realize and thankful for this country that I am honored to be a resident.

As I began to voraciously read this & his other "tomes"...the Pulitzer prize winner "The Good War", "Hope dies last", "American Dreams", "Working" , "Hard Times"...among others, I found one, "Coming of Age" to be his unbidden masterwork...it was reflections on the 20th century by those who had lived it...It's still a work that I read from time to time...simply for grounding myself & realizing how fortunate we are for the previous generations' toil, effort and sacrifice before us.

We were out (the better half & I) last night - It was our anniversary. On the radio, it was announced that Studs had passed to that "big rally in the sky". As we got out of the car, I said to my wife...how ironic that he should go just before the election on Tuesday to see a son of an immigrant, a community activist from his own town of Chicago be on the ballot of President of the United States. As I said this, I felt a chill , not a chill of cold or some eerie Halloween phenomenon but a shiver no a tremor of emotion on the whole import of the moment of his passing in such a time in our history.

The fact that the candidate is of African heritage would be a celebration of all that Studs believed & espoused about this wonderful, wonderful country. Studs was a light to me & countless others in some dark times...now that he is gone, it's time to pick up his torch & lead on. Studs Terkel was a true American superhero.

Leading is not some ego filled pastime but simply to do good in your life & the lives of others. It's time for our generation to do the same as previous ones and work for our kids & grandkids. Ensure that they have worthwhile lives too!

To those of you reading this, read Stud's work, read it & be filled with hope..the hope that good always wins out in the end.

http://dlv1.matrix.msu.edu:8080/ramgen/terkel/a0/a1/terkel-a0a1i9-b.rm
This is a clip from interviews he did on a train ride to Washington DC for a civil rights march. 54 weeks before I came into the world...a fitting finale before next Tuesday.

St. Mullins, Graigue & the Barrow Valley.

About 40 minutes from Wexford Town is the Barrow valley and it's hidden jewels, such as Graiguenamanagh & St. Mullins, two idyllic spots set in two counties. A favourite drive of mine on a summer's evening.

St. Mullins is a little village just up the Barrow River from New Ross. A cousin of my dad - Trudy Morrell, lived on the Kilkenny or "the Graigue side" high up on the inclines of Brandon Hill looking down upon this scene which you have to concur is a most agreeable sight. Trudy had to move eventually into nearby New Ross, a case of the practical over the romantic as she did not have a car & had to rely on a bus to get to shopping etc.

Driving from Trudy's home, you arrive in the village of Graiguenamanagh or the Graigue as it's known to the locals, a gorgeous riverside village known for it's abbey and it's cut glass _"Duiske glass". Once you cross the bridge, you're in County Carlow, another picture postcard hamlet that looks pretty driving through but probably is a place that you can't wait to scat from if you're a young local. Here you can hire a boat or a barge and navigate the river up to the canal system or down to Waterford estuary, heading into the Atlantic.

Heading up from Graigue, you drive along a beautiful winding road which has some amazing vistas, very much hidden Ireland. We're in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains, rolling up to the wexford border. That is the beauty about The south east of Ireland, a region I consider to be the most beautiful in the country. Having Wexford as it's core stretching across to Waterford's eastern shores, west to the Barrow valley featured here and north to the garden of Ireland - Wicklow.

St. Mullins though takes the biscuit! There is a wonderful serenity to the place that you have to simply experience to believe. It has an impressive ecclesiastical history. The locality takes its name from St. Moling, a 7th century cleric, prince, poet, artist and artisan who built a monastery here with the help of "Gobban Saor", the legendary Irish builder.

In the 8th century manuscript, known as “The Book of Mulling”, there is a plan of the monastery, the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery which shows four crosses inside and eight crosses outside the circular monastic wall. It is said that St. Moling dug a mile-long watercourse with his own hands to power his mill – a task that took seven years! He became Bishop of Ferns, died in 697 and is buried at St. Mullin’s.

The St. Moling watercourse is still there, but the original monastery was plundered by the Vikings in 951 and was again burned in 1138. An abbey was built on the site later, in the Middle Ages.

A 9th century High Cross, depicting the Crucifixion and the Celtic spiral pattern, stands outside the remains of the abbey and there are also some domestic medieval buildings, including one that has an unusual diamond-shaped window. St. Moling's Mill and Well are a short distance away. Another notable monument in the packed little churchyard is a penal altar, used in the days when the anti-Catholic penal laws were in force.

A Norman motte, once topped by a wooden castle, stands outside the churchyard, and when Mass was being said at the altar some of the congregation would climb the motte to act as lookouts. Being a Catholic in penal times in Ireland was an offence punishable by death, depending on what mood the travelling magistrate was in. You could not own a horse, own property and as a result vote. No rights basically whatsoever.

The MacMurrough Kavanaghs, former Kings of Leinster, together with other Celtic Kings, are buried in the neighbourhood of the monastery. A famous "healing priest"Fr. Daniel Kavanagh, is also buried here. People still claim that to cure toothache you should take a pinch of earth from outside the churchyard and exchange it for a pinch of clay from F. Kavanagh's grave. Then say a brief prayer, pop the clay into your mouth and walk down the hill to wash it out with water from St. Molings Well.

The site includes a medieval church ruin, the base of a round tower and the former Church of Ireland church, built in 1811. Protestants and Catholics lie side by side in the churchyard, and a story is told in the village of the days when, because there were only a handful of Protestants in the neighbourhood, the local Church of Ireland Bishop was thinking of closing down the church. The distraught vicar had a word with the Catholic priest, who had a word with his flock, and on the day of the Bishop’s visit Catholic families filled the Protestant church, joining in the responses and lustily singing Protestant hymns. The Bishop went home delighted and the church remained open. I understand they used this story in "The Quiet Man" although it's said that this story is a common one in the South though not in the North - I wonder why.

That's about it for this reminisce of a Barrow Valley drive, Hope you liked the photos.

Some deep wisdom from Oscar

The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible - wildean wit on a windswept day in Ohio. Very unseasonal weather, almost like an early spring day in Wexford, the sort of day the red & green jacketed f**kwits would mount up & pursue a poor oul fox across neighbouring fields to our demense.

Especially when some of those red & green jacketed F**kwits had the arse out of their trousers only some time before. The Nouveau Riche of Wexford, social climbers and arsigans that hung out with the 'great & the good" of these hunts really are to be seen to be believed.

Obviously Oscar felt the same way all those years ago. I wonder when he was visiting his cousins in Wexford, was it the ancestors of the same morons that we see today that he was commenting on?

Anyway, the fox is regarded in Irish folklore as a cunning & wise creature and is very close to the psyche of the Celt. I imagine the sight of red-coats chasing a native born creature endeared the fox to us in no uncertain way.

It was always an honour to help An Sionnach (gaelic for Fox) evade his captors. I just hope the practise is outlawed eventually back home.

"Weaving olden dances"

The most precious poem to me is Yeat’s “The Stolen Child”.
It is precious for personal reasons that I will not go into here only that it speaks to me and sings solace to my heart.

I wrote earlier of the Other crowd. The poem tells of the child that crosses over with the “good people”. Maybe it was our way of dealing with a very emotional subject yet are we not a very emotional race?

The picture above I took at Hook Head on Nov 30th, 1998 at 5pm....the sun was setting and the placement of the couple on the foreshore was one of those miraculous occasions when everything comes together for the perfect picture. The picture fits the poem in my mind.


The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping
than he can understand.

The Wexford Banshee

W hat is a Bow?...No, it's not the favoured weapon Of Robin Hood, I am writing about here.The Bow was the Wexford name for the Banshee.

Banshee is from the Gaelic Bean-Sidhe (same pronunciation basically) that means literally Fairy Woman.

The Bow would follow the families of Celtic Families, those with an O’ or a Mac’ before their name, rumours had it that she followed particular families even in that ring which are the O’Neills, O’Briens, O’Connors, O’Gradys & the Kavanaghs – those 5 families strangely enough span the country and were representative of our old 5 provinces, many more clans are interlinked to these families.

She appeared as a young girl, a stately woman or an old hag in tatters, wrapped in a grave shroud or a grey cloak.

She was also known as The Bean-chaointe (keening woman) or the Bean-nighe (the washer woman) in my home province of Leinster. The banshee would keen for a family who was to lose a member, staying outside the window of the person in questions room, howling her sorrow all night long. The washer woman was a tag attributed to her washing the blood stained clothes of those about to be killed in battle.


Indeed it was said around the fire at night to us young’uns that she was an ancestral spirit come to forewarn us of an impending death in the family. When the wind would be raging outside, I remember Paddy Gaul telling us that was the “Bow” outside on her way to some poor family that night. Mr. Gaul was a great one for a song or a story. His wife, Marie would coax him on for our benefit. Another neighbour, Andy Nolan & his wife Sissy would tell us similar tales – The Nolans were from the Counties of Laois & Kilkenny, and great neighbours also.

“Bow” , pronounced bough as in Bough of a tree was a name you often heard in Wexford Town. She was known to haunt Mulgannon Hill where she often follow some poor unfortunate wending their way home after the pubs would shut.

Stories of the Bow abroad in the town were manifest, our mothers especially those native born would warn us “to beware the bow” when we would stay out past dusk during the summer, we would all scuttle in dutifully no doubt muttering about that “oul hag” and then shutting up hoping a member of the other crowd weren’t within ear-shot.

As I revealed, amongst even the kids when we are out playing in the street. The Bow was never that far away. A local character who had the appearance to our childish imaginations at least had to endure the privations of being identified as the local banshee. There was a woman, dead now called Bridgey Harris who was known as 'the bow' or "Bridgey the Bow'.

Some little curs would call after how...."Bowwww!" and get a curse muttered at them as she scuttled her way home through the Republic of Davitt Road South on her way home to the sylvan folds of Wolfe Tone Villas.

She was person of modest means, the poverty of her life, apparent by the cut of her clothes, the perpetual woodbine cigarette hanging from her lips.

Her occupation was one of forager & scavenger. She was eternally searching trough empty & abandoned houses, picking at rubbish tips…Many a day we’d see her pass by, her cart – an old pram carriage piled high with timber, slates whatever trundling by…her tiny frame pushing what a full grown carthorse would have difficulty pulling. A hard life she had, of that there is no doubt.

The local wags said she had millions stashed by but I heard when she passed on, she had but a pittance and that ended up soon in the coffers of some local hostelry, her house-friend drinking it away in mere months - he to die by a broken neck after falling down the stairs in a drunken stupor. Sometimes Irony is a bitter joker.

Life’s not all sweetness & roses especially where drink is concerned.

Eddie Lenihan

The master Seanchai, Eddie Lenihan is a national treasure. A native of Kerry now resident in the Banner county - Clare, he is a collator & archivist of the traditional tales from primarily that side of the country but to this Wexfordman, they are tales that I also heard in my own hinterland (the baronies of Forth & Bargy) from the old folk .

A wonderful story teller.....His website is on the right hand side of this site....if you have an interest in the Other crowd or indeed enjoy the lore of Celtic Ireland and beyond...reading this man's tales is a must.

The Other crowd are what we Irish call the Tuatha De Dannann or the Fairies as they are known to the western world. To make fun of them is do so at your own peril. there are so many tales from all over the Country of the mischief they cause to the nay sayers & mongrels who make fun of them.

If you are interested in reading further, Try this book he told/co-wrote with Carolyn Eve Green...a cornucopia of tales & lore concerning the good people. It's available at all good online bookstores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc.