Irish Eyes

By Mattie Lennon

Start your 2025 reading with two fabulous books. Tales of a Patchwork and Left at the Lamb.

In Tales of a Patchwork Life, Brighid McLaughlin, folk artist, journalist, storyteller and writer among other things, brings the reader on a step by step journey through her life of adventure, research, tragedy and every emotion known to the human race. In chapter one she brings you on a guided tour of her little cottage in Dalkey, County Dublin. Of this cottage which was built in 1875 she says, "Twas here the most profound things happened to me." Her ability to paint word pictures means that the reader can almost smell the turf smoke from the open fire and hear the fried herrings sizzling in butter. Among the links to her past are, “ . . . a horsehair snare that I associate with my father’s life and stories: a rusty madeleine tray, a poignant reminder of the last thing my sister gave me two nights before she was murdered; an old iron crane . . .” Part of a long list of items each one a reminder of love, ambition, death and hope.

From her humble abode in Dalkey we are taken back in time to her childhood home in north county Dublin where her father who spent part of his life, "In Canada mining, tunneling, flying and flying planes through blizzards” was an agricultural farm machinery dealer,

Early in the book she gives an account of her childhood on the Dublin/Meath border and makes no secret of the fact that she was “hard reared.” Always a creative spirit she was useless at maths and gives a vivid account of her red knuckles as a result of “Mrs Collin’s leather strap when I couldn’t add or subtract.” She describes Mrs Margaret Collins as, “. . . a large woman in her late sixties who wore an inadequate supporting bra and a very low plunge necked lime green Aran cardigan.”

She was sent to a Brigidine Boarding School where the punishment was unbelievable and the food was inedible; “Disgusting meatballs made from shredded offal and bone.”

She doesn’t pull any punches in describing her job with Dublin Public Libraries she says, "I loved books but it was the bosses I had a problem with.” One librarian bullied her ferociously, “This yoke spent most of the time during the summer months drinking Rose and topless sunbathing in the backyard of the library.”She points out that most of the staff in Dublin’s public libraries was overeducated, “. . . if you were any way creative you were f*cked.”

At one stage Therese Cronan, wife of the poet Tony, took Brighid under her wing and told her, “I feel duty bound to guard you against the social f---kaneers, the phonies, the cruel in tongue who drink in the ‘Horse-shit’ bar in the Shelbourne.”

A patchwork life surely. While being driven through the mountains of Montana by Rich Hall. In his Chevrolet, the sight of John Deere farm machinery, balers and combine harvesters reminded her of, " . . . my childhood in North County Dublin." Her life of writing brought her into contact with, “leprosy survivors, bohemian eccentrics, gamblers, snake handlers in the Appalachian Mountains, farmers in Minnesota, civil rights leaders in Louisiana, boxers. They represented what I cared for all my life, people who knew suffering and survived.”

Suffering was no stranger to the author herself’. Having her sister brutally murdered and her husband Michael Shannon drowned was no picnic. Person of the world though she is, she can be surprised. One such time was when Gareca Browne’s father the 98 year old 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, who had sat in the House of Lords for an incredible 72 years, “ . . . held a place in his heart for me that was not platonic. . . I absolutely adored him and he adored me, but certainly not in that way.” In his invitation to her to attend his birthday trip to Paris he signed it, ” Your old but loving Rascal, Dom,Dom.”

She didn’t exactly “adore” Ted Kennedy or Kevin McClory or the “ … fierce looking woman with grey hair and a formidable stern face” who turned out to be “some sort of psychologist” and had her sit the Rorschach Test.

Don’t miss this work by and about this woman whose life is in itself an open book.

Details from www.mercierpress.ie

(I won’t tell you where the title comes from.-- Think Eats shoots and leaves!)

Written by Aidan Cruise and David Harrington with research by the late Kieran Swords and the assistance of many local historians this book is described as “ A flavour of the History and Heritage in the Blessington area” but it is much more than that. If you take Blessington as a centre point and draw a circle with a radius of approximately 18 miles you will have the history, folklore tales and memories of almost everything within that circle. Ice age, Stone Age, Bronze Age, it’s all there. From a 5000 year old dwelling at Humphreystown to a detailed history of the Blessington Steam Tram and from the story of the granite for the Wellington monument to the construction of the Poulaphouca Dam it’s all told in detail and with literally hundreds of pictures within its 305 pages.

Richard Meagher, one of the many readers who are delighted with this work had this to say ,“Fantastic book, got a present of it when back in Blessington on vacation from Nova Scotia, can’t put it down so much great information, will have to read it again.”

It would appear that the first print run flew off the shelves but there is a big demand for a reprint

Co-author and Secretary of the Lakeside Heritage Group, Aidan Cruise can be contacted at ; aidan.cruise@gmail.com

Happy New Year.

See you in February.