Aidan Higgins, Irish writer and Mick Degan, Athy man mentioned in Hibbins' novel 'Dog Days'

It was fifty-eight years ago that I first came across the writings of Aidan Higgins when his second book ‘Langrishe Go Down’ was published to critical acclaim. Born in Celbridge in 1927 his first book ‘Felo de Se’, a short story collection, was his introduction as a new Irish writer who would emerge six years later to be described by Fintan O’Toole as ‘the coming literary man, not just in Ireland but throughout Europe.’ I was a member of a small committee led by the writer Neil Donnelly which organised the weekend literary celebration ‘Aidan Higgins at 80’ in St. Raphael’s, Celbridge over a May weekend in 2007. It was a weekend graced by the presence and active participation of such great writers as Dermot Healy, Fintan O’Toole, John Banville, poet Derek Mahon and the American novelist Annie Proulx. Athy was represented by the world class photographer John Minihan, several of whose photographic images illustrated the weekend programme. It was a rare opportunity to meet Aidan Higgins and to talk to the writer whom I had first met many years previously during a reading at a literary festival. I was interested in following up a claim made to me following the publication in 1998 of his book, ‘Dog Days’ which gives an account of life in Dublin while Higgins was living in nearby Brittas, Co. Wicklow. My informant had then claimed that a native son of Athy featured in Aidan Higgins’s ‘Dog Days’. He named Mick Deegan, whose brothers Joe and Jack were well known to the people of Athy, while another brother in Donegal, Monsignor Patrick Deegan, was perhaps less well known in the South Kildare town. Mick Deegan had a small shop on the corner of Avoca Road in Dublin where he had a thriving business. He was described by Seamus Dowling in his recent memoirs ‘Flowers that Bloometh’ as a colourful personality who was rarely seen without the butt of a cigarette hanging from the side of his lip. Seamus, who is the bridge correspondent for the Irish Times, described Mick Deegan as ‘a small, squat figure with a neck so big he could not get shirts to fit him in the usual retail outlets who knew his customers and had a brief chat – benign gossip – with everyone of them. He would douse a cigarette when he saw his wife coming across the road, where they lived.’ Aidan Higgins in his book ‘Dog Days’ wrote of Deegan. ‘Customers came in for loaves of Boland’s bread and bottles of Lucan Dairy and Mick serves them absently, lost in the dream where Glen Rock is hitting the rails at White City or coming drugged from the No. 2 box. His big redfaced son is in the Gardai. His shop smells like a country shop in the country of my childhook (King’s in Celbride) when everything alarmed me. Mick looks dead-beat. He lights up a fag, covers his puffy face with a soft stubby hand, the index finger darkly stained. MAN HELD FOR PUB MURDER declares the Evening Press headline. The Ballymore Eustace haulier John Lawlor had been shot dead by the Provos in Timmon’s public house in Essex Street one lunchtime: summoned there by the hit-man ordered to “execute” him and shot with as little compunction as the killer would have given a mad dog; Lawlor sipping the coldest pint he was ever to swallow. Mick heaves a heavy sigh, licks his fingers, turns a page.’ Aidan Higgins confirmed to me that the Mick referenced in ‘Dog Days’ was indeed Mick Deegan, the man whom however he did not know was from the same county as himself. The ‘Aidan Higgins at 80’ celebration was a great success, largely due to the work of Neil Donnelly. It was also a well-deserved tribute to an Irish writer whom John Banville described as ‘a major figure in Irish writing in the 20th century, a link between the high modernists Joyce and Beckett and the more restrained generation of writers that followed him.’ Aidan Higgins died in December 2015 and as I finished writing this piece I have on my desk the sixty page publication which was produced for the 80th birthday celebration under the title ‘A Trade Recondite as Falconry’ which was Aidan Higgins’s definition of creative writing.