John MacKenna, Brian Hughes and the Musical 'Endurance'

When literature and music are brought together one is almost always assured of a performance not to be missed.  Such were my thoughts when John MacKenna, prize winning author and Brian Hughes, a first class traditional musician, announced the project on which both have been engaged for the past 12 months.  The project involved a musical composition by Brian Hughes to which the writer John MacKenna provided a narrative.  The combined work in music and words is to mark the centenary of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition to the Antarctic.

2014 marks the centenary of the Endurance expedition, the greatest survival story ever told.  In 1914 Ernest Shackleton and the ship Endurance left Europe as the First World War was commencing.  Shackleton, the Kilkea, Co. Kildare born Antarctic explorer and his crew hoped to achieve one of the last great feats by crossing the Antarctic from coast to coast.  What followed was one of the most daring and adventurous escapes in the history of Polar exploration.

The musical suite composed by Brian Hughes featuring the Monasterevin Gospel Choir with Brian Hughes and a host of other musicians including Shana Daby and Seamus Brett will be launched as a CD on Sunday, 26^th October 2014.  The CD launch is on the same night as the first public performance of the work which will take place in the George Bernard Shaw Theatre Carlow, starting at 8.00 p.m.  The performance will feature not only the composer, the writer and the Monasterevin Gospel Choir, but also the Kildare County Orchestra.

The stage presentation also includes a multi media element devised by Craig Blackwell, making this a unique and innovative performance of the story of Shackleton’s Endurance expedition.  The combination of words, music and visual presentation promises an evening of entertainment not to be missed.

The work was commissioned by Athy Heritage Centre as part of the centenary celebrations of the 1914 Endurance Antarctic expedition.  The County Kildare born explorer is the subject of an exhibition in the Athy Heritage Centre which is the only permanent exhibition anywhere in the world dedicated to Shackleton. 

Brian Hughes, who in the past has released a number of CDs of traditional Irish music, highlighted for me the work which as the composer he undertook to match the music and the mood to the events which make up the Endurance story.  The principal movements of the composer’s suite highlight the optimism of the parting, the devastation arising from the ship’s destruction, the crew’s hopelessness when drifting on ice, culminating in the courageous voyage of the James Caird and the dramatic rescue of the crew members.  The beautiful musical suite by Brian Hughes is complemented by the written words of John MacKenna which both the musician and the writer will perform on the Carlow stage on Sunday, 26^th October.

The performance will be officially opened by Ernest Shackleton’s granddaughter, Alexandra Shackleton.  Alexandra, as patron of the Shackleton Autumn School now in its 14^th year, will be attending the Autumn School which opens in Athy Heritage Centre on Friday 24^th October.  The performance in the George Bernard Shaw Theatre Carlow is part of this year’s Shackleton Autumn School for which bookings can be made by contacting the Heritage Centre on (059)8633075 or by email at athyheritage@eircom.net.

Castledermot born John MacKenna, who to date has produced an extraordinary range of literary works comprising poems, plays, short stories and novels, has written another novel which will be launched on Thursday, 20^th November.  The venue, an unusual one for a literary event, is the Arboretum Garden Centre in Carlow where radio personality Joe Duffy will launch John’s novel, ‘Joseph’.  John’s literary works have been the subject of several awards including the Irish Times fiction prize for 1993.  His book of short stories, ‘The Fallen’ reviewed in the Sunday Times by Penny Perrick was described as ‘raw beautiful stories set in and around Athy’ by a writer who was ‘marvellously enriching’.  Further accolades came with his first novel, ‘Clare’, which has just been republished, when Irish novelist Kevin Casey described MacKenna ‘as a writer of increasing confidence and power’.  His literary style drew comparisons with John McGahern when Kate Donovan reviewed his book, ‘The Last Fine Summer’ for the Irish Times.

John MacKenna is a writer whose previous works were usually set in the rural background of South Kildare, bringing comparisons with Hardy’s affinity with Wessex.  The new novel, ‘Joseph’ breaks with this literary fascination with place and as one of the most notable contemporary Irish fiction writers MacKenna extends his literary borders with his latest work.  The launch is on 20^th November and an  invitation is extended to all to attend this notable event.

John MacKenna Skit! (Johanna Macken)

I was fortunate enough to spend a few days recently researching in the British Library where I came across some papers which helped me to partially solve a puzzle that has troubled me for some time.  The story of Johanna Macken is a most unusual one.  It was a name I had heard now and again in my younger days but always, it seemed to me, a name that seemed to produce a slight frission of disapproval when mentioned by persons of a certain age.  With the instincts of the Christian Brothers boy, I knew better than to ask my elders too many questions.  I was later to discover that our town had produced at least one authoress whose fame had travelled far to other lands but who was perhaps not always as appreciated as she should have been in her own home town.

The future writer, Johanna Macken, was born in the late 1850's or early 1860's in the Castledermot area.  I have been able to find little information about her early life which seems in any case to have been fairly uneventful but she almost certainly attended the Ballitore Quaker School which had formerly counted Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy among its pupils.  It was perhaps this influence that prompted her to become a Quaker sometime in her early adult life, a move which proved to be only the first of the quaintly individualist touches that would mark her personal career from then on.  For Johanna was an unusual and might I say libertarian personality for her day – a hint of which must have survived to ensure her part in the bawdy rhymes that innocently echoed around the local school yard almost a century later.

The first time I discovered that Johanna Macken had a reality outside of our schoolboy chants was many years ago in Webbs book shop on Aston Quay, home to many a lost literary treasure and a place which has long since become a casualty of Dublin's ever diminishing book trade.  It was a shop I always enjoyed visiting, as much for the pleasure of chatting to its elderly guardian Tony Lamont, a man of abstruse and varied learning as for the opportunity of whiling away my hours amongst its towers of ancient tomes.  On hearing I was from Athy, Tony one day chuckled mischievously to himself and fished out a greyish pockmarked little item from one of the rear shelves.  It was a slim book on the history of Castledermot, obviously a product of the previous century but what caught my attention was the name boldly emblazoned on the front, that of Johanna Macken.  The title recalled the star of our childhood songs - fiction made flesh and a story was then related to me which I was finally able to corroborate for myself almost 30 years later while in the British Library.

The Castledermot book was the first of Johanna's long and prolific literary career.  It appears she soon thereafter began publishing under a disguised male name – in the manner of her predecessors Charlotte Bronte and George Elliott – to escape some of the prejudice against female authors that still survived in the 19^th century.  The Castledermot book was a local affair but my researches have shown that Johanna Macken was involved in the production of a myriad of literary creations.  In the era of the three volume novel – vast affairs which were the stock and trade of the lending libraries dotted throughout Britain – Macken quickly made her mark with “Claire”, a five volume effort which won comparisons with Samuel Richardson's “Pamela” for its sympathetic account of a working girls passage through life.  With the novels she produced over the next decade or so (at a rate of roughly two a year that would shame many of our current crop of authors) it seems that Johanna Macken established a solid name writing under the nom de plume “Mete Lane” as a writer of romance and adventure stories.  These imagined tales of high society were a world apart from her humble lifestyle which she lived out, I believe, in a small cottage in the Kilkea area.  Nevertheless they were a staple feature of the diet of the British public at the turn of the century and indeed part of the forgotten social history of the time.

But Tony Lamont had a more curious story to tell than that of a now neglected lady novelist.  It seems that Johanna Macken under one of her many pseudonyms was also the author of a series of pornographic novels that were equally popular in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras, but even less likely to be noted by the compiler of literary histories.  Under the name of Jack Makedo, she wrote a number of what one might call racy page turners for Londons Blackheart Press, the titles of which are descriptive enough in themselves and need not be repeated here.  It was perhaps at least one of the reasons why this strange author has become a hidden part of Athy's past.  Lucrative these novels may have been, but their existence was certainly designed to pass under any official radar.  It was the last of these books, “A Haunted Heart” which was destined to secure Johanna Macken, alias Jack Makedo, her own unusual place in literary history.  Fifteen years before James Joyce's Ulysses would create a similar controversy, Macken's last novel was unexpectedly seized on arrival in the United States by the U.S. Post Office and those involved in its importation  were charged with attempting to distribute obscene material.  There was no celebrity trial for an author who was – in another of her many guises – one of Britain's most popular writers of the penny  romance.  The ensuing press scandal ensured that many of Macken's remaining titles were removed from the shelves of the British and Irish book shops. 

All that remained in her home town, a place soon to be consumed by the larger dramas of a World War and a War of Independence (and in any case not regularly preoccupied by the scandals of the London literati) was the faint echo of a stained reputation.  All that passed down to myself and my pals in much later years was the fantastical character who starred in many a ribald rhyme.

Johanna Macken faded into obscurity after the trial of her New York distributors and to the best of my knowledge never wrote another book.  I have often wondered what became of her, but I understand she did remain in the South Kildare area and probably survived to a distinguished age, most likely under another of her many pseudonyms.  Though the photograph reproduced here shows the lady writer in her heyday – and many of my readers who may have come across her would have done so when she was at a rather more advanced age – I would appeal to anyone who could help me to properly conclude the story of this most unusual woman.

Until then her only surviving epitaph will be that chanted in a rowdy school yard over fifty years ago.

            Johanna Macken had her pride

            Which was never, ever at her side

            For when she had the sudden urge

            She upped and wrote a dirty dirge.

Europe’s premier Antarctic event and it’s happening in Athy

For the last nine years the local Heritage Centre has hosted the Shackleton Autumn School over the October Bank Holiday weekend. It has grown in status over the years, hosting as it does each year a gathering of overseas polar experts who bring to an Irish audience an unrivalled knowledge and experience of polar affairs. This year the weekend’s event will have lecturers from Norway, America and England and many overseas visitors will be arriving in Athy to take part in what has become Europe’s premier Antarctic event.

The mixture of lectures, exhibitions, drama and film has proved to be a winning formula. With the other local festivals such as the Bluegrass Festival, the Athy Waterways Festival and the Medieval Festival, the Shackleton weekend provides a welcome addition to the social and cultural life of the town.

This year on the opening Friday night the Shackleton Memorial Lecture will be given by Caroline Casey. Caroline is registered blind but despite this has packed more into her short life than many of us could hope to do in a lifetime. You may recall her journey across India on an elephant some years ago, a trip which got nationwide coverage on radio and TV. On her return from the Indian continent Caroline founded the Aisling Project now re-named Kanchi which works to facilitate the integration of persons with disabilities into the work force. From that she developed and presented on Irish TV the O² Ability Awards. Her achievements in the face of enormous difficulties have been recognised nationally and internationally, culminating in her appointment as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2006. She was the first and only Irish person appointed to that forum and further honours came courtesy of the National University of Ireland when she was awarded an honorary doctorate. Two years ago she received the Eisenhower Fellowship.

Earlier on Friday evening and prior to Caroline Casey’s talk, Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Ernest Shackleton, will launch the book ‘The Shackleton Letters: Behind the Scenes of the Nimrod Expedition’, a book published by the Erskine Press of Norwich, England. The choice of Athy Heritage Centre to launch the book written by Regina Daly is quite an achievement for the Shackleton Autumn School. Unquestionably the launch confirms the growing importance of the Shackleton weekend within Antarctic exploration circles. The Shackleton School’s own publication, ‘Nimrod’ – Volume 3 will be on sale during and after that weekend. It includes some of the lectures given at the 2008 School and with previously issued volumes 1 and 2 provides a well ordered and comprehensive coverage of lectures in past years.

On Saturday 24th October the lectures commence at 10.30 a.m. with a talk by Hans Kjell Larsen, a native of Norway on his fellow countryman and grandfather, the Antarctic pioneer Captain C.A. Larsen. This is followed at 12noon by Professor Andrew Lambert’s talk on the Franklin Expedition. That expedition remains to this day shrouded in mystery following the disappearance of it’s ships and all their crew in the Arctic.

Dr. David Wilson, the grand nephew of Dr. Edward Wilson who perished with Captain Scott’s Polar party, will give an illustrated talk on Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition. Dr. Russell Porter from Rhode Island College, U.S.A. will give the final talk on Saturday on the subject of the Franklin Expedition. Sunday morning will have particular interest for book lovers when Dr. Michael Rosove, a Professor of Medicine at the University of California and the author of several books on Antarctic history, gives his talk on ‘The Great Books of Shackletonia’. Dublin-born Marie Herbert who with her husband Wally spent years with the Inuit in Greenland will conclude the Sunday morning lectures and in the afternoon a selection of unusual and long forgotten early polar films will be shown in the Town Hall.

Sunday night sees the first performance in Athy of John MacKenna’s new play, ‘We Once Sang Like Other Men’. This prolific writer has produced a body of work including novels, short stories and plays which has been scarcely paralleled by any other modern Irish writer. Adding to his literary achievements is John’s continuing involvement as an actor and in his new play directed by Marion Brophy John plays the role of Peter the fisherman, in a modern re-telling of an age old tale. We had hoped to have the local writer’s new play as the first drama to be shown on the stage of the new Arts Centre in Woodstock Street, but unfortunately it’s not possible pending the completion of planned fitting out work. Instead the play will be staged in the Town Hall on Sunday night, 25th October commencing at 9.00 p.m. The bus tour through ‘Shackleton country’ will conclude the weekend’s activities. Those wishing to travel should assemble at the Heritage Centre no later than 10.00 a.m. on the Bank Holiday Monday.

This year the exhibition to run in conjunction with the Autumn School tells the story of Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition. This was the first expedition led by the Kilkea-born explorer and it will feature several priceless artefacts from the 1907-1909 Expedition never before displayed in this country. The Scott Polar Institute of Cambridge has cooperated with the Heritage Centre in putting on this Exhibition. Some of the items on display will include equipment from that expedition, together with tins of food carried by the explorers as they traversed the Antarctic continent. Other items include Shackleton’s sledging flag and a copy of the route chart prepared for the search party which set out to find Captain Scott and his companions who perished on the later Terra Nova Expedition. There will be many more important artefacts on display, including a unique original copy of the book ‘Aurora Australis’ which was the very first book printed on the Antarctic Continent.

The help of Kildare County Council, Athy Town Council, Tegral, Athy Credit Union, Athy Chamber of Commerce and Diageo in supporting the Shackleton School is acknowledged. The continuing support of the local people of Athy and district is also welcomed and an invitation is extended to all our readers to attend the official opening of the Autumn School at 7pm on Friday, 23rd October in Athy Heritage Centre. The wine reception that evening will be sponsored by the Carlton Abbey Hotel.

Tallaght-fornia dreamin’ for MacKenna’s Corner Boys

Last week I travelled to the Civic Theatre in the heart of the new township of Tallaght for the first night of John MacKenna’s latest play, ‘Corner Boys’. The theatre, part of the complex of buildings which were built up around the Tallaght Square shopping development is a cultural oasis. In an incongruous setting it stands almost as a beacon of light, reflecting well on the community which however seems to make greater use of the nearby cinema complex than it does of the theatre itself. I journeyed up the motorway somewhat apprehensively, wondering as to whether our local writer who has given us some wonderful literary works could once again provide a memorable night of entertainment. John MacKenna’s previous play, ‘Who By Fire’, received enthusiastic responses from his audiences last year, but less than favourable comments from the critics who seem more perplexed than enlightened by what they saw.

‘Corner Boys’, the writer tells us, is a play of laughter, love, missed opportunity and tragedy. Clearly the whole gamut of human emotion seems to have found a voice and a setting in his play, if the advance publicity is to be believed. It’s a play about the lives of ordinary people and people certainly did not come any more ordinary than the corner boys which once populated the street corners of provincial Ireland of past years.

If you are of an age which started out in the decades before television captured the minds and eyes of the Irish people you will have seen the corner boys. MacKenna’s play is located on a street corner in nearby Castledermot, but here in Athy we had two prime street corners where our local corner boys congregated each day without fail. Carolan’s Corner and O’Rourke-Glynn’s Corner were the focal points for the men who, no matter what age they were, and some were quite old, were always referred to and readily identified as corner boys. They stood there, apparently motionless, their backs to the wall, watching, observing, recognising, and where recognition did not come, enquiring amongst themselves. Their world was encompassed within the horizons of their vision, their eyes looking up and down the street, seldom moving, seldom missing, always recording, even if not always understanding.

Their commentary on the comings and goings in the street passed for conversation. They were for the most part quiet, seldom if ever garrulous as they stood with hands in trousers pockets, removed only to retrieve a cigarette from the mouth, sometimes balancing on one leg with the other leg extended behind and resting against the wall.

Traffic movement in the days of the corner boys was unlike the continuous cavalcade we have come to know today. The sparse traffic moved slowly, allowing time for those passing to be identified and the strangers to be noted. Comments were the life blood of the community of corner boys. Their minds no doubt struggled to maintain a balance between observing, commenting and ruminating and in this way the day passed. What I wondered would the fertile imagination of the former teacher from Castledermot come up with in a play centered on the dialogue of men who spent their days hanging around the corners of small towns and villages.

It was the famous theatrical critic of the 1940’s, James Agate, who described the essence of theatre as ‘excitement shared in company and moreover excitement packed into something under three hours.’ After the 1½ hour performance, with a 15 min. interval of ‘Corner Boys’, I could not but admit that John MacKenna had by Agate’s definition captured the essence of theatre with his latest play. This was a play punctuated during it’s first half particularly, by raucous laughter as the audience reacted, at least most of them did, at the ribaldry of the three corner boys, and occasionally the antics of the two girls acting out their roles as shop assistants. The second half of the play swung the audience’s emotions the other way as the reality of the disappointed lives of the young people unfolded in scenes which were tense and devoid of the frivolity and merriment of the play’s opening.

The play’s theme is difficult to define. That in some strange way is one of the strength’s of MacKenna’s work. The interpretation of what you see and hear allows for different conclusions. Is it the questionable struggle of the genders which shows in the character of Alice the indomitable strength of the female contrasting with the weakness of the corner boys? Is it a story of love and jealously amongst a small group within a provincial town, or a story of hopelessness emphasised in the words of one of the actors who complains that ‘poverty is a life sentence – the only way to get time off is to die young’.

‘Corner Boys’ is a fine piece of work which one must see in its entirety to appreciate. The opening scenes, if seen in isolation, might lead one to conclude that it was nothing more than a vehicle for a few old male jokes and less than savoury male-type behaviour. The truth however, is that John MacKenna has written a fine piece for the theatre and happily the players under the direction of Marian Brophy have done his work justice. The one scene, which coming in the middle of the first act, seemed not to fit in as well as the rest of the play was the Parish Priest’s sermon in which he tells his parishioners how they should live their lives. This for me was the only part of the play which did not come across as well as the director and the author might have hoped.

A good play, with excellent direction by Marian Brophy of Carlow, was further enhanced by strong acting by Cora Fenton playing the part of Alice Dungan, and Charlie Hughes playing her brother Billy. Cora Fenton was exceptionally good and John MacKenna, himself a fine actor, gave a performance which was overshadowed by his two colleagues. Noel Lambe gave one of his best performances to date and newcomer Teresa Cahill can be well pleased on her debut role with the ‘Water to Wine Theatre Company’.

A well written play, with good performances by the five actors and excellent direction by Marian Brophy should ensure a successful tour for ‘Corner Boys’. It will come to the Town Hall Athy for three nights commencing on 3rd March, Dunamaise Theatre Portlaoise on Thursday 14th February, Eire Óg Hall Carlow on 8th March, finishing in the Moate Club Naas on 14th and 15th March. A total of 22 venues will be toured by the company between 6th February and 15th March, with what promises to be a very successful play for the Castledermot-born writer. You should go and see it at a venue near you.

The crisis facing the Catholic Church, as numbers fall

Bishop Eamon Walsh, when addressing the customary small attendance at 12 noon Mass last Sunday in St Michael’s Parish Church, spoke of parochial priests of the Dublin Diocese being reduced by one third of their current number in nine years’ time. Even more alarming was his claim that the already-elderly priests in Ireland’s largest diocese will be less than half their present numbers in 12 years’ time.

Adding to the difficulties facing the Irish Catholic Church into the future is the certainty that those priests who remain at the helm of local parishes in 2020 will almost entirely consist of elderly men. Bishop Walsh spoke of the possible amalgamation of parishes and the employment of lay people in roles unspecified, but presumably roles that are presently occupied by Catholic clergy.

Unquestionably, the Catholic Church in Ireland is facing into an evolving crisis and one which will not easily be resolved. The fall-off in Sunday church attendances has been noticeable for some years past, coinciding with a fall-off in vocations for the priesthood and religious orders.

We have seen the departure of the Christian Brothers from Athy and the closure of the local Convent of Mercy, all due to the failure to secure new entrants for those religious orders.

The possibility is that missionary countries to which Irish priests, nuns and brothers once brought the message of the Gospel may in the future be required to provide religious personnel for the Irish Church.

There is as much need today for missionary work among the Irish people as there was in darkest Africa a few generations ago. One gets the impression that the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland has remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

An obedient people born and reared in the Catholic faith had in the past little need for the work of missionaries. The Church marshalled and directed, while the people obeyed, and the nature of the Church’s role remained the same for generations. The unquestioning obedience that once marked the Irish people’s attitude to religion is now gone, yet the Church appears not to have adapted to the change in society.

In our parish, more and more parishioners fail to attend Sunday Mass in the parish church which was built just over 40 years ago with the hard-earned pounds, shillings and pence of once loyal local families. The children of those families are now by and large staying away from the church, the building of which their parents and grandparents worked so hard to finance.

The answer in the short term will undoubtedly give us amalgamated parishes, repeating the experiences of the Church of Ireland in the years following the founding of the Irish Free State. The long-term solution lies with the likes of the relatively youthful Fr Joe McDonald and his peers. The ability to reach out beyond the dwindling congregation at Sunday Masses is the challenge.

Fr Joe’s Sunday sermons have brought a new dimension to church attendances in St Michael’s. In the week following the Christmas holidays, I listened to him give a homily at 12 o’clock Mass which perhaps was the most stimulating and thought-provoking sermon I had ever heard delivered in the parish church. It was a wonderful occasion and many who were at that Mass have commented to me since in similar terms. Our new curate deserves a bigger audience and the hope is that he will get it in St Michael’s rather than elsewhere. After all, the parish church of St Michael’s in Athy holds the unique distinction of having hosted over 160 years ago the first mission held in an Irish parish. Maybe the resurgence of the Irish Catholic Church will start in the town where the Order of the Black Friars have had a presence for the past 750 years.

One man who, like those of his generation, always remained faithful to the church of his birth was Freddie Farrell. He passed away last week aged 78 years. Freddie was a daily Mass-goer who served Mass in the Dominican Church on the very morning that he suffered a stroke from which he would die days later.

A Laois man, Freddie was proud of his county of birth and despite having lived all of his adult life in Athy never lost affection for the O’Moore county. In his younger days Freddie, with his sister Mona, was a champion Irish dancer. Friends of the legendary Rory O’Connor, Freddie and his sister won innumerable feisanna in the 1940s and for a time he taught Irish dancing in the town hall. After attending the Christian Brothers School in Athy, he worked with his father John who had a haulage business and when his father retired in 1961 Freddie took over the business. Ten years previously, Freddie married Betty Blanchfield of St Patrick’s Avenue and they celebrated 55 years of married life in May of last year.

The love of Irish dancing was passed on to his daughter Marie, who currently operates the Farrell Caffrey School of Dancing. Marie was brought to Dublin each week by her father to take lessons from Ireland’s premier Irish dance master, Rory O’Connor.

Freddie also provided transport in the 1960s for the variety group of which Marie was a member and which toured extensively throughout Ireland for almost ten years. Included in that group were the legendary Casey Dempsey and Tom Farrell.

I recall Freddie operating what was previously Dowling’s and later Kehoe’s public house in Offaly Street for a few years in the late 1960s. He operated the haulage business at the same time, extending his business interests into minibus hire and I believe that he may have been the first minibus operator in this area.

A very likeable man, Freddie continued working up to two years ago. Fr Ross McCauley of the Dominican Friary spoke of Freddie when receiving his remains in the parish church as “a man who was always willing to go that extra mile”.

Those who knew Freddie recognised only too well how appropriate it was to describe him in that way. He went out of his way on so many occasions to help others that it could truly be said of him that he was generous to a fault.

Freddie Farrell, champion hornpipe dancer in his younger days, was a very honourable and likeable man and on his passing we extend sympathy to his wife Betty and his family.

On Wednesday 6 February, the Water to Wine Theatre Company will take to the stage in the Civic Theatre, Tallaght for four nights with a production of John MacKenna’s new play Corner Boys. The play is a tragic/comic story of three corner boys and two women set in a small Irish village in 1963 during President Kennedy’s visit to Ireland and his subsequent assassination. The play has a cast of five, including the playwright himself, and the director is Marian Brophy of Carlow.

Corner Boys will go on tour following the run in Tallaght, taking in 20 provincial theatres including three nights in the town hall, Athy, on 3, 4 and 5 March. John MacKenna is one of our most prolific writers, bringing his writing talents to novels, short stories and plays and proving adept at each of these literary genres.

The play Corner Boys will bring back memories for those of us over 50 years of age who will remember Carolan’s corner and O’Rourke Glynn’s corner as the local ‘seats of wisdom’.

A list of theatres across the country where Corner Boys will play can be obtained by e-mailing watertowinetheatre@hotm ail.com.

Christmas memories

On Monday 10th December we witnessed one of the largest attendances at a funeral service held in Athy. John Perry a native of Bunclody but an adopted son of Athy had died three days previously. His passing was not unexpected but when it came it occasioned genuine regret for the man who was universally regarded for his courtesy and kindness.

The name Perry is synonymous in so far as townsfolk are concerned with the motor dealership and garage while for country folk the name is more associated with the farm machinery business. Both were developed from the start up business commenced forty five years ago by John Perry who came to Athy six years previously to work with Duthie Larges of Leinster Street. When he arrived in the South Kildare town he was just twenty years of age and within one week of his arrival he had made his first move in the upward transition which would eventually lead to the opening of his own business. That move, just a short distance up Leinster Street brought him to Jacksons, a firm well known and long established in the town of Athy. He later moved to Smiths Garage next to the I.V.I. foundry before branching out on his own just six years after he first arrived in Athy.

The friendly man who was John Perry was a highly respected business man who according to the many stories I have heard this week treated his customers with remarkable kindness and courtesy. Legion are the accounts that have come to my notice confirming that a happy customer was very important to the Bunclody man whose dealings were always fair and equitable.

As a committee member of the Church of Ireland John was a member of the local Select Vestry for almost forty years and for the last three decades fulfilled the role of treasurer of the Athy Parish. His involvement with the Athy Lions Club was perhaps less well know given that organisation’s work is by the most part carried out discreetly and without undue fanfare. As a past president of the Lions Club and a member of many years standing his contribution to local charities and good causes generally was exemplary. Above all he was an honourable man whose courtesy and innate kindness marked him as a man apart. The huge gathering at his funeral service at the Parish Church of St. Michaels was an indication of the esteem in which John and his family are held both locally and much further afield. To his wife Olive, his sons Stephen, Roger and Niall and his extended family go our sympathies.

Christmas time in Athy has been marked for many years passed with the performance of “While Shepherds Watched” in the local Dominican Church. A Yule time entertainment it’s always a very enjoyable festive offering guaranteed to bring good cheer and set the stage for the celebration of Christmas. This Thursday the 2007 performance takes place just days after Paul Stafford was laid to rest in St. Michaels Cemetery. It was Paul who fifteen years ago produced the very first “While Shepherds Watched”. His involvement in theatrical productions made him an ideal person to organise that first show and the audience reaction ensured it would become an annual event thereafter.

I recall Paul’s involvement in another event, an Oratoria written by John MacKenna and Mairead O’Flynn which he produced for Remembrance Sunday approximately 14 years ago in the Presbyterian Church on the Dublin Road. I had the performance captured on film but unfortunately the film has been missing for a number of years, no doubt lying on someone’s shelf, overlooked and forgotten. I can still remember the evocative scene created by Paul towards the end of the Oratorio when in darkness and with background commentary he gave the names of the Athy men who died in the 1914-1918 war, a candle was lit for every one of those men until finally 125 candles were flickering at the front of the Church. It was a very emotional scene created by a talented producer who worked on several theatrical offerings by John MacKenna and the Mend and Makedo Theatre Company. It was in fact the first public acknowledgment of the contribution made by Athy men during the 1914-18 war and thankfully in the intervening years we have witnessed the reclaiming of their memory as an integral part of our community’s proud history. Paul died after a long illness and our sympathies go to his mother Connie and his sisters Imelda, Celine and Anne.

A recent commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the death of Monaghan poet Patrick Kavanagh saw the planting of a tree at the Canal Harbour. It was a symbolic gesture for the Inniskeen man who wrote.

O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water preferably
So stilly greeny at the heart of Summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully.

Later that evening in the nearby Gargoyles restaurant which was once the Grand Canal Hotel an evening of Poetry, Drama and Music brought to my attention for the first time the talented musicianship of octogenarian Seamus Farrell of Ballylinan. The tin whistle is his forte but somewhere along the way Seamus kissed the Blarney stone and luckily for social historians he is blessed with a good memory and a deep knowledge of this part of the country. Talking to Seamus that night and since then has brought a wealth of information from which I hope to piece together a few interesting articles in the new year.

In the meantime may I wish you all a Happy Christmas and a contented New year.

Literary launches and a week filled with memories

An eventful few days during the past week saw me attending two book launches and meeting the family of a pioneer trade union activist on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his death. It was also the week when I learned of the shooting dead of a young Athy man while wearing the uniform of the RIC during the War of Independence.

But firstly to the book launches which I believe to be unique, given that they were of books independently penned by a father and his young son and both of which were launched within days of each other. For John MacKenna, the launching of one of his books is by now a common enough event, but nevertheless his latest literary offering brought together a great gathering in the local Heritage Centre. Launched by Joe Taylor, the man of many voices on our national radio station, MacKenna’s continuing literary insight into the landscapes of South Kildare, and in particular Castledermot, proves yet again his mastery of the written word.

His son, Ewan, at just 23 years of age, had his first venture in the book production launched in Dublin just a few days afterwards. Ewan, who is a sports reporter with the Sunday Tribune, has written the story of Armagh footballer Oisin McConville’s addiction to gambling. The launch of a first book is always a memorable event and while Ewan MacKenna will no doubt pen many more publications, this, his first book, will always hold special memories for him. ‘The Gambler --Oisin McConville’s Story’ is published by Mainstream and is available in all good bookshops.

On Thursday 15 November I met the family of the late Christy Supple who died 40 years ago in London and whose remains were brought back to his native town for burial in St. Michael’s Cemetery. His widow, Kathleen, who is 86 years old travelled from Harrow in London with her son Tom to be at her husband’s graveside on the 40th anniversary of his death and with them was her son Joe who travelled from British Columbia in Canada.

Christy Supple was for me, and I’m sure for many locals, an overlooked figure from Athy’s past who in the 1920’s and later played a leading part in developing the trade union movement in South Kildare. I have written previously of Christy’s involvement in the Farm Workers Strike of 1919 and of his attempts to extend membership of the Transport Union in South Kildare before and after that time. It was a difficult period for everyone, the War of Independence brought with it murder and mayhem and in it’s wake followed the lawlessness which was inevitably created by those who took advantage of the situation. Christy Supple’s task in organising the farm labourers of South Kildare at an age when he was just a few years out of his teens and in the midst of civil unrest was an unenviable one. The truce between the British Authorities and the I.R.A. which came into effect on 11th July 1921 did little to ease the burden of the lowly paid Irish farm labourers and towards the end of 1922, even as the Civil War raged, they went on strike. Christy Supple was to the forefront of the dispute, which was extended in January 1923 to parts of County Waterford.

Athy Urban District Council tried to arbitrate between the union and the local farmers, but to no avail. The Minister for Industry and Commerce next took the initiative to bring the parties together but before he could do so the Ministry authorities arrested Christy Supple on 29th January 1923. His arrest came about as a result of a letter he had sent to a worker on Melrose’s farm in Grangenolvin. In that letter Supple, as Branch Secretary of the Transport Union, called upon the workman to strike and continued, ‘failing to do so we will be compelled to take drastic action against you and the employer’. The workman by name Melville apparently ignored the call to strike and was subsequently attacked by a person or persons unknown and shot in the hand. This at a time when the Civil War was at its most intense was a relatively unremarkable criminal act for which no-one was ever subsequently convicted. However, suspicion attached to the Trade Union Branch Secretary who had written to Melville and so Christy Supple was arrested and lodged in Carlow jail. While he was incarcerated the situation in South Kildare worsened and a number of farmers haggards were burned. Claim and counterclaim came from the workers and from the Farmers Union, each blaming the other for what happened. Some workmen who broke the strike had their houses attacked and a threshing machine and a straw elevator were destroyed on lands at Bennettsbridge. A number of farm labourers who were picketing in the Bennettsbridge area were arrested and held in military custody for three months. The situation in South Kildare was so bad that a troop of Free State soldiers took over the Town Hall in the centre of Athy on 9th March 1923 where they remained billeted for over eight months.

In the meantime Christy Supple continued to be detained in Carlow Jail and during the period of his imprisonment his mother took suddenly ill while travelling from Athy to Carlow to visit her son and died soon afterwards. Christy’s request for leave to attend his mother’s funeral was refused. This would rankle with him for the rest of his life and would later prompt his dying wish to be brought back to Athy to be buried alongside his mother.

Christy Supple was eventually released from prison late in 1923 and as to his sub-sequent career I have but sketchy details. He was elected to Athy Urban District Council in June 1925 at a time when he was living at the Bleach. I believe he may have been living with his married sister, Mrs. Margaret Corcoran. Like so many others from the town of Athy he emigrated to England sometime in the 1930’s where he married Kathleen Walsh of Clon-bern, Tuam in 1944. Their eldest son, Tom, was born in 1948 and three years later the Supple family returned to Athy where their second son Joe was born in 1953. They lived for a while in the Bleach with Mrs. Corcoran before renting a house at 2/6 a week opposite Plewman’s Terrace. Christy was by now working in the Asbestos factory but in 1955 the Supple family returned to England. Christy died in London on 15th November 1967, aged 69 years, and his remains were brought back to his native place to be buried alongside his mother. In addition to his immediate family he was survived by his brother Tom from Foxhill and his sisters Mrs. Corcoran and Molly Dalton. His other brother Joe had died in Dublin in 1953.

Christy Supple’s story can only be told in part as there is still much to learn of the young man, who encouraged by William O’Brien of the Dublin Transport Union set out as early as 1918 to unionise the work-ers of South Kildare. His story is one of courage and enduring hardship and meeting his family in Athy on the 40th anniversary of his death was a great privilege.

Earlier in the week as a small group of local men gathered to commemorate the men from Athy who died in World War One I learned of the killing of another Athy man. Unlike his townsmen who were killed in war by members of an opposing army, young Edward Doran was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman on 17th May 1921 as he went about his duties as a member of the R.I.C. I was told he was shot as he attempted to take down a tricolour from a pole but the official records disclose that he and his colleague John Dunne, who was also killed, were serving jurors summonses in the village of Kinnity when they were fired on. Dunne, aged 22 years, was from Kilconly in Tuam, while 24 year old Edward Doran was from Athy. Prior to joining the R.I.C. less than three years previously Doran had worked as a gardener for Minch’s of Rockfield. I understand his sister was a secretary in Minch Nortons, although my informant claims that she worked for local Solicitors Malcomson & Law. Was he I wonder a brother of Frank Doran who lived for many years in County Cork and whom I believe occasionally wrote on G.A.A. matters? If anyone has any information on the family of Edward Doran I would be delighted to hear from them.

Remembering the fallen in the First World War

Remembrance Sunday, 11 November, will this year fall on the 89th anniversary of the day that the First World War ended. At 11 o’clock on the morning of 11 November 1918 the guns fell silent across the battlefields where almost 10 million men and women had lost their lives during the previous 52 months. The carnage of war was unfortunately to be replaced by an even more relentless destroyer of human life as the great flu epidemic which marked the final months of the Great War took its toll throughout the world. More people worldwide were to die during the few months of the influenza outbreak than were killed in the 1914-18 war.
The killing of approximately 35,000 Irish men in the World War and the maiming of even more men and women must have had a depressing effect on the national psyche at a time when the Irish people were about to embark on the final push for independence. 129 Athy men were killed in the war, the vast majority of whom were blown to bits or submerged in the mud of Flanders, never again to be found. Few bodies were recovered from where they fell and so the families of these dead men never had a graveside at which they could grieve. Perhaps even more tragic however, insofar as the fathers, mothers, widows and children of these men were concerned, was the change in attitudes back home in Ireland brought about by the emergence of Sinn Fein and the drive for Irish independence. Men who paraded to the railway station in Athy, accompanied by the Leinster Street Fife and Drum Band to the cheers of the townspeople, found on their return from war that they were at best ignored, but often times regarded as an embarrassment in an Ireland where Republican nationalism had gripped the public’s imagination and set the course for the island’s political future.

However, freedom for Ireland was a desire also shared by many of the men who fought in the First World War and indeed there were many amongst them who had enlisted in the belief that by doing so they were helping the cause of Home Rule. After all, had not the local Urban District Councillors actively encouraged them to enlist to fight in France and Flanders as soon as war was declared in

1914. The same encouragement was coming from every quarter. Canon Mackey, the Parish Priest of Athy, had often canvassed their support for the war from public platforms in Emily Square, as had many other highly regarded and respected persons in the town. No wonder then that the young men of Athy and the surrounding countryside enlisted in their hundreds and joined the British Army in the fight against Germany.

The shame of it is that those thought lucky or fortunate enough to survive the human carnage which was the First World War returned to a country and a town whose people rejected the overseas war and those who had fought in it. Not only were the survivors of the war rejected, but shamefully those who died were ignored. That is until recent years when a more reasoned response to the events of the 1914-18 period and its aftermath caused us and our Republican government to re-assess the contribution which the World War I soldiers made to the shared history of our country. The Irish Peace Tower at Messines now stands as our Nation’s symbolic remembrance of the Great War dead and in Athy the plaque placed on the Town Hall wall by the Town Council last year is Athy’s acknowledgement of our gratitude to the local men who died and those who survived the 1914-18 war.Local men like the Kelly brothers, Denis, John and Owen, the Curtis brothers, John, Laurence and Patrick, the Hayden brothers, Aloysius and Patrick and the Stafford brothers, Edward and Thomas. I could go on and on until the 219 men from Athy and district who died in the Great War were all listed. Theirs was a lost generation, lost not only to family and friends, but also to the collective memory of a community which should never have forgotten these young men. They were of our town, friends and neighbours and their deaths created a void within families, neighbourhoods and the wider community which took several generations to replace.

Next Sunday, November 11th, there will be an opportunity to remember the memory of all Athy men killed in the 1914-18 War and by so doing acknowledging the debt we owe them and their families for what they suffered. At 3.00 pm in St. Michael’s Old Cemetery a short service of remembrance will take place at the graves of the six Athy men who enlisted and died during the First World War and who are buried in the local cemetery. Later that evening at 8.00 p.m. in the Methodist Church at Woodstock Street a presentation of theatre, music and poetry will take place to remember the men of Athy and district who died in the war. You are encouraged to attend either or both events. After all, one hour or so of your time is little to offer in return for those who lost their lives all those years ago.

It’s a coincidence that on Friday night next, 9 November, John MacKenna who over 15 years ago initiated the Remembrance ceremonies in St. Michael’s Cemetery, will have his new book launched in the Heritage Centre. “The River Field” is a book of short stories, all set in a 12 acre triangular field near Castledermot and covering the period stretching back as far as 1763. John is regarded as one of the most accomplished writers in this country and his talents have been recognised with awards for his fiction and most recently for a radio play which won an international prize in New York. It’s good to see his writings in print because after the last of his first three books which was published in 1998 he waited another 8 years before publishing his most recent book, “Things You Should Know”.

The 55 year old Castledermot man, often regarded as a successor to McGahern’s literary genius, has yet again produced a body of work which shows a masterful literary talent at work. I understand the official launch of the book will be by Joe Taylor of RTE fame and will take place in the Heritage Centre on Friday, 9 November at 8.00 p.m. It will be an opportunity to join in the celebration and to buy a signed copy of a book which I believe will be a best seller. Even better still you might take the opportunity to disagree with something he might have to say on the night and so keep up the tradition which is slowly building up of controversial debate within the confines of the Town Hall!

John MacKenna Writer

For many readers in Athy it comes as a profound if pleasant shock to find that we have a writer in our midst. Not the kind of writer most incurable readers at times hope themselves to be, but the real thing - and a successful one at that. Local man John MacKenna has produced a body of work in recent years which is both compelling and readable. His latest novel is to be launched on the 10th of August in the Town Hall and will be a further addition to the chronicle of local life which is slowly being amassed in various forms by him. Strange perhaps to claim such a personal and individual body of writing for a chronicle, but it is indisputably that, because where local histories and records can give us the body of this area’s past, only in imaginative fiction can we perhaps reclaim its invisible, private life - and take measure of its present. And for all the re-invigoration of the town which has taken place over the last ten or fifteen years, it was also a stroke of unsurpassable good fortune that a local writer of talent should attract the attention that John MacKenna has; and of even more good fortune that he should deserve it.

His success in the literary world is evident from his collection of prizes, the backing of a prestigious publisher and numerous translations of his work for the foreign market. However, what will prove to be his most lasting success is of quite another order, and despite the advantages to be gained from a high profile, of immeasurably more importance to the reader.

Though MacKenna’s writing, from “The Fallen” to “Clare”, to “A Year of Our Lives” and “The Last Fine Summer”, most often takes a confessional form, its introspection masks a social awareness with a collection of personal testaments which implicitly reinforces the value of stories and personal narratives which form the small change of social life. Though the historical novel is becoming fashionable once again, (think of the success of Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” trilogy, or stretching the definition a little, Don DeLillo’s “Underworld”) it is John MacKenna’s distinctive blend of the personal and historical, together with an ability to be both blunt and lyrical, that sets him apart. More specifically (and more pertinent to his local readership) this results in the kind of piercing narrative which has a very particular social and historical setting - very often ours - but with that humane centre which qualifies it as universal. And if it horrifies you to think that the whole world can be contained in what he calls the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of Athy, Carlow and Castledermot, then you should read his work, or read it again, and read it a little closer because the world isn’t getting any bigger than this.

Ezra Pound claimed that “the life of a village is narrative”, a view that John MacKenna echoes in the opening of “The Lost Village”, a semi-historical account of life in Castledermot in 1925.
“The news was spreading, from the Square in all directions, to Dempsey’s
Row, to the few men at Carey’s Corner, to Dalton’s pub and Doyle’s and to the
billiard hall. The relieving officer had been nobbed on his way back to Athy.
His car had been stopped beyond Kilkea and his money taken from him. Was
he hurt? No one was sure. He might even be dead …”

Fortunately, the cause of the delay was a car breakdown rather than a Bonnie & Clyde style misadventure, but the life of a small village hangs on the talk that grows out of pubs and football fields and markets, and this aspect of the public life of a town is admirably captured throughout. Conventional histories do not attempt to recreate - this aspect of social life, hence the value - and the perils - of re-imaginings in works of fiction.

However, the romantic notion of village life touted in the cute talk of shop doorways and football pitches has a necessary counterpoint in MacKenna’s later stories. For example, increasingly, throughout the stories in “The Fallen” communication fails. MacKenna’s fondness for first person narration allows a certain freedom with style and even perhaps, a place for the author to hide (although, travelling incognito, he invevitably trails his peculiar brand of poetry behind him) yet conveys an inevitable sense of solitude. Although two of the stories from “The Fallen” - “The Unclouded Day” and “The Fallen” itself, have been adopted as voiceplays, their roots are closer to lyric poetry than drama. Their narrators are adept at storytelling, and at times declamation, but though narrating voices cross each other, they rarely respond to one another. So, with little opportunity for exchange or resolution, communication is frustrated by the fact that it is undirected. Many of these characters seem to be speaking into nothing. These soliloquies provide a tiny indictment of the loneliness that sprouts in a community where everything is known, but only half-known; and where communication is forestalled by the familiarity that assumes too much and knows too little.

It is this which I take to be John MacKenna’s success as a writer. Despite the evocative sharpness of his language, or even his honesty (strange - or sentimental - as it must seem to attribute this virtue to a writer of fiction) it is his ability to reveal startling personal vistas in such a familiar landscape which is most affecting. And it is enough, simply, for one character to assume that “what you want is my story” .. for it to be true.

The launch of John MacKenna’s novel, which is set in Athy, will take place in the Community Library of our Town Hall on Tuesday 10th August at 8pm. “A Haunted Heart” published in hardback by Picador is the story of a woman in her twilight years telling of her involvement with Joshua Jacob and the White Quakers, sixty years previously. The action in the book is centered in Athy of 1959 with flashbacks to 1895 and the activity of the White Quakers in South Kildare.
As you might expect from MacKenna this is a masterfully crafted tale and one which will add to his growing stature as a writer.

Everyone is invited to come to the book launch on Tuesday 10th August which is being held in the Library with a wine reception kindly sponsored by Lawler’s builders of Athy.