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Irish
Culture and Customs: Traditions, folklore, and more.
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By Rick Grant'Echoes of a Savage Land' |
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From the book's first image, an old woman bleeding a cock in preparation for the Feast of St. Martin, it is clear that McGowan means to show us the savage side of his homeland, the brutality borne from a religion that predated the coming of Christ by millennia. As he puts it: "Two thousand years of Christianity is but a thin veneer."
In a freewheeling narrative that is just as likely to take us to some unexpected aside as down his original path, McGowan walks us through the Irish year, from Samhain through the dark winter to the spring planting and back around to harvest time.
McGowan, the author of "In the Shadow of Benbulben" and "Inishmurray: Gale, Stone and Fire," shows us around like a good friend taking us home on a break from school. He takes us into a world that is almost completely extinct and makes clear a lifestyle that is almost impossible to imagine for those of us raised in the excesses of the modern age.
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ECHOES OF A SAVAGE LAND
By Joe McGowan 400 pages (paperback) Cork: Mercier Press, August 2001 €18.95 / $20.95 US |
In country fashion, he takes his time, using three-quarters of the book to introduce us to the varied rituals and feasts that make up a year in the life of rural Irish folk. He illustrates how many of the traditions he grew up with were inspired by a previous culture, one built on blood and violence. He makes it easy to understand how the Irish wed the new Christian values to ancient pagan beliefs.
Along the way, he shows us the basics of survival during the middle of the 20th century, from building homes and thatching roofs, to working the fields, making rope and building a hayrick. And he introduces us to the people he grew up with, the family and friends that filled what seems like an unbearable existence with warmth and love.
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| One of the locals featured in Joe McGowan's book. |
We can almost feel the heat on our shins and the cold winter air on our backs as we stare into the flames and listen to the stories passed back and forth through the pipe smoke. McGowan's intimacy with the scene makes the setting a familiar and comfortable place. It's not really his writing that gets us there, although his prose is solid and his imagery is more than adequate. It's more his comfort level with the material that earns our trust and suspends our disbelief.
As we sit with him around that winter fire and listen to the stories of old Ireland, we find ourselves pining for a lifestyle that is no more. The wonder is that this is true even for those of us who never lived it. If you are lucky enough to have Irish blood in you, this book will transport you to the world of your ancestors.
McGowan asks: "Why do we regret losing what we don't really want? Why do we long for a way of life we wouldn't return to: an austerity that was sustained by penury, not by anyone's wish for it to be so?"
Perhaps, he suggests, "we miss the intimacy of a society where neighbors depended upon one another, needed one another."
The reader is left envying McGowan, not for the hardships he endured as a youngster in that savage land, but for his ability to live through it and still focus on the best it offered him.
If you have even the slightest interest in what life in rural Ireland once held, you'll find plenty to enjoy here. But beyond that, McGowan has written a book that successfully preserves a piece of history that is becoming harder to find and might have otherwise been lost. That alone makes this an important work.
About the Reviewer: WGT Consulting Editor Rick Grant grew up in western Missouri. Currently working as an editor in Manhattan, Grant has worked in radio and video production, but in recent years has focused on reporting and editing, covering American business in a number of industries. He lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania with his wife, three children, and numerous pets.
| The northwest of Ireland palpably tingles with poetry and folklore. It is of this beautiful mythic terrain that Joe McGowan writes. Buy his book now at Amazon.com. . |
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