A forgotten poet.

Heart in Pilgrimage – A Study of George Herbert.

Jane Falloon, Author House, Milton Keynes, 2007. pp 231. 

This review was written on June 6th 2007

George Herbert was born in 1593 and died in his fortieth year. He came from aristocratic stock and his kinsmen were the Earls of Powis, Lords Herbert of Cherbury in Wales. Through his family and his early position as Orator at Cambridge University he had easy access to the court of King James 1 and subsequently to that of Charles 1. He left a collection of 184 poems which were published after his death. Within the next 80 years 13 editions had been published. They marked him as one of the greatest English poets of the 17^th century.  Such was the view of many literary critics.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 19^th century described him as England’s greatest poet and John Ruskin declared him to be his favourite poet. In more recent years, T.S. Eliot and Séamus Heaney were both conscious of his high standing as a poet.

Easter Wings poem (constructed to shape two wings)

Jane Falloon regrets that he is now largely forgotten by the literati of to-day.  ‘The name rings muffled bells in some people’s minds’. In a text of about 60 pages she provides a biographical note about Herbert and subsequent pages are devoted to the publication of 24 of her subject’s favourite poems.  Each poem is examined and analysed in detail with interpretations which Jane shares with commentaries by previous critics. Your reviewer has few qualifications as a critic of poetry but it is not possible to disagree with the author who is passionate and strenuous in her view that Herbert is one of England’s greatest poets and that his reputation needs to be rehabilitated. In construction and style, his poetry has a distinct sense of modernity.

Despite his aristocratic background and his close access to court, Herbert’s deep spirituality, love of God and commitment to His services led him into a life of humility and service to his Church and to his brethren. He eschewed all the temptations of court and the secular life, not without a struggle of mind and the surprised reactions of some of his friends and kinsmen. He became a deacon of the Anglican Church after leaving Cambridge and only went on to ordination and to a modest parish near Salisbury three years before his death.  His life was one of personal poverty and of service to others. During Herbert’s short life, one is impressed by the buoyant optimism among Anglicans and the commitment to the Anglican Church at a relatively tranquil time in its history, after the turmoil of the Reformation and before the circumstances which bitterly divided Protestantism in the reign of Charles 1.

Young boys and their viols.

Herbert was a lover of music and sang to his own lute and viol. His love of Cathedral music ‘elevated his soul and was his Heaven on earth’. Despite his deep spirituality and love of God, his poetry is outstanding for its great variety of moods, his humour, humanity and wit. ‘We can revel in his witty use of words; his brilliant variety of metres; his felicity with rhymes’. In his approaches to God he is not without complaints about his own many afflictions and misfortunes but he invariably finishes by expressing his gratitude for God’s goodness. For poets and all those interested in poetry, Jane Falloon provides a fine portal to Herbert’s life and works.

A Woman of Aran: The Life and Times of Bridget Dirrane

A Woman of  Aran: The Life and Times of Bridget Dirrane. Blackwater Press, Dublin, 1997.

This review was written in 1998.

This short and delightful book celebrates the life of Bridget Dirrane who is 103 years and is still hale and hearty in the St. Francis Home in Galway. The well written and absorbing text by Rose O'Connor and Jack Mahon is derived from their conversations with Bridget. I have a special interest in her because she was a children’s nurse who looked after me and my older brother and sister when my father was Minister for Defence in the Free State government, and until he had retired as military head of the army in 1923.

The first 28 pages deal with her family life in Aran. Her memoirs evoke a great nostalgia for the people of the West in these early years before we had become an acquisitive society and before the beauty and simplicity of our Irish language and Irish culture was tainted by foreign influences.

Bridget first left Aran before she was twenty years. She had a most varied career, looking after the children of many families in Ireland and the United States until her return to her roots in Aran at the age of 72 years. Her professional life brought her into contact with many famous people, both in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora in Boston and other parts of America. Her memories of some of these people are interesting and evocative of our recent history.

Yours truly in the arms of a Nurse Kelly, 1922 .

Her story is well worth reading, even if it is only to remind us of the wonderful talents of the Irish people who emerged from the hardships and limitations of past centuries to the freedom and prosperity of modern Ireland. It is a reminder too of the great pride and satisfaction enjoyed by those in the service of the more privileged and educated families in my early days, and of how they shared the friendship and the security of the home. We had such a member on the domestic staff from 1920 to the beginning of the World War. During  the 1930s my parents employed a girl after her schooling from the Gaelteacht for two or three years and then, as they reached full adulthood, they were encouraged and assisted to advance themselves by becoming nurses, teachers or following other avocations.  My father’s enthusiasm for the Irish language ensured that in these later years the girls were Irish speakers from Donegal, Connemara or the Dingle Peninsula. They were appointed to maintain the Irish language as part of the household and as tutors to supervise our schooling.  He loved them all because he indulged in his passion of speaking Irish from the Gaelteacht. 

Postscript: Myself and Louise  called to see Bridget in her nursing home around the time I wrote this review. She was physically quite feeble but her mind was nimble as ever. She died on New Year's Eve 2003 aged 109. At the time she was the second oldest person in Ireland.

Catholic Emancipation and it's influence

Emancipation and its influence on the Irish.

Written on September 20th 2014

The Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1829 (the Catholic Emancipation Act) was passed in the House of Commons with the support of the Liberals, the Whigs and a few Tories. It was opposed by other Tories, by the House of Lords and particularly by King George 4^th.  It allowed Catholics in Britain and Ireland to join the House of Commons and to become members of local authorities and other political bodies. Daniel O’Connell in his later years had a major influence in pressing for Catholic emancipation and for the acceptance of Catholics as normal members of the population. Lord Wellesley who was the brother of the Duke of Wellington and who had been the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland from 1821 to 1828, had, like the Duke, worked tirelessly to have the emancipation bill passed.

Bishop John Milner

What is not known to us in Ireland is that there was a priest in England who was called Bishop John Milner, who in the early 1800s played a very large part in pushing Catholic emancipation.  He died shortly after it was successfully passed by parliament.  The Protestants in the North were powerfully opposed to the Act but when eventually it was passed, the opposition was divided there along class lines. The aristocracy were indifferent to the change but the lower classes and the workers were opposed which provoked much of the later sectarianism in the province manifested by the marches on the 12^th of July and other evidence of opposition to the Catholic community. And these were the northerners who joined with the Catholics in the 1798 Rebellion and who were bought off by Pitt when he promised to provide a regular income for their impoverished clerics at the time of the Union. The Catholic clerics refused his offer.

Some restrictions were included in the Act. Catholic clergy could not use titles such as Archbishop or Bishop and Catholics were entitled to vote only if they satisfied certain standards in terms of property. The restriction on titles by the Church was ignored and these and other restrictions were eventually deleted from the Act between 1851 and 1871.

The Irish Ireland rebellion of 1847 and the Fenian rebellion of 1867 were the only protests in arms during the rest of the century.  They were poorly organised and easily dealt with by the authorities, not to mention the rebels own incompetence.  There were no executions and the rebels were either imprisoned or banished to Australia or other countries abroad, unlike the executions after 1916 which caused such a nationalist reaction and contributed to the War of Independence and to the Civil War.

Church of St. Nicholas of Myra (without) - 1829

Emancipation was followed in Dublin by an extraordinary degree of church building activity in the city and the outer suburbs.  Oddly enough, the same interest in church building was evident amongst Protestants in the city as well. Their churches were smaller and perhaps more acceptable from the architectural and devotional points of view.

I had a particular interest in writing this essay about the Catholic Emancipation Act. The subsequent spread of secondary education had a profound effect on Catholics and particularly on my paternal and maternal parents. The establishment of many Catholic secondary schools, particularly among the Ursuline, Loreto, Dominican and Mercy orders for women and the Christian Brothers for men over the next half century created a Catholic middle class which reached the same standard of education and the same social fabric as their Protestant brethren. This and the entry of Catholics into local and national politics and into management made it inevitable that the large Catholic majority would eventually dominate the affairs of the country. And it is clear that the great Celtic revival movement on the late 19^th century, initiated largely by the Protestant minority, was gradually joined by Catholic scholars and writers as education became available to the masses

Church of St. Francis Xavier, Dublin.

As regards political influence, The Treaty between England and Ireland included a provision that the Protestant minority would not be victimised by an Irish Parliament. In fact, the first Irish governments were more than generous to them by including a large number of Protestants in its Senate. Otherwise, Protestants have shown little interest in the country’s politics and its proceedings since 1922, with a few notable exceptions. However, despite the amity between Catholics and Protestants in the South, it appears that the 10% of Protestants existing in the 26 Counties in the 1920s have diminished in recent times.

Patrick and Elizabeth Mulcahy with their three eldest children

Perhaps the most remarkable feature about my two families was the emphasis on education at the turn of the 19^h and 20^th centuries, particularly among the girls.   There were eight children in my father’s family, five girls and three boys.  Their father was postmaster in Thurles and later in Ennis in Co. Clare. Four of the five girls were sent up to Dublin to do university degrees and to take part in the secondary teaching profession.  Three of them became nuns within the Ursuline teaching order.  The fifth girl remained at home to look after the younger boys because of the death of their mother at an early stage. She subsequently joined the Sisters of Charity as a nun and hospital administrator.

The three boys were treated differently by their father. Despite the fact that my father, Richard, the eldest boy, got one of the first places in the Intermediate examination in Ireland, his father insisted that he must leave school and join the Post Office as a learner before he had entered his last two years in school.  He had won an exhibition of 20 pounds a year for the last two years of his education but his father was in need of the money because of debt incurred by his family. My father went as a post office learner to Bantry in West Cork where he was close to Ballingeary, this centre of the West Cork gaelteacht. He learned to speak excellent Irish and he spent much of his spare time with the local people and their various social and cultural activities.  Bantry was ten miles from Ballingeary but not infrequently he walked the distance between the two villages.

Paddy and Dad, standing. Kitty, Sam and Senan, seated.

After two years in Wexford, he arrived in Dublin in 1907 at the gage of 21. He spent the six years attending the recently opened third level schools in Bolton Street and Kevin Street in Dublin where he studied languages, science and mostly matters in relation to telegraphy.  He became a fairly senior member of the telegraphy staff in Dublin by 1916 when he became, rather accidentally, involved in the 1916 Rebellion and was subsequently imprisoned and sacked from his post office career. He returned to Dublin with the intention of doing medicine but soon got involved in the building up of the Irish Volunteers and became their first Chief of Staff in March 1918 because of his military exploits in Easter Week. He remained in that position until 1922, after the Treaty had been ratified and he was then appointed Minister for Defence. 

He retired from the Army in January 1922 but immediately re-joined as Chief of Staff at the end of June with the start of the Civil War.  He remained Chief of Staff until the end of the Civil War and then spent the rest of his life as a politician.

Despite my father’s early departure from school, he remained all his life passionate about learning; he became a fluent Irish speaker and read much French and French poetry. Among these and other aspects of learning, he was an inveterate reader all his life, particularly on the history of the country during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, an interest which is evident by the large library of books of the period which are still in my library.

His brother, Paddy, joined the British army when he was underage and after his return from three years as a sapper in the trenches to Ireland he joined the IRA during the War of Independence and subsequently remained in the National Army. He became chief of staff in the 1950s, more than 30 years after my father had been in that role. My other uncle, Sam, the youngest boy, was born just shortly before his mother’s death.  He became a priest, joined the Cistercian monastery and school in Roscrea and subsequently travelled to Mid-Lothian in Scotland in 1946 where he set up the first post-reformation Catholic monastery in Scotland; Perhaps unexpectedly he was successful in being welcomed by the strong Presbyterian population at the time and of becoming intimate with the head of the Church of Scotland in terms of ecumenical activity and of friendship.

My mother Min (top right) with parents, siblings and aunt.

There were twelve siblings in my mother’s family who were born in a farming community in Taghmon in County Wexford.  There were eight girls and four boys.  Surprisingly, six of the girls were sent to Dublin after their secondary education with the Loreto order in Gorey.  In Dublin they attended the old Royal University and subsequently University College Dublin.  One became a teacher in the Loreto order, another qualified as a scientist and the other four became secondary teachers until they got married.  They taught not only in Ireland but also in England and in Europe.  It was the custom for them to spend a year or two teaching in convents in Germany, Belgium, England, Scotland and France. Two of the eight girls remained in the household on the Wexford farm, one of whom, Nell, was active in local politics.

Mother, perhaps passing on some advice to a newly qualified doctor!

Mary Josephine ‘’Min’’ married my father. Agnes married Denis McCullough who was a prominent IRA man in the North and unsuccessfully attempted to reach the 1916 rebellion from the North.  Two of my Aunts, Mary Kate and Phyllis married Sean T. O’Kelly who was a leading politician during the troubled times and who joined de Valera as a close colleague after the split created by the Treaty settlement  His first wife died in 1934 and his second wife Phyllis, outlived him, having married about 1940.  A further sister joined Professor Michael O’Malley who was the leading surgeon in Galway and who played an important part in advancing the medical services of that city.

Two of the four boys, Jack and Michael, remained farmers in Tomcoole where they had an extensive holding of about 600 acres by the 1930s. Jim became a doctor qualifying in University College in Dublin. He attended the GPO as a medical student looking after the occupants during the 1916 Rebellion.  The fourth boy, Martin, became a priest, qualified in Wexford and was in a parish there when he died young from blood poisoning.

The Ryan family was seriously divided by the Treaty settlement, particularly Jim who was to remain a close associate of de Valera and both Kate and Phyllis who had been influenced by Seán T. O’Kelly who was active in Sinn Féin and who  too remained faithful to de Valera. Nell who had remained in Wexford was fervently anti-Treaty. She was imprisoned and went on hunger strike while my father was head of the army during the Civil War. He refused her release despite pressure from some of her siblings! The strike, which she shared with others, was to last 30 days until they were induced to abandon their suffering, and not thanks to my father! The split among the Ryan siblings was a disaster at the time but the worst aspect of the bitterness had diminished after a few years and subsequent generations of the family were not touched by their differences. 

My father’s family had no specific interest in politics and dad’s involvement in 1916 was not approved of initially by his family. His father’s reaction to 1916 was said to be ‘’He had much to thank the British for appointing him postmaster of Ennis’’.

The Ryan sisters were not particularly active during the rebellion as individuals apart from my mother who was a member of Cumman na mBan. She established a branch of the Cumann in London while teaching there. She was closely associated with Seán McDermott, who was one of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation and who was executed subsequently. She, with her youngest sister, Phyllis, acted as messengers to the GPO during Easter Week.  McDermott would have married my mother if he had survived, instead of which she met Richard Mulcahy in 1917, after his return from prison. They were married in 1919. The Ryans, including my mother, tended to distance themselves from politics and political contact once they became married and acquired children.

Ireland and neutrality.

This review was written in 2005

In Times of War. Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-1945. By Robert Fisk. André Deutsch, London, 1983. pp XVI + 565.

I borrowed this book from the RDS library. It is a rather unnecessarily long account of Ireland’s international role before and during the second World War but it is a mine of detail about De Valera’s stance on the issue of neutrality. Dev was of course supported in his policy by the vast majority of the people of the Republic and by all Irish politicians with the exception of James Dillon. De Valera emerges as an incorruptible leader who was implacable in his defence of neutrality and in his stubborn resistance to the British attempts for Ireland to join in the war and for Ireland to yield on the Treaty Ports which had been returned to Ireland in 1938. Behind Ireland’s public stance on neutrality was of course the great majority of the Irish people’s sympathy for the Allies and the increasingly strong but secret cooperation which Ireland gave to the British in terms of information and assistance in releasing members of the British army, navy and air force who had found themselves for one reason or another on Free State soil.

There is a huge amount of detail in the book about actual or alleged spying, on both the German and British sides. On this issue and from the personal points of view, Richard Mulcahy is widely reported because of the considerable number of papers he left in the UCD archives in relation to the Defence Council which was set up during the war in Ireland. He and Dr. Tom O’Higgins represented Fine Gail on the Defence Council.

Churchill and De Valera meet in 1953. 

The British in general and Churchill in particular had little appreciation of the motives which determined Ireland’s neutrality, and Churchill could be both arrogant and undiplomatic in dealing with De Valera whom he learned to hate because of Dev’s stubborn stance. There is no doubt that the loss of the ports was a serious problem for the British, particularly during the early years of the war when shipping  losses proved to be very threatening and at times reached as much as 400,000 tons in one month. In later years, as the submarine menace came under better control, the loss of the ports was less significant. However, the pressure on De Valera and the Irish Government to yield on the ports continued up to the end of the war.

Apart from details about Ireland’s stance, Fisk deals in considerable detail with the North of Ireland and with its own problems during the period. There is a detailed account of the disastrous bombing of Belfast which caused considerable distress in relation to refugees and the low morale of the Belfast citizens.  There is little doubt that Ireland’s neutrality and the North’s readiness to join in the war lead to widening the division of the two parts of Ireland. It was certainly responsible for consolidating partition in the minds of the Northern loyalists and the British. However, at no time had the British confirmed its stated commitment to support the North until 1948 when Jack Costello abolished the External Relations Act. By creating the Republic outside the Commonwealth he was to precipitate the British guarantees to the North of Ireland. The Northern Loyalists would receive the full support of Britain unless the majority of people in the Province wished to return to a united Ireland. The British were angry at Ireland’s unexpected defection from the Commonwealth and the British guarantees added fuel to the fire of the anti-partition campaign which De Valera had started after he had lost the 1948 election. Costello became equally vocal about partition and the North’s intransigence, thus further alienating the North and consolidating rather than solving the northern problem. He was angry following the British assurances but he only had himself to blame having left the Commonwealth without seeking the views of the leader of his party, Richard Mulcahy, and clearly ignoring the traditional support of the Commonwealth by his party members.

Mulcahy (3rd from right)  elected President of Fine Gael. Costello on his left.

It is not relevant to Robert Fisk’s detailed account of Ireland’s neutrality but it can be only a source of disappointment that Richard Mulcahy who, as the newly elected President of Fine Gael in 1944, declared his full support for Commonwealth membership, accepted Costello’s decision without demurring. I was with him at breakfast at Lissenfield when the Sunday Independent arrived with the news. The declaration of the Republic and the departure from the Commonwealth came as a complete surprise to him but the only comment he apparently ever made on the issue outside my presence was, when travelling by car to Cobh with Paddy Lynch to meet Jack Costello on his return from Canada, he said to Paddy ‘Jack must have had a drink too many when he made the declaration’.

My Father and  Mother 1953

I can only explain my father’s unexpected acquiescence to three possible factors - his loyalty to his close friend Costello, his very Victorian commitment to the authority of the head of government and, perhaps above all, his reluctance to disturb the harmony of the rather fragile Interparty government with the consequent danger of De Valera returning to power. Nevertheless, I believe my father was too committed to loyalty not to express his criticism about an act which was in his view inconsistent to the fundamental policy stated by him when elected head of his Party in 1944. And loyalty was a constant feature of his life even when he was challenged by authority whose action he might disapprove of.

The English Language

This review was written on August 31st 2012

The English Language. 

I bought this book from Kindle in August 2012.  I was, as always, interested in the origins of the English language.  This book is authored by a very learned scholar of language, and much of his long dissertation contains unusual but not inappropriate words in the text, such as orthography, philologist, palaeontologist, consontental, triphthong, phonetics, the copula, praeterite, etymology, prosody, euphony etc. which must be a little beyond the ordinary reader

Robert Gordon Latham C. 1860

The text was probably published in the early 20^th century and the author, Robert Gordon Latham, was Professor of English Education in London University.  It is long, perhaps about 700 pages. Its contents must be hugely important to any real scholar of the English language, containing as it does so much detail about every aspect of the language’s evolution from the earliest Etruscan roots to the constructions of the present day language.  Much of its details were lost on me but nevertheless I learned enough to follow the general evolution of the English language and its relationship historically and in other respects with many other ancient and modern tongues.

Archaic Etruscan Alphabet 7th - 5th Centuries BC

Apparently the first alphabet known to us was Etruscan and the earlier pre-Roman and pre-Greek languages are described as Gothic, Celtic or Germanic.  There is much information about the so called Germanic languages which include those of the Nordic countries, Iceland and the North Atlantic islands. The name England and Anglo-Saxon were derived from the immigrant Angles and Saxons.

The initial chapters deal largely with the origin of the English language during the 6^th and 7^th centuries A.D. with the various invasions of the Saxons, the Angles and the Jurists from Germany and surrounding cultures.  These sects invaded different parts of south-eastern England and they have left the remains of their languages in some of the place names in these areas.  The book provides many examples of modern names and place names in the east and south of England which can be traced back to these earlier Germanic tongues. These Germanic languages were preceded by the Roman invasion of England at the time of Caesar but the Romans left little trace of Latin after their departure, whatever about their archaeology remains.

Viking Runic inscription

The Vikings during their long stay at the end of the first and early in the second millennia left their mark too in their language and were more influential north  of the country’s south-east.

Later chapters deal with the evolution of English at the time of Edward the Confessor in the 13^th Century.  It was then that the educated speaking Latin and French were first to start corresponding in old English and it was Edward the First who was the first to communicate with his subjects in this way. 

There is much of interest in the origin of language in Scotland where the low level Scots spoke English while the Western areas spoke Gaelic and were heavily influenced in the North of Scotland and in the contiguous northern islands by Scandinavian roots with Gaelic dominant in the Highlands and the Hebrides. 

I have to confess that many chapters were fast read by me where the author deals with such aspects as terminology, pronunciation, declensions and grammar; I was primarily concerned with the origin of the language.  I was of course interested to enquire into the origin of Irish in Ireland and the Celtic languages still existing along the Atlantic seaboard. It was extraordinary that the Celtic tongues continued to exist for so long on this narrow strip of coastland stretching from the North of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the northwest of Spain.  There is a section suggesting that the Irish in Ireland was particularly related to the ancient Punic languages, presumably from North Africa, but the evidence of this is hardly convincing or perhaps not fully understood by myself. In one chapter, it was stated that Irish was of Carthaginian origin but it is apparent that Celtic preceded Greek and Latin as one of the earlier languages in Europe and the Eastern world.

There is much reference in the text to the influence of the Scandinavian or Norse languages. The Viking invasion of England (and Ireland), an occupation which continued for five centuries or more, left place names as well as other language  traces. Examples in Ireland are the terminal place name word such as ford, which is derived from the Norse word Fiord and why did the family names including the initial Fitz remain common in Ireland and not in England? 

The reference to Edward the Confessor underlines the importance of the Norman invasion in 1166 when French and Latin became the spoken and written words of the better educated and which had a huge influence on English terminology, particularly in the areas of science, law, the professions and the gradual expansion of education.

Reading this long and specialist book reminds me of certain limitations in the use of Kindle.  These may be partly an expression of my own ignorance of the usage of this medium of reading. The Kindle is unsatisfactory in dealing with maps, photos and designs.  Maps apparently cannot be changed to do different fonts, so that they cannot be enlarged or studied in detail.  There is also the problem of making quick and easy reference to other aspects of a long book, particularly where there are many characters and many chapters. 

This book is, for example, divided into four parts, one at least of which has more than thirty chapters, and each of which is on a different aspect of the English language.  Of course the book itself may be heavy for the older person and its font may not suit the elderly. These are problems for me with my visual impairment and the cramps induced by the weight of the book on my hands.

At the year 1,000 A.D it was believed that the language at the time owed 75% of its origin to Anglo-Saxon, 12% to Anglo-Norman, 2% to Celtic, 4% to early Latin, 3% to Scandinavian and the rest miscellaneous. Clearly by the 21^st century much has changed through the later Norman influence based as it was on the earlier Latin and the preceding Greek, and of the influence of the extensive regions which were dominated by and greatly influenced by the British Empire during the last three centuries. Among the educated at least, and particularly those of the medical profession, the many prefixes (pre, Latin) and suffixes (Greek ism, Latin ble) derived from these two classical languages is a prominent part of our daily speech.

Reading this book at my advanced age confirms my regrets that I had not read it and similar works about the origin of the English language and its progressive change over the last two millennia. It reminds me how poor was the standard of education, primary and secondary, during my earlier years. It also should remind us that Latin and Greek are still important for the medical profession if we doctors are to maintain a proper insight into the culture and into the history of our profession.

My three boys in Nunraw

Sancta Maria Abbey Nunraw.

My three boys in Nunraw, September 2014

My paternal parents and their offspring were interested in education and in professional advancement. Their progress could be described as the product of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and of the proliferation of the Irish Catholic secondary schools during the gradual emergence of the Catholic middle class during the later years of the 19^th   century

Brothers three: Dad, Sam and Paddy

My father was the eldest boy, born in 1886, and Sam was the youngest of the eight children. He was born in 1900. It is Sam who is the subject of this essay. He studied for the priesthood and joined the Cistercian Order in 1924. I deal briefly with his career and in doing so I refer to my three sons who joined me in visiting the monastery established by Sam at Nunraw in East Lothian in Scotland in 1946.

Sam was prior of the Cistercian monastery and secondary school at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary when he was appointed as the founder and Abbot of the first post-reformation Catholic monastery in Scotland. It was sited in East Lothian in 1946 just after the end of the World War. It seemed a very ambitious undertaking and almost a provocative challenge that a Catholic monastery would dare to establish itself in the heart of Scottish Presbyterian country and that it would acquire extensive land and buildings after their arrival there. On the contrary, the monks were well received by the local people and were greatly helped in settling down during their early years.

Land acquired extended eventually to 1300 acres, which was mostly worked by the monks with some local farmers but the fall in vocations among young people has led to the disposal of the land and the loss of the traditional role of the Cistercians in farming and providing for their members.

The monks (and their many skills).

The monastery was completed by 1969 and had acquired a large guest house close by. The monks built the monastary completely by themselves during its 23 years of construction with the assistance of volunteers and a few local building experts. As the first abbot of Nunraw, Dom Columban (Sam) soon became a close friend of the head of the Church of Scotland and both were enthusiastic in sharing their interest in and hopes of ecumenical progress within the Christian world. Dom Columban had an obvious impact both locally and in the wider world. He received widespread publicity at the time of his death in 1970 including a full programme presented by Malcolm Muggeridge on BBC television.

Sam

I remember my uncle as having a most happy and gentle disposition, a feature of many of the other monks we met as children and as we were to meet this year when we arrived in Nunraw. He was clearly very progressive in his outlook and may have found the very conservative rule of the Cistercian Order to be incompatible with changing attitudes aimed at greater communication created by better education and the expanding nature of modern society.

An example of his progressive nature was his concern about the appalling diet on which he and his colleagues in the order were confined to. No meat, fish or other sources of protein except hard cheese could be found on their table. He arranged for me and my colleague, Noel Hickey, and our dietician in my department at St. Vincent’s Hospital to visit Mount Melleray in  Co. Waterford, the head and sister house of the Cistercians in Ireland and to make recommendations about a healthier diet for the Order worldwide.

We investigated the causes of death of the previous 50 monks as recorded in the County register in Co. Waterford and found a relatively poor life expectation among the community. We attended their main meal of the day (including our female dietician – possibly the first female to attend such an event!) and made recommendations to my Uncle Sam which were sent to Rome and apparently acted upon on behalf of the entire Order. Meat and fish were still prohibited, as I recall, but pulses – a mixture of beans, peas and lentils – and eggs and other protein sources may have been allowed.

At Nunraw: David, Self, Richard, Dom Caira and Hugh.

Earlier this year during a conversation with my son Hugh we spoke about Dom Columban. Hugh suggested that we ought to visit the monastery as a tribute to his memory. After some thought I wrote to the current abbot Dom Mark Caira and I was kindly invited to visit Nunraw with my three sons, Richard, David and Hugh. Flying directly to Edinburgh, we hired a car and settled ourselves in an excellent hotel. Next morning we drove to Nunraw, a distance of about 35 miles where we spent up to three hours in intensive conversation with the abbot, with his immediate predecessor, Dom Raymond, and his predecessor and successor to Dom Columban, Dom Donald. The latter was appointed shortly before Columban retired and the latter’s  early death just at 70 years.  Obviously with the next three abbots alive and well, the life span of  the monks has greatly extended since the early  days, perhaps because  their dietary habits have improved or might it be the bracing air of Scotland?

Sam's grave is just to the left of the big cross.

Not unexpectedly, we found that there has been a marked fall in vocations and that the monastery needs to reduce its facilities for the visitors who attended and used the monastery and guest house as an environment designed for prayer and reflection. There are now about twelve to fourteen monks, all of them above seventy years. They had a complement of about 64 in the early 60s but vocations have been falling slowly and inexorably since Vatican II and I am told that the paucity of vocations entering monasteries is evident worldwide. In the late 1960s I recall my uncle being greatly stressed by the early changes occurring in the monastic world after Vatican II.

We found the same personalities among our hosts which I recognised in my uncle and predecessor whom I knew so well, a sense of happiness, contentment, courtesy and optimism despite recent changes in the spiritual and secular world. And clearly they showed a special regard and reverence when they spoke about Dom Columban.

Richard, David and Hugh; when things were more black and white.

The visit for me had another and equally meaningful and lasting effect. It was the first time I had spent alone with my three boys, all now in their fifties. It was a reminder of the gulf which exists between generations in terms of interests and current affairs. It also is a reminder of how warm can be the relationship between father and son. I was treated like a lord in terms of hospitality and consideration and reminded so fully of the warmth of their affection. It was as obvious to them as it was to me that this short break from full family life, removed from the daily affairs of an extended family, had a binding effect on our relationship. 

When together in the hotel, pub or elsewhere there was never a moment of silence. Talk was incessant but it was generally shared by the three and on subjects which were more often of interest to their generation. The first evening we arrived we spent about two hours in the lounge/bar and I found that I was a little remote from the conversation, not only because the subjects were closer to their interests but because of my inability to catch many parts of their conversation, aggravated by the constant noise in the background of the bar and the inevitable loss of hearing as part of my age. At first I was a little concerned about my patchy exclusion from the discussions and the likelihood that this would remain during the entire stay of our time in Edinburgh but I decided that my real role was to study the three of them during their frequent and sometimes intense conversations and to analyse the relationship between them.

Pinting with Hugh

This proved to be an excellent decision and, although there was no loss of attention to me and my presence at times, it was fascinating to be a listener rather than a participator and to study their different characters. Their friendship was clearly apparent and at no time was there any evidence of discord but it was clear that Hugh needs to be alone at times and it is good to be alone with him to share a pint. Richard tends to have strong views but is amenable to other opinions and is safe behind the wheel. He did not seem to resent the modern gadget at the back of the car which in flat and monotonous tones advised him that the next turn was 350 metres to the left. It seemed a help in Edinburgh to the unfamiliar, dominated as the city is by the Castle, by the confusing pattern of streets surrounding it and the heavy weekend traffic and crowds  

David, Self and Richard, enjoying the 1970s.

David likes to keep in close communication with his family and his profession and is in constant use of his mobile phone and his camera. I had the impression that he was the calmest of the three but this could be disputed. When the three were together there was little evidence of calm. Hugh was less communicative with his wife and family at home. He probably contacted them not more than three times daily while David would have comfortably exceeded that number. Richard was the most economical in the use of his ‘phone. He rang his loved one once every day as he retired to his bed in my room. Most obvious to me was the affection the boys shared, their generosity, their common interests and their constant concern about my welfare and comfort.

Altogether it was a most happy reminder of the good fortune which can exist in family life and particularly in the extended family of which I have had the good fortune to belong.  Apart from our visit to Nunraw I thought the happiest moments of our visit was sitting in a crowded pub with a pint of Guinness in my hand listening to and sometimes even intervening among my three boys.

Spot yourselves boys.

Clearing the Air

Clearing the Air - the Battle over the Smoking Ban Noel Gilmore. The Liberties Press, 2005. 

This review was written on March 18th 2005

Life expectancy in Ireland has been increasing gradually during the last century, thanks to various social, public health and medical measures. It has extended more rapidly in the last 25 years largely as a result of the anti-smoking campaign which first started forty years ago at the time of the first Royal College of Physicians and the Surgeon General’s reports. Life expectancy will gather momentum because of the recent public smoking ban in Ireland, followed as it will be by similar measures worldwide. Indeed, it may mark the beginning of the end of cigarette smoking as a health hazard. The trend will be further increased by changes in the production of cigarettes – smaller cigarettes, reduced tobacco content and lower levels of tar and nicotine.

The ban will have a powerful effect on the culture of nations and on public health, particularly as most smokers in Ireland are now in the younger age group who do not yet manifest the clinical effects of the smoking diseases. Older persons, septuagenarians, octogenarians and older, who are likely to be non-smokers or who had stopped smoking when at an earlier age, will become an increasing proportion of our population.  It is well established from epidemiological studies that the healthy smoker who stops gradually reverts over five to ten years to the same risk status as the non-smoker.

Budget 2015 - another 40c on a pack of fags.

In terms of legislation, the Irish ban is unique as a measure of social engineering. It was promulgated by a minister, cabinet and a parliament for the common good with no obvious motive of political gain or advantage. The exchequer will not necessarily be affected as the price of cigarettes will almost certainly be subject to increasing taxation. The ban was implemented after a widely conducted and controversial campaign involving every stratum of Irish society. The commercial vested interests were harnessed most powerfully to oppose the ban; but the Minister and his department adopted a brilliant public relations strategy, receiving increasing and vital support from a variety of organisations, including voluntary, statutory, health, social and environmental bodies and members of the medical professions. In political terms, it was the most altruistic piece of legislation in my memory and, in terms of public benefit and approval, it is in the same realm as the banning of plastic bags.

The success of this legislation contrasts with some other aspects in our country. The neglect of education, civics and the provision of better infrastructure for transport, cycling and healthy exercise, are some of these, and our appalling planning policies at a time of great prosperity and of waste as consumerism takes precedence over more pressing social obligations.

Noel Gilmore, a former director of the Government Information Services, provides a fascinating account of a well organised public campaign which up to recently would not have been envisaged in our wildest dreams. The author writes well and is supported by detailed research into the origin and the progress of the campaign. It makes easy and sometimes amusing reading, and is a comfortable gossipy account but is none the worse for that. It is an important reminder of what can be done by our politicians for the common good. Let us be thankful for this rather rare example of our government’s genuine concern for Irish society.

Micheál Martin, Minister for Health, 2004.

Some months after the ban was implemented I was invited by an old-standing colleague in Munich to attend a meeting on medical epidemiology and to address the audience from various European countries on Ireland’s success in banning smoking in public. The audience was suitably impressed by our government’s altruism but I thought it appropriate to add my own view that there was one factor which received no publicly in Ireland but which might have been in the mind of the minister for health and his cabinet colleagues. Talk was being heard at that time that some of the staff in our public houses were aware of the increasing information being published about the carcinogenic effect of passive smoking. Such workers were obviously exposed to a heavy atmosphere of cigarette smoke during their employment. Those inflicted by lung cancer, emphysema or coronary disease were likely in future to raise this matter when seeking compensation and would certainly succeed in their plea of risk exposure. I suspect that our minister for health must have some inkling of this potential hazard and that his altruistic act must have had a tinge of a political motive.