A friend gives a present of a first edition of Ernie O'Malley's On Another Man's Wound. O'Malley had a great feeling for people and place, even in prison. A fellow prisoner was Paddy Moran: "He had lived in Keadue near Lough Meelagh in the county Roscommon. It was easy to begin an acquaintance when I could talk of a country I had liked.
"The men carried their home places in their minds; it was pleasant to take them out of themselves by building up the skeleton of what they had known well; their memories would supply details, and people the new country of their minds. When you knew a man's district well and could talk about its personal geography, you became, for a time, closer than a blood relation. He knew the lonely shores of Lough Allen, the bare recession of hills towards Leitrim and the smells of ferny undergrowth of woods near the lakes of Skean and Meelagh. He was happy to talk of Crossna and of the people he liked . . . To test his memory, and to take him out of gaol, I would ask him to walk down the right bank of the Shannon from Lough Allen to Carrick and come back on the opposite side.
"Next day we would add further details. At exercise now he walked behind me. `Do you remember the colour of the Curlews after rain?' After another round of the drab yard, I'd say `And the reeds near the shore in the early morning. Wouldn't it be fine to stand on the Rock of Courage in Lough Key and look across at the Rock of Doon?"' Thomas Hardy in his poem afterwards wrote:
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings.
Delicate filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say.
`He was a man who used to notice such things'.
Ernie O'Malley, dashing, high spirited, was a man who, in the midst of war, used to notice such things.