IN VIENNA earlier this year, I was taken aback to learn that the city is a linguistic cousin of Fionn MacCumhaill. Or such, at least, is the most widely accepted of several etymological theories: that “Vienna” comes from the same Celtic root as the Irish word, meaning “bright” or “fair”, from which the mythological giant derived his forename.
Not that you have to go back to prehistory for links between the Austrian capital and Ireland. The influence of the Benedictine monks who helped found the University of Vienna in 1365 is still remembered in such local place-names as Schottentor, Schottenstift, and Schottenring, all references to the Irish (or “Scots”) who came here via Germany in the 12th century.
They were mentioned briefly during introductions at the same university in July, when another invasion of scholars – many of them Irish, but none monks – descended on the banks of the Danube for a conference on Flann O’Brien. And as if to underline the linguistic connection, it so happened that the gathering included a real-life Finn McCool.
Well, strictly-speaking, he was a real-life German: the actor Harry Rowohlt, best known in his own country for playing a down-and-out in Lindestrasse, Germany's version of Coronation Street.
But Rowohlt's bushy Karl Marx beard hid a man of many talents. He is also a writer and a prolific translator of authors including Hemingway, Hilaire Belloc, and Leonard Cohen. Flann O'Brien too, of course: a love of whose work led him to translate At Swim-Two-Birdsand, wearing his other hat, to play Finn McCool in the Viennese film of the novel, In Schwimmen-Zwei-Vögel.
AS THE TITLE ALONEhints, it can't have been an easy book to render into German. But I wouldn't have thought that – unlike the Joycean masterpiece ASTB lampoons – it was especially hard to read in English. Whereas the people behind a new Dublin literary initiative called the Flying Book Club fear otherwise.
The Flying Book Club is partly the work of Dr Eibhlin Evans, one of the organisers of next month’s Flann O’Brien conference at Trinity College. And further marking the centenary, she and her fellow flying book clubbers are running a series of workshops to introduce the man to new readers. The FBC’s general mission is to provide literary enlightenment to those in need. But occasionally, in a programme called “Feel the fear and read it anyway”, the group focuses on works that are considered difficult or intimidating.
The kind, in short, that people sometimes pretend to have read, pending realisation of their sincere ambition to do so, some day. Apparently, At Swim-Two-Birdsfalls in this category. In any case, it will be the October subject of the FBC's outreach project. More details are at flyingbookclub.ie.
THE PRESENCE of Finn McCool may also loom over a documentary on RTÉ radio this evening, when sound recordist Tom Lawrence presents a piece called The Tower of Time. The tower in question is better known as Aylmer's Folly, after the landlord George Aylmer, who built it with the help of his Co Kildare tenants 150 years ago. It was probably erected according to the principles of freemasonry, as a homage to God. But it may also have been part of Aylmer's plan to provide local people with work. He was a well-regarded landlord during the Famine years. In any case, among the tower's unusual features are the names and townlands of the 82 tenants who took part, carved meticulously into the spiral steps.
Aylmer’s Folly is also interesting for its location on top of the Hill of Allen, which soars over the rest of Kildare – not that that takes much doing – to a height of 670 feet. No, it’s not exactly Alpine. Even so, it was important enough in times past to be the reputed power-base of the aforementioned Finn McCool.
As you might remember from schooldays, the mythical giant first made his reputation on another nearby hill, Tara, when he repulsed a fire-breathing spirt who turned up every year at Samhain and burned the royal palace down.
On each occasion, the defenders would first be lulled into sleep by music. But after 23 years of this annual arson, Fionn maintained a successful vigil by means of leaning his forehead all night against the point of spear. Kept awake by the pain, he then used the spear to slay the fire-breather.
He must have nodded off in the centuries since (according to Finnegans Wake, he’s permanently asleep, somewhere under Dublin). Because apart from George Aylmer, modern invaders of the Hill of Allen have included that ferocious tribe, Cement Roadstone Holdings Ltd, whose quarries have wreaked havoc on the landscape below the tower. Indeed, along with rooks and ghostly voices, the sounds captured by Lawrence’s documentary include CRH lorries, busily carting away the hill.
Maybe the noise will wake the sleeping giant to anger, eventually. Or maybe, as in some versions of his story, he’s beyond waking. Local history has it that when Aylmer and his men were excavating the site, they found human bones – unusually large ones in some versions of the story – and carefully reburied them.
The Tower of Time is part of RTÉ’s The Curious Ear series and is broadcast today at 6.45pm on Radio One.