HE SEEMS to have gone unnoticed amid the general obsession with Pat and Kathy Kenny. But among the more unusual visitors to the Dalkey land dispute case at the High Court this week has been the ghost of Patrick Kavanagh, writes Frank McNally.
I spotted him straight away, the first morning. In fact, I had no choice. He stood on my foot with his size-12 hobnailed boots as he shuffled past me in the packed public gallery, searching for a non-existent seat. And it was reassuring to see him, despite the pain, if only because he assuaged my own guilt about being there.
There seemed no justifiable reason for attending the case, other than pure nosiness. I had just happened to be passing when I saw the media scrum outside, and couldn't resist dropping in for a few minutes. But the feeling of prurience was still nagging me when Kavanagh appeared.
Then I remembered his famous sonnet, Epic, and its opening lines: "I have lived in important places, times/ When great events were decided: who owned/ That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land/ Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims." The similarities between the Gorse Hill sage and the events Kavanagh described were striking. In fairness, there have been no pitchforks used in Dalkey (not that we've heard, anyway). And at 0.2 acres, the disputed piece of rock there is closer to three-quarters of a rood than a half.
Also, on a technical point, there are no "gorse hills" in Kavanagh country, only hills covered with "whins". But still, the resemblances between the two scenarios were uncanny. They became more so when counsel spoke of raised fists, angry words, gates being closed on people's arms, and so on.
Another verse from the poem came back to me: "I heard the Duffys shouting 'Damn your soul'/ And old McCabe, stripped to the waist, seen/ Step the plot defying blue cast-steel - / 'Here is the march along these iron stones'."
I noticed Kavanagh taking copious notes, no doubt for use in a future poem. And yet it was hard to imagine how the evidence would help him improve on his original, unless he were simply to relocate the action from Inniskeen to suburban south Dublin.
This might be useful, in fact. I have since discovered that, in its poetry notes for students, the popular website skoool.ie cites the lines "That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land/ Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims" as an example of - and I quote: "the loneliness, conflicts, and frustrations of rural life".
Fair enough. But it may be worth reminding Dublin kids that, despite their rugby schools and their hoity-toity lifestyles, they are not necessarily above this sort of thing. If the High Court case serves any useful purpose, it shows that Epic's themes are universal, not just applicable to muck savages from Monaghan.
Of course, Kavanagh makes this point himself when he recalls, in the poem's conclusion, that the Duffy/McCabe row happened in 1938, as supposedly greater events were unfolding elsewhere: "That was the year of the Munich bother. Which/ Was most important? I inclined/ To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin/ Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind./ He said: I made the Iliad from such/ A local row. Gods make their own importance."
Yes, this is the real message of the Dalkey case for we mortals: that not even the gods are immune from neighbourly tensions. That, on the contrary, passionate boundary disputes can just as easily occur in the vicinity of Mount Olympus (or Killiney Hill, as it's known locally).
I didn't see Homer's ghost in the public gallery, by the way. But I could easily have missed him. The case is being heard in the High Court's new rooms at the Distillery Building, and I've heard there are spirits all over the place in there. (It's not true, however, that juries hearing cases on the premises can reach verdicts on the basis of 40 per cent proof; although I have previously proposed such a reform as a means of dramatically reducing the courts backlog.)
Anyway, reassured that my presence in the gallery was motivated by more than vulgar curiosity, but was rather an exercise in better understanding mankind, I sat through all the gory details that the lawyers insisted on revealing. And when the hearing finally ended, I waited at the door for a chance to meet my hero. No, not Pat Kenny. Kavanagh, I mean.
I was a bit nervous, given his fierce reputation. But I remembered that in another poem, he once invited us: "If ever you go to Dublin town, in a hundred years or so, inquire for my ghost on Baggot Street. . ." The specified period had not elapsed, I knew, and this was the wrong part of town. Even so, I hoped to find him in a mellow mood.
I was not disappointed. No doubt buoyed by the evidence that Epicwas holding its relevance so well 70 years after the events that inspired it, he was in the best of form. So when I blurted out something about how his poetry had touched all our lives, he thanked me warmly, shook my hand, and went on his way.
Then he paused and turned to me again. "Speaking of being touched," he said. "Any chance you could lend me a few bob?"