Wonderful, on a moist, morbid, allegedly spring day, to open a book that makes you laugh and rejoice from the first page. It is a pick me up indeed It is The Kiltartan History Book by Lady Gregory, illustrated by her son Robert Gregory. History with a difference. It launches at once into direct speech, within quotation marks, and continues throughout for each story. "As to the old history of Ireland, the first man ever died in Ireland was Partholan, and he is buried, and his greyhound along wit him, at some place in Kerry."
We have many of the heroes of our story and some of the villains, from the Goban Saor to Queen Victoria and Edward VII; many about O'Connell. "O'Connell wore his hat in the English House of Commons what no man but the King can do. He wore it for three days because he had a sore head, and at the end of that they bade him put it off and he said he would not, where he had worn it three days." Then Parnell:
"Parnell was a very good man, and a just man, and if he had lived to now, Ireland would be different to what it is. The only thing that ever could be said against him was the influence he had with that woman, and how do we know but that was a thing appointed for him by. God? Parnell had a back to him, but O'Connell stood alone. He fought a good war in the House of Commons. Parnell did a great deal, getting the land. I often heard he didn't die at all - it was very quick for him to go. I often wondered there were no people smart enough to dig up the coffin and to see what is in it, at night they could do that." Long after this book was published didn't we have an Abbey play on the theme that Parnell hadn't died? With Denis O'Dea?
Then Denis Browne. "There is a tree near Denis Browne's house that used to be used for hanging men in the time of 98, he being a great man in that time, and High Sheriff of Mayo." One night, the story goes, Denis Browne thought he might be hearing false inform at on against some innocent people. So he shot one of his own horses on the lawn. Next day some of his people came to tell him just who had done the deed. "So the two that gave that false witness were the last two Denis Browne ever hung. He rose out of it after, and washed his hands of it all. And his big house is turned into a convent, and the tree is growing there yet."
Published in 1909 by Maunsel in the discreet brown paper covers that were the mark of the time. This is History, writes Lady Gregory, told by beggars, pipers, travelling men, and such pleasant company.