Autumn, indeed. There are as many seed pods on the fuchsia at the front door as there are blossoms. Nearly. The crab apples are due for eating any day now. The miserable mulberry tree is covered with tiny red fruit, but it would take 10 of them to make a plump raspberry. Maybe in a century ... And another reminder of Autumn - a long article in an English magazine about Lisdoonvarna in September, the matchmaking and so on. Which brings us to the point - one of the most striking books about rural Ireland, My Village My World by John M. Feehan (Mercier £5.99). In the introduction he writes: "This book is a simple account of the lives of ordinary people in the countryside half a century ago .. . our way of life took thousands of years to grow and develop and mature but it was destroyed in less than a generation and I was one of those who strangled it". He has changed names and disguised locations. John B. Keane writes in the foreword, describing this very slim paperback of fewer then 100 pages as being, "a legacy of wit, laughter and wisdom." Back to matchmaking as Feehan sees it. There is an old couple with two sons. The elder is going to get the farm; so as soon as the old couple receive the pension, they'd give a fistful of money to the second son, so that he could get a woman and marry into her farm. A lot of visiting by the matchmaker; eventually when on a Sunday "mother and daughter had gone to second Mass, matchmaker and potential bridegroom would walk the land "to satisfy my man that he wasn't getting a pig in a poke" and that the land was well fenced and watered, with no ragwort, etc.
Then the outhouses and the stock. On another day the matchmaker and the girl's father would get down to money. When it was all agreed, "we'd have to go to a solicitor to put everything right. You would never trust the word of a farmer for he's so crooked that if he said the rosary with you, he'd try to do you out of a decade." Feehan writes: "Most farmer's marriages were arranged in this way, devoid of any finer emotions. Indeed this system lingered on well into the 1940's and was strongly supported by the church." The reminiscences are often buoyantly humorous, politically somewhat unrelenting, but overall, as John B. Keane has it, "boisterous and ribald, and I am tempted to say it is by far the funniest book I have ever read." John Feehan died in May 1991. The Epilogue reads "I have very little to show after a long life, but I also ask for very little - a few dogs, a few books, birds and nature and a few companions. Surely He will grant me that." Y