Hands clasped over the head of his stick, Bertie Rodgers the poet had just come into your office, with a poem, maybe, in his pocket, but it was not long before he told you, if meeting you for the first time, that this was no ordinary walking stick - it had belonged to, and had been cut by Charles Stewart Parnell. He looked at you with wistful eyes. Conor Cruise O'Brien, who was later given the stick by Bertie, wrote: "It was indeed a rather disconcerting thing to be listened to by him. He seemed to listen with his eyes. These were large, prominent, lustrous, suited to a hypnotist or a Swami. They also seemed to be, in some strange way, turned off, not looking ... they were, in fact rapt in the contemplation and analysis of spoken words." That was in the introduction to Irish Literary Portraits by Rodgers.
Conor in turn passed the stick on to Seamus Heaney, as you have read, and now it has gone to Nuala Ni Dhomhnall. A literary line starting when? For, as far as we know, the first in the line was Brinsley Macnamara from whom Bertie received it. It was a whitehorn, and Seamus Heaney wrote a poem to mark the latest transfer which was on Monday. "Whitethorn, not blackthorn", he opens his poem, and goes on to refer to the District Inspector's stick of office which was blackthorn, not whitethorn and "As black as his boot and neater than ninepence." The District Inspector is now gone; the rank disappeared about 1970/71 as a friend who, wanting for another reason to enquire about that well-known symbol, often seen on official occasions, in this time in the North, phoned the historical section of the RUC.
Even more surprising was that as Seamus Heaney and others have seen in the past, the often long and usually slim rod of office was never an authorised part of the officer's equipment. It was not authorised, but was permitted. And traditionally, said the official, it was usually presented to the newly-promoted officer by some of his friends in the ranks. It was long and slim; it could also be short as a swaggerstick. There could be a whole essay on the blackthorn stick industry. The bush itself, which bears the sloe, has branches a little darker than the whitethorn or hawthorn. But, to emphasise the black in the name, perhaps, paint or stain is applied and it makes a neat corner in the tourist shops.
The passing down of Parnell's stick is a touching note of fidelity. Seamus Heaney's poem is published by Peter Fallon's Gallery Press.