There could hardly be a better companion on a walk around Ireland than Ben Kiely. Start again: there could not possibly be a better companion on such a pilgrimage. And few people could get away with giving the two sides of a question, without losing any of his own right to be himself. Wander with Ben as he quotes and breaks into song. We are drawn with. him. "There was a time when, without offence and in mixed (sectarian, not sexual) company, it was possible to sing `The Sash My Father Wore'. This may no longer be advisable. But the magic flute may, because of its very intractability, retain a heavenly neutrality. Scholars and flautists will know that there are variant renderings." And then he gives the song in full.
This is an anthology always on the move. Omagh in the 1930s, and Brother Hamill had pushed Ben into reciting from the stage of the town hall the whole of that haunting poem. The Man From God Knows Where.. "Brother Hamill, besides being brother-in-the-flesh to Mickey Hamill, one of the greatest-ever centre-halves (Belfast Celtic), and himself had been away out there trying to pressurise the Chinese into Christianity or into soccer football, or something. So when he told me that I would step out there and recite, little choice had I:
Into our townlan', on a night of snow,
Rode a man from God-knows-where
It's some feat to carry right through, and Ben, of course did. Ulster gets first crack of the whip and soon we're into Ferguson's magnificent Lament for Thomas Davis, which as Ben points out begins at Ballinderry, in the Land of the Loughshore. . . "but moves on to embrace all of Ireland and many, many years".
I walked through Ballinderry in the spring-time.
When the bud was on the tree
But Leinster, Connacht and Munster get their due. Of Patrick Kavanagh he remembers 1941 when "he was, like myself, walking the streets of Dublin, doing a bit for the papers, being reasonably happy and wondering what it was all about". You'll find all the greats in this anthology and even the lush "Groves of Blarney":
'Tis there the lake is, well stored with perches,
And comely eels in the verdant mud
Besides the leeches, and groves of beeches,
Standing in order for to guard the flood.
The author, Richard Alfred Milliken, says Ben, was one of the Yeos in 1798, but "God help us, it was a long time ago." A poem worthy of the great Amanda herself. (Lilliput, £7.99. As I Rode by Granard Moat by Benedict Kiely.)