MEMORY lane becomes an extremely busy thoroughfare at this time of year, with many purveyors of nostalgia in various shapes and sizes lining up to meet customers' demands.
There is no shortage of material either, with at least one bounty presenting four examples of its wares. This is Wexford and, with the year that's in it, it is not surprising to find that two of those books are about hurling.
No Hurling at the Dairy Door, by Billy Rackard (Blackwater Press, £9.99), is this hurling veteran's memoirs not only of epic games but also of a way of life now gone. Rackard evokes those early years of farm and pub life in rural in the 1930s and 40s with an light hearted grace. The book carries many historic photographs but could have done with some keener editing to eliminate numerous superfluous commas. And surely William Joyce introduced his broadcasts from Germany by saying "Germany calling, Germany calling" and not "Lord Haw Haw calling"?
The second hurling book from the Model County is With Heart and Hand, by Tom Williams (Blackwater Press, £9.99). This is the "inside story", stylishly and colourfully told, of Wexford's hurling resurgence after twenty eight years of defeat. It correctly identifies and pays adequate tribute to the man mainly responsible for that resurgence, the team manager Liam Griffin, an extraordinary, messianic and inspiring figure whose methods and vision are here expertly analysed for the first time. Williams, whose first book this is, is a skilful writer and the book is profusely illustrated with many fine colour and monochrome photographs.
The two other books from Wexford are, in fact, collections of photographs: 100 Wexford Country Houses, by Dan Walsh (Millpark Publications, £15) and County Wexford in the Rare Oul' Times - Vol III, by Nicholas Furlong and John Hayes (Old Distillery Press, £10).
Dan Walsh's large format history documents the fortunes of more than a hundred of the county's finer houses, including many that have disappeared through demolition or through fire. It is ironic that so many of these old country houses suffered ruination after their purchase by the Irish Land Commission during the break up of old estates. Incidentally, Walsh says that Ballyrankin House was burned during the Civil War in July 1921 - the Civil War did not start until 1922. A map showing the location of the recorded houses would have been helpful.
County Wexford in the Rare Oul' Times is the third in a series of large format collections of historic and not so historic photographs, and the impression from this third volume is that the collectors must be in danger of running out of old photographs interesting enough to be published. This volume contains pictures taken in the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s - hardly "rare oul' times" even in indulgent Wexford. Photographs of local football and hurling teams may be of vital interest to those portrayed but they are hardly of historic significance. Curiously, one of "the best action photo graphs" (caption writer Furlong's own description) in the book is reduced to near postage stamp size on page 187; it could have done with full page treatment. There is also a strange scarcity of apostrophes throughout the volume. Still, Wexford folk everywhere will love it.
County Cork is represented here by three books - Family Names of County Cork, by Diarmuid O Murchadha (Collins Press, £11.99), Cork/Corcaigh (Cork Corporation, £20) and Maura's Boy - A Cork Childhood, by Christy Kenneally (Mercier Press, £6.99). Family Names of County Cork is a reprint, with a few pages of corrections, of the Glendale Press publication of 1985. Some fifty families are dealt with in a discursive rather than genealogical manner, though the subject matter is obviously dear to the heart of the scholarly author.
The Cork Corporation publication, a promotional book about the city, is a beautifully designed and illustrated advertisement for Cork and its environs, with text by Mary Leland and extracts from well known writers who admire the city and its people. The colour photographs are sumptuous. Christy Kenneally captures another aspect of Cork in his autobiographical record of his first ten years as a boy growing up on the banks of the Lee. It is a well written and finely observed piece of social history of the decade 1948-58.
On to Limerick now for two more books from that region. The indefatigable Jim Kemmy edits The Limerick Anthology (Gill & Macmillan, £10.99) which, as the title says, is a collection of articles, essays, ballads and poems about Limerick by both natives and others, ranging from Eamon de Valera to Richard Harris, and Siegfried Sassoon to Harold Pinter. Marvellous value for the price and published as the city begins to celebrate the 800th anniversary of its first charter. The second book is Limerick Lives (The Samartans, £19.99), a collection of short insights into the lives of seventy five "personalities" from Limerick city and county, edited bay Mary Fennelly and aimed at raising funds for the Limerick Friends of the Samaritans. A commendable and attractive project.
There are two books on aspects of Dublin history worthy of note - The Four Courts: 200 Years, edited by Caroline Costello (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland, £21) and Kilmainham - The History of a Settlement Older than Dublin, by Colum Kenny (Four Courts Press; no price given). The first is a collection of essays published to commemorate the bicentenary of the Four Courts and includes pieces on the origins of the Courts, their history and development and the lifestyles of those who practise there. One of the contributors, Colum Kenny, is the author of the Kilmainham book - a tightly written illustrated history of the ancient foundation of Maignenn which became, in time, the Royal Hospital. There is plenty of fascinating detail and there are many useful footnotes. A scholarly but readable account.
The Wicklow World of Elizabeth Smith 1840-1850, edited by Dermot James and Seamas O Maitiu (Woodfield Press, £9.99), consists of a selection of extracts from the Irish journal of a Scottish woman who lived lord more than fifty years in Co Wicklow - ten of them during the Famine. Her frank opinions are augmented by a useful commentary by the editors and by numerous maps and photographs of the places mentioned.
The area around Clane, Co Kildare, its history, archaeology and topography, all come in for study in The Shady Roads to Clane, text by Hermann Geissel, illustrations and graphics by Roger Horgan, with contributions from Tony McEvoy and others (CRS Publications, no price given), a gem of a local publication which includes some genuine research and solid history - as well as quirky illustrations that, strangely, enhance the content.
Three books of youthful memoirs come from three different parts of the country: Vivienne Draper's The Straight Furrow (Brandon, £6.99) deals with growing up in the rectory at Ardglass; William Magan's An Irish Boyhood (Pentland Press, £14.50) is a memoir (the first of a trilogy) of life in an Ascendancy family in the Irish midlands, while John O'Connor's The Munster, the Music and the Village (Kilcohan Press, no price given) is about the author's early days as a showband musician and journalist on the Munster Express.
Finally, Irish Academic Press have published four new local histories in the Maynooth Studies in Local History series, edited by Raymond Gillespie - Roscommon before the Famine, the Parishes of Kiltoom and Cam, 1749-1845, by William Gacquin; Dalkey - Society and Economy in a Small Medieval Irish Town, by Charles V. Smith; St. Catherine's Parish Dublin 1840-1900, by John Crawford and An Early Toll Road - The Dublin Dunleer Turnpike 1731-1855, by David Broderick. All are attractively produced paperbacks priced at £4.95 each, with maps, plates and photographs to enhance the readable contents.
