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Old Forge Books | | | | "Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, its too dark to read.' (Groucho Marx)
The Lightning Tree - Brandon Books
In the forward to this remarkable novel the author tells us of his relationship with Mariah, with whom he made friends as a young boy and who died when he was ten. From her reminiscences he has woven a magical tale of a woman who provided a link of memory with the early years of the nineteenth century and whose life was shadowed by both the Famine and a love tragically lost.
Though experiencing at first hand the curse of emigration, with the departure of her brother Frank and his wife to Australia, Mariah spent all of her life within a few miles radius of her family home in the Burren area of north Clare, a house built by her great-grandfather in the eighteenth century. Here she learnt the ways of domestic life from her mother but, more importantly, she also learnt the lore of the healer from her father and this became a dominant part of her life. The author describes in detail some of the ancient remedies used, though often the healing meted out by Mariah, her father and her brother Brian relied more on psychology than on medicine.
Born in 1858, Mariah witnessed a number of tragic events over her long life, including the hasty burial of a newborn baby, and the death of a mother and child from cold and hunger. But though "The Lightning Tree" records its share of physical hardship, it is dominated by the spiritual dimension which is itself enhanced by the beauty of the language. Curtis portrays the young Mariah's closeness to the world of the spirits, a closeness that leads to an ethereal playmate and which is at one with her identification with the natural world and her own corner of it. On climbing the hill behind the house she records, "From that high mound, I could see the entire world I was to inhabit all my life", and it is this continuity of place over almost a century that brings depth to both the narrative and the characters.
The author uses the eponymous lightning tree, an ash tree destroyed by lightning while Mariah was still a child, and the chestnut tree on the corner which was the focal point for much of the village activity, as symbols of life and death, but also of the tenacity of life; the chestnut tree is cut down in the name of progress but the stricken ash tree germinates new shoots from within itself, signifying both continuity and the strength of the life force.
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The Music of Ghosts - A Burren Miscellany (collection of essays, stories and poetry) - Old Forge Books
Some excerpts from The Music of Ghosts...
"My father (Pat Joe) was a Blacksmith; his father before him was a Blacksmith and his father before him... Indeed it would seem that the family had been involved in the 'smithy' trade for as far back in memory could hold and even further. They were blacksmiths and horse-lovers and carers of animals when they arrived in the county and to the burren in the mid 1500s. They were, more than likely, involved in the 'smithy' trade when they arrived in Ireland on invading Norman sailing-ships from northern France sometime in the 15th century. It is said that every Curtis family had at least one blacksmith in the clan.
It would seem that with this ancient trade raditionally came the knowledge of the more arcane gift of 'Healing.' In one branch of this family this 'Gift' found expression in offering cures, often life-saving, to many human ailments. In his travels around Clare in the late 19th century, celebrated historian and author T. J. Westropp, became aware of the family's 'Cure' - also called 'The Charm.' My grandfatehr was the local Blacksmith when the historian travelled here.
PJ recalls the many sounds of his childhood -- "From the first light and early cockcrow the farmyard bustled with life. Cows had to be milked, cow-cabins cleaned and fresh straw shaken on floors. Cattle had to be foddered in the fields and pigs, hens, geese, ducks and bronze turkeys and their broods had to be fed and counted daily - a visit from the neighbourhood fox could cause havoc in the henhouse. These chores were all done to a cacophony of sounds - mooing, bleating, chirping, quacking - all in rhythm with the clanging of milk-buckets and creamery cans, feeding pails and tins, barking dogs and cawing crows and magpies. When winter days fell like a magic spell on the burren and life and time itself slowed to a crawl, the Forge and my father rarely saw an idle moment."
He remembers... "the clear, rhythmic "Clang" of hammer on iron; of steel on steel; the deep, bell-like tone of resonating anvil; the arcing, spitting fiery showering of sparks; the pungent aroma of sweat and burning hoof, the fierce hiss and sizzle of red-hot metal being plunged into a stone-trough of iron-brown water; the stamping of horse hooves on a cobblestone floor and the snorting and bit-chomping of an impatient animal. All these sounds and smells are a backdrop to men conversing; sometimes in hushed whispers, sometimes loudly and punctuated often by raucous laughter... The old Forge stood for almost two centuries in our farmyard... I am 2-3 years of age and I reluctantly retreat to stand out of harm's way some distance from the forge door; my father having seen me pull playfully at the tail of a waiting horse, had shooed me away to a safe distance... The Forge, with all its dark, shadowy corners and hidden secrets was, I soon learned, a place of many dangers; a forbidden place where only adult men (even my mother never entered here) conducted some strange ritual on a daily basis..."
BUY THE MUSIC OF GHOSTS FROM PAYPALNotes From The Heart - Poolbeg
Charts the history of Irish music from the turn of the century to the present day. An absolutely wonderful book. Paperback. 180 pages. P.J.Curtis, Grammy award-winning record producer and presenter provides an overview of Irish music and song from the earliest recordings, through the bleak decades of the Forties and Fifties, to the popular renaissance of recent years. Vividly capturing the personalities of musicians, past and present, who have contributed to this living tradition.
BUY NOTES FROM THE HEART FROM PAYPALOne Night In The Life Of RV Mulrooney - Poolbeg
"What a night! Tracking down the elusive poteen still, hauling a dead man and coffin from the swamp, tombs still missing in the marsh and now fiddles in the wind! RV would be glad hen this night was over..."
Yes, Sergeant Rudolph Valentino Mulrooney longs to return to the normality of everyday life in Ballykeogh and his daily communion with the great Ludwig von Beethoven...
But in a village where the postmistress armed with a shotgun barricades herself periodically against a German invasion, where the sacristan RN (Ramon Navarro, brother to RV) brews illicit poteen nightly in a labyrinth of vaults under the church graveyard - what exactly is normality?
PJ Curtis flexes his creative muscles in a new direction and presents us with this stunningly imaginative and hilarious tour de force.
Cover illustrations by Graeme Knuttel. (Book out of print)
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