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The Big
Drum
Prof. Art Hughes’ 15th book just
published.
Friend of Black Tie Magazine, Dr Art Hughes is in
New York for the academic year 2009/10 as a Visiting Professor
of Irish at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU.
One of the world’s leading Gaelic scholars, he has just launched
his 15th book: a literary translation entitled The
Big Drum. This novel was written in Irish by Seosamh Mac
Grianna as An Druma Mór and it is widely recognized as
one of the finest ever written in the Irish language. The core
of the novel concerns a feud between two marching bands in a
little seaside hamlet Ros Cuain (or Rannafast) in County Donegal
in the North-West of Ireland in the years 1912 to 1922. This
townland was part of the Gaeltacht or ‘Irish-speaking
area of Tyrconnell (Donegal)’.
Seosamh Mac Grianna (1900-90), a brilliant and artistic young
writer, completed the book in 1930 and it was due to be
published in 1935 but the Irish Government decided, at the
eleventh hour, to ban the book because of fears that some local
characters who featured in the book (albeit under pseudonyms)
may have taken court action for libel. Banning the book was a
devastating blow for the young author who abandoned his writing
career after this unwarranted censorship. Mac Grianna was to
spend the next 30 years of his life in a lost wilderness and the
last 30 in a mental institution!
For the first time, an English translation of this important
Gaelic novel has been prepared by Professor Hughes. Not only
does Hughes provide an excellent translation with explanatory
end notes, but he also provides a 12,000 word essay on the
author’s background and the reader would be advised to read this
appended essay (page 119 ff.) before beginning the novel proper.
The novel while seemingly ignoring such major events as the
First World War (1914-18) and, to a degree the Irish Easter
Rising of 1916, can also be viewed as an examination of the need
for feuding in the human race as a whole, where this small local
skirmish can be seen as a parody for wider warfare and the
inherent struggle of groups or factions of people to control and
subjugate each other. This novel is a hidden gem which has now
been put on wider public display. Professor Hughes must be
congratulated for bringing the work of Seosamh Mac Grianna to an
international audience. In addition to his skills as a literary
scholar, Art Hughes has also painted the cover.
The book details are as follows:
The Big Drum Seosamh
Mac Grianna,
translated A.J. Hughes (Ben Madigan Press 2010).
It is available to an American readership via the website
www.litriocht.com .
Go the following page to order a copy:
http://www.litriocht.com/shop/index.php
Here are some extracts from
the novel:
Chapter 1, setting the
scene:
The Gaeltacht of Tyrconnell [i.e. Donegal] lies between rugged
mountain and rocky shore from Urris to Malinmore, as if it were
duelling with the Great Ocean. These same shores bear many
wounds and scars, gored and gashed as a consequence of that
conflict which began before Parthalán came to Inis Samhaoir, yes
and before years or days came into the world from the distant,
misty womb of time. The thin covering of mossy ground which
serves as soil there lies on the oldest rocks in creation; bog
oak is found in abundance there – the stumps of the great trees
into which the doe used to flee before Ireland ever heard a
human voice. No living soul could ever tell how the first seeds
of heather were planted, a plant which, in spite of tillage, is
still found to the very edge of the sea. No living lore recounts
who thrust the first spade there but it is easy to imagine its
countenance before it was ploughed for crops: the brows and long
tails of the hills and the massive expanse of red moor at the
bottom of them; clear, tranquil lakes adorning them and floods
meandering down their slopes. Harbours digging their way through
the tall, jutting, patterned cliffs: harbours wherein the
horrors of the world lurked at nightfall, just as they do now.
Strands which roared as the stormy weather approached the final
third of its slumber; strands which roared as if they were angry
and unspeakably weary of that conflict between wave and shore.
But people came and began
their own feuding in the midst of the agitation between land and
sea. The lowing of their cattle and the clatter of their tools
were heard, clearly and sharply amidst the great tumult of the
sea. Pagans came there, as did Christians. An occasional lonely
and isolated house appeared there as if in a vision. The saints
came – Fionán, Cróine and Conall- and they built their church
cells and belfrys. The wood kernes and mercenary gallowglasses
came and built strongholds by fords and river crossings. And, as
the child is destined to grow old, the houses, church cells and
strongholds became deserted and the bog and moor swallowed them
up as if buried in the
grave.
Excerpt
from Chapter 4 describing the end of a St Patrick’s Day dance in
a local school:
The
flames were getting long on the lamps and they were turned
down. A man who was half drunk put his elbow through the
window. One man shouted too much during the dancing, and he had
to be put out. Everything ran true to form, the things that
were normal for a dance of the sort - and it didn’t make a wisp
of difference to the fun. Midnight past and it shot an arrow of
slumber into St. Patrick’s Day, but it wasn’t noticed. Two
o’clock passed, the blackest and most feeble hour of the night,
but no-one in the schoolhouse was any the weaker or
low-spirited. Four o’clock passed and you noticed the house
emptying. Men were courting women between the dances and going
out with them. The last dance was called. Everyone who could
find room for their two feet on the floor got up. They danced
this dance enthusiastically, drinking the last drop of fun from
the difficult well of life in this gloomy hour before the dawn.
They
dispersed then and only the committee were left in the school,
and the four walls of the school had the look of a person who
had lost a night’s sleep. It had a raw, tired loneliness. You
would think that the air was numb with pain.
The committee
men put the seats back in and brushed the floor. They gathered
together then and smoked their pipes. They were like wraiths
standing there. It was an entire night since the old people
had taken up their rosary beads and said their decades on the
harrowing edge of eternity. The young people who had left the
school were sleeping now. These six men were like a small
handful of friars who had been resurrected and who were whiling
away their time on this world until cockcrow would banish them
to places beyond the mouth of the grave. They chatted for a
while. Then the man who had the key emptied the ashes from his
pipe on the corner of the table. He went over to the lamp and
placed his palm above it. The rest of them went out. He blew
on his palm. The light leapt, as did the man’s shadow, across
the floor and onto the wall; then the light went out.
Clouds were reddening to the east above Carraig an Eidhinn when
he came out and turned the key in the lock.
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