IRISH SHORT STORIES

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CLAIRE KEEGAN reads her award winning  story, "Foster" on RTE Radio. 

 Set on a farm in County Wicklow, around the time of the IRA hunger strikes, Foster begins early on a Sunday after Mass, a “hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road”. The narrator, a young girl, is being taken by her father to stay with relatives while her mother gets ready to give birth.

>>LISTEN 1 hr 20 mins..

Brian Friel

Selected Stories 

Friel's first fictions found expression in the short story form. Although primarily recognized as a playwright, Friel is also known for his short stories set in the border region between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic that explore the lives of characters who struggle with strict social, religious, and moral conventions. Themes of poverty, dissillusionment, the role of childhood memories, and man's connection to nature, reappear in his drama. *******

 TEN short stories by Brian Friel are read below by Donal Donnelly, Irish actor, who embodied a variety of Irish characters on the American stage and in American movies, notably in the plays of Friel, and in John Huston's adaptation of James Joyce's   “The Dead.”

1. THE DIVINER.         During 25 years of married life, Nelly Devenny was ashamed to lift her head because her husband was seldom sober, never in a job for more than a few weeks, & always fighting. When he died she took a job as a charwoman in her village of Drumeen, Ireland. She was the perfect servant. Soon she married a retired man from the West, Mr. Doherty. >>LISTEN 36:36
   

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2. FOUNDRY HOUSE. Considered one of Friel's best stories.                 When his father and mother died, Joe Brennan, thrity-three year old radio mechanic, applied for their house, his old home, the gate lodge to Foundry House--the ancestral home of the Hogans, a once-powerful Catholic family in the North of Ireland. He wrote directly to Mr. Bernard Hogan, the owner. Two days later he received a reply from Mrs. Hogan granting him permission. Rita, his wife, insisted that he mention their nine children and that they were living in three rooms above a launderette.   >>LISTEN  42 mins.

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   AMONG THE RUINS.                 Margo, Joe's wife organized the outing to Corradinna, in Donegal, on the N.W. coast of Ireland. She told the children, Mary & Peter, that they were going to see where their daddy used to live & play. As they approached Corradinna Joe's eagerness overcame him.         >>LISTEN 30:46
   

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   THE SAUCER OF  LARKS.                    Two Germans, employed by the German War Graves Commission, go to the Irish countryside in Donegal to find the grave of a German airman, killed there in 1942. They plan to take the remains to a special cemetery in County Wicklow. Two local policeman go with them to show them where the grave is. The Sergeant glories in the beauty of Donegal on this spring morning. Read by Kevin Barry for New Yorker, Listen 27 mins.
   

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5. THE WIDOWHOOD SYSTEM.             Harry Quinn moved his pigeons up into the remodeled loft soon after his mother died. Now he would breed a bird to win the All Ireland Open Championship on the scientific method, according to Mendel's genes, as he had read in the Pigeon Fanciers Post--on the widowhood system--trying to get a cock to win a race on account of his desire to return to his mate.>LISTEN 52 mins
   

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6. THE ILLUSIONISTS.   The annual visit of M.L'Estrange to  Beannafreaghan primary school marks the end of winter and beginning of spring. It is perhaps too easy to see the figure of the young boy in The Illusionists, whose father is a teacher, whose school is visited by a magician and who is fascinated by the possibility of running away with the magician, as a portrait of a figure [Brian Friel] who will grow to love illusions and spend his life creating them.  >>LISTEN  36:16
   

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   THE GOLD IN THE SEA.                 The writer spends a night with 72 year old Con and his two nephews, Philly and Lispy, on their crude boat, the Regina Coeli, fishing for salmon off the coast of Ireland. The three are poor men, farmers and part-time fishermen, fishing illegally without a light to avoid being caught without a license.>>LISTEN 32:14
   

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8. GINGER HERO.                                “At the time I'm thinking about, the year Billy Brogan and I bought our own fighting cock and matched him against the best birds in Ireland, you would never have suspected that Annie and Min were sisters..… When Ginger Hero fought the Tiger; that day everything changed for Billy and Annie-and for my wife Min, who was Annie's sister, and for me!" >>LISTEN 53:48
   

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   THE POTATO GATHERERS.
   "Early a November morning, Kelly and his four potato gatherers, on their way to the potato fields, are the only living things in that part of County Tyrone, Ireland; two permanent farmhands and two boys hired for the day. The boys chat incessantly. It is 12-year-old Philly's first job, his first time to take a day off from school to earn money..." >>LISTEN 23:53
   

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10. EVERYTHING NEAT AND TIDY. "Johnny, a taxi driver, knew that his in-laws, the MacMenamins, might have had wealth & position; their farm was one of the best in County Tyrone of Ireland. But the MacMenamins had lived imprudently. When her husband died Mrs. MacMenamin had to sell all, & move in with Johnny. He drove his mother-in-law to the County Psychiatric Clinic every Tuesday and Thursday morning."  >>LISTEN 26:44

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11. MR SING MY HEART'S DELIGHT.  

    On the west coast of Ireland there are wild, lonely places where few visitors come. A boy on his yearly visit to his grandmother tells a tale  of the simple life, when a travelling salesman from a farway land finds a kindness he did not expect....         "On the first day of every new year, I made the forty-five mile jurney by train, post van, and foot across County Donegal to my grandmother's house..."  Read by Patrick Moy: >>LISTEN 24.32 mins.

The Skelper by Brian Friel

The New Yorker, August 1, 1959

Before he was a week in the village of Bennafreaghan, in Ireland, the Skelper must have sensed that no one liked him. He was the kind of man who attracts unpopularity - a big, shapeless figure with an air of mocking superiority about him. He tried to make friends in the pub, but was not too successful.

Then he made a bet with the postman, Quigley. Everyone knew that Quigley was a poacher. The Skelper made a bet that he could take a fish quicker than Quigley from a local stream. A contest was arranged & most of the neighborhood men came to watch. Quigley won, but a policeman came along, and the poor man would have been arrested & lost his job if the Skelper had not gotten him out of the jam with a quick, glib excuse to the policeman. He thus won everyone's regard.

>>Listen

Copyright 2010 Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons. All rights reserved.

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FRANK O'CONNOR of Cork.   

Ireland's best known short story writer with over 50 published in The New Yorker, reads three of his classic stories; two others follow.            

1. THE DRUNKARD. The story of a young boy and his alcoholic father who has a tendency to fall-off-the-wagon when the circumstances are right, and usually with catastrophic consequences for the young boy's family. >>LISTEN 23:11

• "How I became a writer" >>LISTEN 3 mins. 41 sec.
  
• "The First Story of mine -'Guests of the Nation' " >>LISTEN 4 mins. 27 sec.
• The Masculine Principle read by Anne Enright >>Listen 47 mins.
  

FRANK O'CONNOR: A Life                      "Cork author Jim McKeon's biography of the Irish writer Frank O'Connor (1903-66) is almost as readable as any fiction told by his subject." New York Times review, July 11, 1999 >>Read Review

MAEVE BRENNAN'S "Christmas Eve", read by Roddy Doyle.

It was Christmas Eve in Dublin and Delia Bagot was preparing her children, Margaret and Lily, for bed. Her husband, Martin, was downstairs reading the paper waiting to come to say good-night to them.>>LISTEN 31:15

Master writer from Cork with over 40 published in The New Yorker, reads two of his classic short stories at 92nd Street Y, New York City.

1. Teresa's Wedding. Set in 1950s Ireland, it examines the life of a young pregnant woman who is being forced into marriage by her priest. 0 to 22:46 minutes

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2. The Piano Tuner's Wives. An elderly blind piano tuner is caught between two wives, one living and one dead. START at 23:06 to 61:43 minutes. >>LISTEN

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3. An Evening with John Joe Dempsy. Comes as close as Mr. Trevor allows himself to affectionate hope for a character's life -- a boy just turned 15 and trembling on the brink of sex>LISTEN 31:38 mins.

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4. The Third Party. In law, the third party is a person involved in a situation in addition to the two main people involved. A third party quite often appears in cases of divorce.   Howver, all threesomes are different. And in some of them it is not always clear which of the three people actually is the third party...   "The two men met by arrangment in the bar of Buswell's Hotel, at half past eleven..." >>LISTEN 25.19 mins.
5.  The giant [dickens] at my shoulder. William Trevor on RTE Radio >>Listen 27.22 mins.

JOHN McGAHERN'S "The Wine Breath", read by Yiyun Li.

 "A priest suddenly begins to recall the day of Michael Bruen's funeral nearly 30 years before. Ever since his mother's death, he'd found himself stumbling into the dead days. It was as if the world of the dead was as available to him as the world of the living." >LISTEN 37:52

Seán O'Faoláin,

from Cork City, a premier Irish short story writer, in The Fur Coat, tells of an Irish middle class couple Molly and Paddy Magurie who have been married for years and were very poor for many years before Paddy finally got a promotion. After they got some financial security, Paddy promises Molly to buy her a fancy mink coat. >>LISTEN 15:10 mins

Seán O'Faoláin ONE TRUE FRIEND 41 mins.



 A novelist and short-story from Co Clare, O'Brien is a novelist and short-story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole. >>LISTEN 13:55 mins.

JOHN B. KEANE Listowel Co Kerry

 

Reads His

>WATCH Peat Fireplace 1:41 hrs.

Where glows the hearth with peat
There lives a subtle spell

The faint blue smoke, the gentle heat,
The moorland odours, tell

From cottage doors that lure us in
From rainy western skies,
To seek the friendly warmth within,
The simple talk and wise.

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