William & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons

 

Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons

bob_lyons@hotmail.com

  • WELCOMEClick to open the WELCOME menu
    • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lyons Migration to America
  • William F. Lyons
  • Mary Donohoe Lyons
  • First Dakotans: The Lyons Experience
  • Patrick J. Lyons
  • Francis. W. LyonsClick to open the Francis. W. Lyons menu
    • Frank Lyons Publications
  • Eugene T. Lyons
  • John A. Lyons
  • Thomas A. Lyons
  • Susan Lyons Winckler
  • Robert F. LyonsClick to open the Robert  F. Lyons menu
    • Robert Lyons Publications
    • Nona Lyons: PUBLICATIONS
    • Videos by BOB
  • William & Mary:Lives & Times
  • LYONS LIBRARY
  • Yankton Sesquicentennial 1861-2011
  • Leabharlann (Irish Library)Click to open the Leabharlann (Irish Library) menu
    • I R I S H Short Stories
  • John Lyons interviews Uncles
  • LYONS FARM AUCTION
  • LYONS Reunion 1986
  • LYONS Reunion 1991
  • Richard F. Lyons, Sr

IRISH Short Stories

IRISH SHORT STORIES

Read Aloud From

                                                                         L i s t e n

 B

e 

l 

o

 w

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

  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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.

    
  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

  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

  7. 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

  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

  9. 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

  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
  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.

Web Hosting by Yahoo!

 



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

  1. MY OEDIPUS COMPLEX. A Christmas remembrance of when father came home from the war read by Frank O'Connor whose short story explains far better than Freud might have done. >>LISTEN 24:44  
  2. THE IDEALIST.   In Ireland, a boy at school, tries to imitate the actions of the young men he reads about in books on English schools. Telling the truth and not tattling on friends is contrary to the usual practice and somehow it does not work out.The teacher and the students do not understand what the boy is trying to accomplish so he finally goes back to ordinary behavior and changes his reading habits. >>LISTEN 14 mins. 

  3. FIRST CONFESSION read by Malachi McCourt.                        "All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grand-mother - my father's mother - came to live with us. Relations in the one house are a strain at the best of times, but, to make matters worse, my grandmother was a real old country woman and quite unsuited to the life in town." >>LISTEN 22:26
  4. THE MAN OF THE WORLD, read by Julian Barnes, published July 28, 1956. The author as a boy goes to visit his friend, Jimmy Leary, whom he admires for his general air of self-confidence & sophistication. They spy on a young couple whose bedroom is just opposite Leary's attic. >>LISTEN 34:24

  5.  Frank O'Connor speaks:
  • "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
  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
  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.
  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.





             
EDNA O'BRIEN. Small Town Lovers.  

 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
>The Great Christmas Raid at  Ballybooley 20. mins 
It all happened back in 1920 when those heinous wretches known as the Black and Tans were hell-bent on maiming and murdering innocent Irish people... when Micky Dooley, the turf thief betake himself to a convenient bog to ply his shifty trade.
 
>A Cock for Christmas 7.51 mins
A Christmas tale, also a story of romance, love and no little debauchery.
 
>Many Years Ago 5.27 mins. [audio]
There were many parcels for the old woman. It was probably the best Christmas the street ever had.
 
>Cider 22.14 mins
A young man comes of age Christmas eve under his father's guidance.
 
>The Curriculum Vitae 11.19 mins.

Fred Spellacy, the postman, would always remember the Christmas as a period of unprecedented decision-making which had improved his lot in the long term.

 >The Magic Stoolin  14.16 mins.

I was tempted for a while to call this story A Christmas Barrel. Everybody, I told myself, has heard of A Christmas Carol so why not A Christmas Barrel. My wife thought the title too stereotyped when I submitted it for her approval.

 






 Colum McCann Dublin & New York
 
>Everything in This Country Must.   22.47 mins.
 
Read by Amy Ryan at Symphony Space, NY.
 
In Northern Ireland,  a girl who lives alone with her father, lost her Mammy and brother, Fiachra, when they were hit by a British army truck. When British soldiers help the father and his daughter rescue his favorite horse, who has wandered into a river's swift current, the father seethes with knotted resentment that these men he hates have come to his aid.

 

 


>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.



  Go to>>

  • Irish Library

 

  • Videos by Bob



 

 

 

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

Web Hosting by Yahoo!

Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons

bob_lyons@hotmail.com