Memorable tales from heart of the Kingdom
Kevin O’Brien, who has recently published ‘The Kerryman Van’, a personal memoir which Cormac MacConnell here describes as “compellingly readable at every level”.
The purest of all the truths is that writing this piece is extremely painful for me. Every word is akin to a droplet of blood extracted from a block of Ulster granite.
When I explain the situation many of you out there, especially those who are grandfathers, will totally empathise with my plight and some few will even maybe salute me for my raw courage and honesty under the circumstances.
I briefly mentioned last week that I hugely enjoyed attending the First Communion of my lovely granddaughter Orla in Connemara the previous Saturday and the baptism of her little sister Annie the following day.
I went on from there to fill the rest of my allotted space with a bit of lighthearted enough hackery about an alleged visit to Purgatory in my dreams. It is the sort of thing that seasoned old hacks like myself can produce on demand.
And I confess here and now that it was unworthy of me because, in a real and hurtful way, I was really placed in Purgatory before the weekend was over by the achievement of Orla’s other grandfather, her mother Niamh’s father Kevin O’Brien. And that is the pure truth.
In all fairness this decent Kerryman, a distinguished teacher and administrator who retired as principal of Templeogue College a couple of years ago after more than 30 years service, strayed into my clan territory as an alleged writer by launching his own memoir entitled The Kerryman Van in Spiddal before the christening oils were fully dried upon little Annie’s forehead.
Worse still from the hack grandfather’s perspective he gave huge honour to Orla, who is nine years old, by featuring her splendid drawing of the said Kerryman Van on the memoir’s cover.
She will surely treasure that forever, long after she has forgotten whatever gift the old hack gave her on the day. Some grandfathers amongst you will now be well aware of the depth of my pain and reduction. I may never fully recover.
It gets worse. If the bloody Kerryman Van was a substandard boring and deeply flawed memoir not worth the paper it is printed upon, ye can be certain that MacConnell would assuage his hurt by laterally criticising it in a fashion all of you would understand at once.
I would slather it with the species of faint praise which is lethal. I’ve often done that in the past.
But dammit I cannot do that this time because, frankly, just between ourselves, it is compellingly readable at every level. I will mention just two elements of the many yarns and reflections that kept me turning the pages to the end. You see Kevin’s father, Dan O’Brien, back in 1953, was the Irish Land Commission official who supervised the evacuation of The Blaskets on a stormy November day. The surviving islanders — moving out to new homes on the mainland — were only able to bring out a single chair and two boxes with them on the day. A naomhóg had to be used for the evacuation because it was impossible for the fishing boat being used for the operation to safely come alongside the slip.
Reporter Kathleen Coburn covered the sad occasion for The Kerryman and later wrote: “The fishing boat remained cruising about for a few hours but was forced at last to give up this project and return to Dingle. Mr D O’Brien, on his return, told me that he will not forget his experience for some time.”
Landing was difficult and dangerous but leaving the slip was much worse.”
And the photographic section at the back of the book includes graphic shots of the evacuation and there, sitting amongst the islanders, wearing the face of a man who has been seasick, is Kevin’s father.
Just one other yarn from among the hundreds in the memoir features some intriguing inside information which Kevin gleaned from his father in relation to the Fifties murder of Maurice Moore near Tralee — upon which, later, John B Keane’s famous play The Field and the subsequent film were based.
Dan was friendly with one of the gardaí involved in the investigation and heard how the main suspect in the case came into the Garda station at one stage, swore on the Bible he was not responsible, and vehemently protested his innocence even on his deathbed.
I won’t tell ye the significance of the Kerryman Van at all. I won’t utter any further praise of any kind for a book which kept me turning pages all night. It would deeply wound me again if more than a very few of you got in touch with Kevin O’Brien at obrienkevin100@gmail.com looking for more information or even a copy of his memoir.
If this turned into any kind of a bestseller I will never again be able to face Orla’s other grandfather at any clan gathering. And that is the sad truth again.
