‘The rock is magical and everything is in the rock for me because I don’t know very much about the flora or fauna, but the rock engages me and what’s done with rock in its natural state – the tombs, the dolmens, the cairns, the walls – all those things factor into the rock in so many ways. In Heart of Burren Stone I realise how much has gone into it that I hadn’t thought of and the best inspiration is osmotic. But encounters with people, the landscape and the sense of something supernatural about it, is what gels and has occasioned my writing. Even for all the age groups I write for, I can’t say that any of the books aren’t the result of living here.’
Historical fiction is a popular literary genre and Ré has successfully tapped into it. Battle for the Burren (2007) is based in Corcomroe Abbey not far from where he lives. ‘I decided that as I was into the area of historical record that correctitude might demand that I know what I’m saying so one summer I spent three months researching and note-taking in the National Library, finding out the details of the battle at Corcomroe and surrounding battles. Eventually I read so much I was getting increasingly confused but I was also getting a sense of the historical. I decided I couldn’t actually write the book at that point, but something was going on in my head and I went back to the notes. I felt a slave to them so I put down my pen and left it for perhaps two or three years. I was frustrated but felt the best way to do it was to abandon all accurate historical knowledge and write it as a piece of fiction, having the backdrop of the historical knowledge and so I gave up the notes and never went near them again.’
Having abandoned them and created in his subconscious some characters, Ré had found the historical backdrop and did not have to be a slave to accuracy. ‘I think that would have allowed the historical to dictate what should be a work of fiction. So I didn’t waste my time in the library as I favour being the creator of the information and of how it is presented. And even though I felt I was being a slave, somehow it feeds into the whole, and the strange thing is you don’t know ever where a book goes.’
Ré enjoys sharing his skills, knowledge and experience with fledgling writers who are developing their style and trying to find their voice. Nurturing writing talent is part of what he does so encouragingly. ‘I often say fiction is fact with a superimposition of the imagination and I think that’s as near as I can get to what it is. I meet a lot of adults and teenagers who read my books and it’s gratifying that the feedback is amazingly positive. I get more feedback about my contemporary material than my Burren writing but people love to know where a character comes from. And even though I would never portray a person I know as a character in any Burren book, obviously the encounters you have in life attune you to particular types of people.’
His influences stretch back to school and several teachers who were hugely important. ‘One was an Irish teacher in Glasthule in Dublin. He was from the Beara peninsula and a very wise man. I don’t think he was the greatest teacher of his subject but he was one of the greatest teachers of life. His name was Seán Ó Súilleabháin and he would roll out pearls of wisdom and had a tremendous reflective capacity.’
All this helped Ré create Brother Benignus, an old, blind monk in Battle for the Burren who is the re-embodiment of Sobharthan from Terror on the Burren. Benignus is an elder of the community of Cistercians in Corcomroe and his name comes from ‘benign’, the Latin for kindness although in the best tradition of character-creation he is an amalgam of several people.
‘When Benignus was forming in my head my old teacher certainly was a huge element and there were other people I met through life who had some quality or other that came to bear. I think it gives truth to the characters we meet and feeds into what I do. There are also elements in Benignus that I like to think are part of me. There’s a reflective side, maybe a kindness, and at the start of the book when he feels a little spider his other senses are developed as they’ve been sharply honed. The gentleness with which he deals with the spider on his hand and how he eases it down on to the rock is something that I admire in people.’
Ré is the author of more than twenty books. Many are multi-layered stories filled with a mix of barbarity and beauty, of good and evil coupled with intrigue. Imaginative leaps play a big part but a vital topographical aspect of the Burren that informs his writing is the place names.
‘When I came to live here I abandoned my work every Tuesday and walked the hills, fields and limestone for many years. I got to know it well as a layman and took an interest in place names using Tim Robinson’s Folding Landscapes map. I find it hard to look at a name and not wonder where it came from. It’s not so much a passion as a quirkiness for me. If I can’t figure it out I’ll go and try to find the basis of the word so that I’ve a fairly educated notion as to where it comes from.
‘In the Burren, names such as Ballyallaban, Baile na hAille Báine, mean the “townland of the white cliff”. If you stand on the Ballyallaban ring fort near the Aillwee cave you will see the cliff of Aillwee which means “the yellow cliff” but there are times of the day when it is not yellow but white and I suspect that is why it was called Baile na hAille Báine.’
The idyllic place that he has made his home for two decades has helped his writing beyond measure. Through his long association with the Burren, there are several locations that are special to him. One of his favourites is right on his doorstep – Lough Rask, Loch Reasca, a mere 250m from his house and for him a place of magic.
‘It is a tidal turlough which is rare and it is influenced not just by the water table but by water off the mountains but is also affected by the tide. At certain times, if you put your finger in, it is pure freshwater, at other times you get a saline element. Historically the story goes that on the eve of the battle of Corcomroe one of the O’Brien factions made camp at Lough Rask in 1317. On that night a fictitious supernatural figure called Dismal of the Burren – a hag of severe countenance – appeared to the soldiers and scared them. Many of them were bloodied and threw themselves in the lake. She had a horrific portent that very few would walk from the field at the battle. Whether she appeared or not – and I’m open on it – or whether it was a construct that came after the battle, I don’t know. But it is an enchanting lake full of intrigue with a supernatural circle loved by walkers and bird watchers. A few years ago eighteen adult herons used to commute 300m from the lake to the sea and it was a great sight.’
There are other parts of the Burren that he loves. The megalithic tomb and quarry at Páirc na Binne, ‘field of the peak’, near Kilnaboy has resonance for him as well as the Gleninsheen box-tomb. ‘There’s something about the box-tomb’s tidiness, about where it is and the remnants of the mound that I like.’
At any given time in his writing life, Ré can find himself working on two or three books. He toggles between writing in English and Irish and enjoys the thrill of working in both languages. ‘The language is not a barrier – in fact I like to think it’s an enhancer, whether it’s contemporary or traditional in style. I wrote both Terror on the Burren and Battle for the Burren in English originally but the Irish language versions were first published. When I translate them I don’t bother to look at the original. I just work from my head but they end up being identical except that idiomatically of course languages are different and the idioms of Irish for me are enhancers in my English work.
‘At my talks I always tell the kids that I write two books at one time – look, you’ve got two hands so why leave one of them idle? They certainly don’t get in the way of one another. If anything, they’re complementary. I love working in English with the clear cut clinicalism of it as a language. Irish is the opposite as it is hugely poetic and takes the mind to places you couldn’t dream.
‘For me the Irish language is a passion and when you see how Hiberno-English is revered, I always think it’s such a bastard form as it can only be some diluted form of both those languages. Irish lends itself to the place names of the Burren, the musicality and everything about the Burren which in i
ts establishment was back in the time of Irish being spoken here. If you listen carefully to the speech of this area, what you get is Béarla i gclúmh na Gaeilge, ‘English in the plumage of Irish’. People here speak English in beautiful reverse forms. For example, I have often heard them say: “Is it the way that …” An amhlaidh go bhfuil … which in terms of sequencing of words are forms directly from Irish. It would be a pity if they disappeared but when they’re gone there’s a huge loss. Unfortunately Irish got tied up and identified with the political movement which was a great pity where language is concerned.’
Clearly the Burren, and its associated topography, history, linguistic and cultural heritage, has offered Ré a deep well of inspiration as it has so many writers, painters and musicians. He does not consider himself an expert on it but believes the stimulation it provides is endless because people are diverse.
‘We engage and encounter it in different ways as we all have a perspective on things. What fills the heart of one person won’t be what fills the heart of another. Artists are instruments and we have something that necessitates and demands release so it’s how we interpret it, how we take it in and what goes on in the subconscious that feeds into it. I feel you must be open to it but I’m not so sure you can consciously make yourself open to the Burren. It is a constant well and that is why you get repeated generations of people coming to it, whether it’s Westropp or Praeger, Heaney or Longley.’
There are many demands on Ré’s time. He has been busy promoting his latest novel, Osama, Obama, Ó a Mhama! for the 10–12 age group, that he describes as a quirky rollercoaster of an adventure. After my visit he is booked for interviews with Radio Kerry about the translation text he has done for Ann Marie McCarthy’s children’s book on Fungie the Dingle dolphin. Slots are lined up later in the day on Raidió na Gaeltachta and Clare FM.
Ré is never short of words in interviews but he rises to the challenge of being asked to sum up the Burren in one word. He glances out through the window of An Scríobhlann where the shadow of the midday sun moves slowly across the white icing-like limestone of Móinín Mountain, and replies monosyllabically ‘Mesmeric,’ then as an afterthought adds ‘It engages the soul, the heart, the mind.’
Author Ré Ó Laighléis at his home at Lough Rask © Trevor Ferris
14
The Tinker’s Heartbreak: Burren Roads
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
W. H. Davies, ‘Leisure’
‘The older people always knew it,’ a man once told me, ‘as The Tinker’s Heartbreak.’ It is a stretch of road that runs long and straight, without so much as a kink for several kilometres. In the days when the tinkers walked the roads of Ireland they thought some would never end and that they might never reach their destination.
From the Corker Pass to the Khyber Pass, over Corkscrew Hill and around the great longueur sweeps of Ballyallaban Hill, the Burren is rich in crooked, mountainy roads. One of the best-known, with winding gradients, is the road between Ballyvaughan and Lisdoonvarna called Corkscrew Hill. A stopping place for tour coaches, it allows visitors to drink in outstanding views from the top. An old black and white photograph reproduced in books shows that the road, as well as the view, has been untouched by time and by the European Union’s roadbuilding funds; it has changed little in a hundred years.
The most-loved Burren road (for visitors at least) is undoubtedly the coastal route, the R477, that runs 29km from Ballyvaughan to Doolin. It is a dramatic and scenic road for appreciation of the hills, flora, seascapes and views over Galway Bay. In summer it is packed with coaches, minibuses, parties of cyclists oozing lycra, power walkers, joggers and snoggers, but the best time to drive it is the spring – preferably on a bright evening to catch the light and watch dusk settle over the bay. Few forty-minute drives anywhere in Europe offer such a spectacular road so close to the sea for a large part of the journey.
I have spent many days vagabondising these byways and back roads, stopping to look, noticing things that take my fancy and moseying around. The Tinker’s Heartbreak, marked on maps as the New Line, runs single track for 16km in a graceful arc along the eastern periphery of the Burren from Corcomroe towards Gort.
Once you cross out of it, heading inland, you have left behind the Burren and said farewell to its walls, terracing and pavement. Along its different stretches the road offers a magical sense of what the Burren is, providing an overview looking into it. Its hills compete for your attention as you gaze up at them, into its valleys and across its flatlands. Early one June morning I once walked most of its length and for the first half-hour I met no cars and no people along its narrow width. There were no comings or goings on the road. Not a farmer, shepherd, milkman or even milkmaid – not a travelling man, woman, child, or tinker bade me the time of day.
Like so many parts of the Burren, the road’s evocative place names tell their own story: Corranroo, Shanclogh, Funshin More and Funshin Beg; Gortnaclogh, Cappah More, Tulla and Cushacorra. Its hedges are brimful and high. It is a road that speaks of an older land, one that possesses a strangeness, a road that for many may have represented a via dolorosa.
Another road well-known to me, having cycled, walked and driven it scores of times, is the R480, denoted by a thick, red line on the Ordnance Survey map and classified as a regional road. It runs past the cottage where I stay linking Ballyvaughan with the southern Burren and opening the door to Sheshymore, Mullaghmore, Leamaneh and Kilfenora. The Ballyallaban road gently twists and turns south of Aillwee cave and is one of the great mountain roads, not only of the Burren and Clare, but of all Ireland. It is not particularly steep although the views from it are spectacular. It has flowing corners as well as left and right hairpin bends. All this means that it has earned its place as a special road for the annual hill climb organised by Galway Motor Club.
One year, my visit coincided with the event and although it is not in my top 1,000 interests, I went along as a non-specialist spectator, whose history of owning ‘exotic’ road racing motor cars includes a Morris Minor, Mini, Renault 5, and Nissan Bluebird – all driven into the ground or round the clock several times. The climb attracts more than eighty drivers and motor sport enthusiasts from all over the country. Each year, on the last Sunday in April, they come in their Porsches, Minis, souped-up Hillman Imps and Ford Anglias. Sponsored by engineering works, garages, guttering firms, banks, bars, hotels, restaurants and plant hire companies, they gather on Sunday morning to break Ballyallaban bread and discuss road and weather conditions as well as the general state of motoring.
Starting on the main road near the cave entrance, the climb runs just over 3km to Lisgoogan. When I arrive dozens of drivers and mechanics are tuning up, revving engines, inflating tyres, checking screws and tightening exhausts. Yellow-coated, baseball-capped marshals direct traffic into fields that have become car parks for the day. They turn away visiting daytrippers and tourists who have accidentally stumbled upon Ireland’s longest and fastest hill climb.
Rally drivers who tackle all the hill climbs throughout the country call Ballyallaban ‘the big one’. One of the drivers, a fresh-faced sixty-something whose name tag on his navy boiler suit says Dennis, exchanges pleasantries from the comfort of his single-seater yellow Avenger. He has been coming for each of the past forty years of the sprint championship.
‘Never missed a year since it started in the 1960s,’ he says. ‘We all love this hill. I call it bravery hill because it takes courage to drive up it at high speed.’
Dennis describes himself as a ‘gentleman racer’ rather than a ‘boy racer’. He explains what is so special about the climb. ‘The corner flows on it are slightly banked in some places and the road generates a great rhythm on a quick run. I would describe it as being like a smooth, continuous snake. It has a longitudinal groove which, when you take it right, is very satisfying. It commands great respect and rewards skilful driving.’
The hill climb is run
over a demanding section of road presenting a unique challenge. At any one time during the climb there are six cars on it either racing up or returning to the starting blocks at a more sedate pace.
‘They are very tight on the noise regulations compared to years ago,’ says Dennis. ‘Nowadays we all have silencers and we must be socially responsible although I’ve often compared the noise to a helicopter flying through your living room. There’s a great thrill in it and a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when you’ve done it. We put total trust in the marshals to make sure the roads are clear of any people straying on to them.’
I wish Dennis luck and walk over to watch the blood-red flag being lowered. A double white line across the road and a temporary set of traffic lights (the only ones ever in use in the Burren) marks the start line. As they wait patiently for the green light, the first cars are puttering. Like Scalextric racing toys they zoom off, shimmering and swaying, bouncing along the straight 100-metre opening stretch through a road tunnel overhung with a tangle of bright green trees and flying past hedges and roadsides sprinkled with clumps of dandelion, herb Robert, and the delicate blue germander speedwell which helps speed these travellers on their way.
An orange Riley Elf emits a sharp shotgun-like blast startling spectators and causing a frisson of excitement. The smell – much-loved by rally car enthusiasts – of burning rubber and fumes envelops the air. And despite the silencers they still manage to generate a substantial amount of noise. I climb over a wall and walk through fields to see if I can pick up the cars farther along the road. People stand behind walls chatting and laughing. Others gather beside Ballyallaban ring fort sited on a corner near the start. This was a religious and political nerve-centre and one of the most important settlements in the Burren although its history is today of no consequence to those standing around its doughnut-shaped base topped with tall trees.
Burren Country Page 18
