Ireland

In the winter of 1951, a storyteller, the last practitioner of an honored, centuries-old tradition, arrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside. For three wonderful evenings, the old gentleman enthralls his assembled local audience with narratives of foolish kings, fabled saints, and Ireland's enduring accomplishments before moving on. But these nights change young Ronan forever, setting him on a years-long pursuit of the elusive, itinerant storyteller and the glorious tales that are no less than the saga of his tenacious and extraordinary isle.

The Washington Post - Bill Sheehan

The stories of Irish history are familiar but still stirring, and Delaney brings a fresh perspective and a depth of understanding to the telling. His detailed grasp of Irish history lends weight and authority to this long, discursive tale. At the same time, his familiarity with every aspect -- social, cultural and economic -- of Irish society, his empathetic rendering of a varied cast of real and imagined characters, and his ability to convey the intricate beauty of the Irish countryside enrich the narrative at every turn. Mostly, though, the novel draws its power from Delaney's conviction that stories matter, giving shape and meaning to our otherwise fractured personal -- and national -- histories. The troubled history of Ireland makes a particularly memorable story. Delaney tells it very well indeed. More Reviews and Recommendations Biography

Though Ireland is his first novel published in the United States, Frank Delaney's brilliant career in broadcasting has earned him fame across the United Kingdom, and several of his nonfiction books have been U.K. bestsellers. More About the Author Editorial Reviews - Ireland From the Publisher

In the winter of 1951, a storyteller, the last practitioner of an honored, centuries-old tradition, arrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside. For three wonderful evenings, the old gentleman enthralls his assembled local audience with narratives of foolish kings, fabled saints, and Ireland's enduring accomplishments before moving on. But these nights change young Ronan forever, setting him on a years-long pursuit of the elusive, itinerant storyteller and the glorious tales that are no less than the saga of his tenacious and extraordinary isle.

The Washington Post - Bill Sheehan

The stories of Irish history are familiar but still stirring, and Delaney brings a fresh perspective and a depth of understanding to the telling. His detailed grasp of Irish history lends weight and authority to this long, discursive tale. At the same time, his familiarity with every aspect -- social, cultural and economic -- of Irish society, his empathetic rendering of a varied cast of real and imagined characters, and his ability to convey the intricate beauty of the Irish countryside enrich the narrative at every turn. Mostly, though, the novel draws its power from Delaney's conviction that stories matter, giving shape and meaning to our otherwise fractured personal -- and national -- histories. The troubled history of Ireland makes a particularly memorable story. Delaney tells it very well indeed. Publishers Weekly

BBC reporter Delaney's fictionalized history of his native country, an Irish bestseller, is a sprawling, riveting read, a book of stories melding into a novel wrapped up in an Irish history text. In 1951, when Ronan O'Mara is nine, he meets the aging itinerant Storyteller, who emerges out a "silver veil" of Irish mist, hoping to trade a yarn for a hot meal. Welcomed inside, the Storyteller lights his pipe and begins, telling of the architect of Newgrange, who built "a marvelous, immortal structure... before Stonehenge in England, before the pyramids of Egypt," and the dentally challenged King Conor of Ulster, who tried, and failed, to outsmart his wife. The stories utterly captivate the young Ronan ("This is the best thing that ever, ever happened"), and they'll draw readers in, too, with their warriors and kings, drinkers and devils, all rendered cleanly and without undue sentimentality. When Ronan's mother banishes the Storyteller for telling a blasphemous tale, Ronan vows to find him. He also becomes fascinated by Irish myth and legend, and, as the years pass, he discovers his own gift for storytelling. Eventually, he sets off, traversing Ireland on foot to find his mentor. Past and present weave together as Delaney entwines the lives of the Storyteller and Ronan in this rich and satisfying book. Agent, Ed Victor. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Library Journal

On a November evening in 1951, a shanachie (storyteller) visits the rural Irish home of the O'Maras, where neighbors have gathered to hear his tales of Ireland's heroism, intrigue, and bloody grandeur. Nine-year-old Ronan is captivated by the old man and drawn to his life of itinerant story gathering. As best he can, young Ronan follows the traveler over the years, collecting his stories while earning a history degree in Dublin. As Ronan and the shanachie grow closer, the young man fantasizes about a life on the road and, for a time, tries to emulate his hero, walking the fields and living on the kindness of strangers. The retelling of the great legends as "true events" may require a few imaginative leaps on the part of the reader, but the bonding between the apprentice and the master is both touching and real. An accomplished historian and novelist, Delaney (The Sins of the Mother) deftly weaves the story of a people and a country with a poignant coming-of-age tale; fans of Edward Rutherford's historical sagas will love it. Highly recommended for all Irish fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/04.]-Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Kirkus Reviews

A vivid rendering of Irish history, imagined and real, embracing "blood and bones, legends, guns, and dreams, Catholics, Protestants, England, horses and poets and lovers."Any novel not meant for children that opens with a character called the Storyteller and praises at length the necessity of the Storyteller's art runs the risk of calling undue attention to its author, who is, after all, the real teller. Throw Hibernia into the mix, and the danger of hokum and, worse, goopy sentimentality (for which see Malachy McCourt's History of Ireland, p. 851) mounts. Thankfully, former BBC reporter Delaney steers clear of mawkishness and seems much less interested in calling attention to himself than in emphasizing the importance of the oral tradition to Irish memory and writing; his Storyteller may smoke a pipe and charm the country people with wee yarns that unfold into vast epics, but the rest of his characters are as real as can be, quick to take up arms against Vikings or Brits or one another, quick to strike up a song and take a drink while resisting the cliches to which people who fight and sing and drink lend themselves. Delaney's sprawling narrative takes in the time of King Conor of Ulster and Saint Patrick, the Battle of the Boyne and the building of Newgrange "before Stonehenge in England, before the pyramids of Egypt," the Easter Uprising and the Troubles of more recent times. Delaney keeps a close eye on plot and connects past and present with subtle, writerly touches: a wild man with tawny hair fights a bear in the misty prehistoric past, then resurfaces, 50 centuries later, to die in the ruins of the Dublin post office, while the Irish landscape itself becomes a key character whosepresence spans the centuries, reminding the reader just why the little island should have inspired so much writing to begin with. Reminiscent of the best of James Michener in scope and sheer crowd-pleasing potential. Agent: Ed Victor/Ed Victor Ltd. Loading... Meet the Writer - Ireland Fact File

Name:
Frank Delaney

Also Known As:
Francis Bryan

Current Home:
New York, New York, and Kent, Connecticut

Date of Birth:
October 24, 1941

Place of Birth:
Tipperary, Republic of Ireland

Education:
Thomastown National School 1947-54; The Abbey School, Tipperary, 1954-60; Rosse College, Dublin, 1960

* Frank Delaney's official web site Biography

J.R.R. Tolkien was famously inspired to write The Lord of the Rings because England did not have a mythology to call its own. Had Tolkien been born a few hundred kilometers to the west, he might have created something more akin to Frank Delaney's Ireland: A Novel.

Set in the country of Delaney's birth, Ireland is, according to Publisher's Weekly, a "sprawling, riveting read, a book of stories melding into a novel wrapped up in an Irish history text." Although the length and subject matter of Delaney's novel invites comparisons to the work of James Michener, Delaney's book aims for the heart rather than the intellect. As opposed to Michener's meticulously researched histories, Ireland is steeped in the Irish storytelling tradition, in which fact and fiction intertwine in the pursuit of a good story.

Ireland is Delaney's first novel to be released in the United States, but he has been a well-known writer and broadcaster in the United Kingdom for many years. In addition to writing seven other novels and a number of nonfiction works, he hosted a long-running and highly-rated series on BBC radio called Word of Mouth. His interest in Irish culture led him to create The Celts, a six-part BBC television series on Celtic history that is notable for giving the musical artist Enya her first popular exposure.

The seeds for Ireland were planted in early 1990, during breakfast with a literary agent and friend named Ed Ficter. Delaney loved the idea of writing an epic history of Ireland, but his busy schedule left him with little time to work on the project. Over the years, Delaney continued to meet with Ficter, and every time, Ficter would leave the conversation with, "Don't forget Ireland: A Novel." After 12 years, Ficter finally managed to wear Delaney down. He dropped his agent, signed up with Ficter, and began work on Ireland.

The basis of many of the stories in the novel were informed by Delaney's extensive travels around his home country. When Delaney was working as a bank clerk in his early 20s, he would often hitchhike around Ireland during holidays, visiting small, forgotten villages and having long conversations with the locals. It was during these travels that Delaney fell in love with Ireland and the people who live there.

Although critical response to Ireland has been highly favorable, Delaney balks when asked if this is his masterpiece. "Oh, God no," he told British bookseller The Book Place, "this is just the start of a new phase. I do want to write a series of big novels about Ireland, and this is the first of them." Fans of Delaney's magical, moving novel eagerly await the forthcoming results of this "new phase."

Good To Know

In our interview, Delaney shared some fun and fascinating insights with us:

"For a startling period of my life I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war -- bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges. It was a 24/7 life, lived on the road, or so it felt, with never a still moment, never knowing what was going to happen next. I've touched on it in a novel called Desire & Pursuit, but the vast portion of the experience is still in there, somewhere in my unconscious mind; and I expect it will emerge one day."

"As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work -- physically -- in the same way. Some write longhand in pencil; some have voice-trained their computers -- and in between lies the world of authorship. As for an interesting moment -- Harold Robbins emerging from his hotel bathroom for an interview with a pretty, bikinied blonde girl on each arm; talk about true to type!"

"No country impresses me as much as the USA. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?' you think -- to which I answer, 'Well, no I wouldn't.' The fact is -- if you want to know how warm Americans, are all you have to do is stand on a sidewalk and open a map. Within seconds, passers-by will gather, offering to help. If you think it happens everywhere else -- it doesn't."

"Writers have opinions -- that, in part, is why they write. Therefore they have strong likes and dislikes. I love hamburgers but hate beets. (Note: I'm using the word 'love,' not 'like.') I love baseball, hate reality shows (all that licensing of people to behave badly). I love libraries, hate noise in public spaces. I'll stop there -- this could become an endless list!"

"Interests and hobbies: Writing -- and reading about writing; renovating houses (I've done three so far); sport, in most forms; great music -- anything from harmonica to harpsichord. In fact, I'd have to struggle to find a subject in which I can't get some kind of interested pulse started."

"Favorite ways to unwind: I like to sprawl in front of the television -- but it has to be good! Good political comment, good drama, good documentary, good drama. One of the mysteries of life is why television is so frequently so bad -- it doesn't have to be, and many have proven that fact. I also like gardening and general pottering and organizing things and walking -- all of these give me good thinking time."

Feature Interviews

In the winter of 2005, Frank Delaney took some time out to talk with us about some of his favorite books, authors, and interests.

What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
Ulysses by James Joyce; in it, Joyce showed that, to a writer, anything is possible -- but also that the best books have wonderful secrets hidden in the material, i.e., in the author's heart, and that such secrets bring great rewards when you go looking for them. Thus, a novel (Ulysses), which for so long has had the reputation of being obscure, can prove tremendously enjoyable if, for example, it's read aloud and the words are savored.

What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
Ten favorites? A hundred, surely -- and I'm going to presume that I am not allowed to cite the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary!

Let's start with Ulysses and see my remarks above.

Next comes Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, probably the first "novel" I ever read; it still compels me and I love it for its immediacy and its vividness and its moral ambiguity; as in life, nobody here is perfect and even the great villain, Long John Silver, is an attractive character.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel I reread every few years or so. It feels to me to have perfect form; to use a movie term, it "arcs" beautifully and we are concerned for each and every character. How interesting that Fitzgerald is able to take uncaring characters such as Tom Buchanan and his beautiful wife, Daisy, and make us care about what happens to them.

Now, a French novel, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert which, in some regions of France, is often given as a as a cautionary-tale wedding gift by the mayor of the town to the bride whose wedding he's conducting. This tragedy plays out in front of our eyes and we cannot take our eyes off it. I was even more drawn to the book when I discovered how much of it is based on real events -- there was a Charles and there was an Emma.

A switch to nonfiction; I always have to keep at least four books "live" at the same time and at the moment I am reading two of the very best books I have ever encountered; they are Arthur Miller's autobiography, Timebends a wonderful, thoughtful, sweeping, funny and utterly revelatory book. He does this marvelous thing of "payoff" -- by which I mean he discusses, say, his mother or his aunts or his uncles or family furniture, and then, as a kind of summary, tells you how the people or events he has been describing have appeared in his plays. And he is so dignified and heartbreakingly tender about Marilyn Monroe.

As a contrast I am reading David McCullough's glorious biography of Founding Father John Adams. This has to be the textbook on how historical biography is written -- humorous, understanding, wise and generously accessible to the reader. And, as a professional writer, I know just how much research he has had to do for each and every sentence -- but he never makes his reader feel the labor.

A third biography -- Matisse, Volume One by Hilary Spurling: English biographer on French painter. I read more and more slowly because I didn't want it to end.

So far, then -- 3 biographies, 4 novels, 7 down, 3 to go; let me choose a collection of short stories, a poetry anthology and an "oddity."

The short story collection is The Collected Stories of William Trevor, the great Irish master, who can sometimes suspend the entire life of the story until the very last paragraph or sentence. He writes about real observations, how people respond under pressure, and pressure can be as "small" as an unreturned telephone call or a visit from a half-remembered lover.

My poetry anthology is the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, the annotated verse collection they aimed at colleges. Published in 1973, edited and annotated by Richard Ellmann (James Joyce's biographer) and Robert O'Clair, its notes on a varied assortment, from Walt Whitman to Leonard Cohen are a repeating joy. On T. S. Eliot "better equipped than any other poet to bring verse fully into the twentieth century."

And lastly I come to the "oddity," if I may call it that. All writing is a "performance" -- you sit there and perform the act of writing. To survive this you need leaders and I love reading books about writing -- I have many on my shelves. Among my favorites, even though not strictly or solely about writing, is Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. It reveals Hemingway, the young writer, naked and open about seeing writing from a romantic and solitary point of view. You can feel and see and sniff his atmosphere; you can taste and handle the texture of his prose as he ponders openly what it is like to write with the world all around.

But please take into account William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, William Gaddis, Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, John O'Hara, John Steinbeck, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Heinrich Boll, Balzac, Zola -- wonderful, sprawling Zola -- the Wolfes, Tom and Thomas, and a few hundred others.

What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
All the standard favorites are here: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Great Expectations, the Godfather trilogy, and when I run my finger down my brain, I see that I like narrative films, movies with a good story -- such as The Shawshank Redemption, most of Hitchcock; The Day of the Jackal, The English Patient, All About Eve. In other words, I like movies that cause me to ask the age-old question wrought by storytellers: "What's going to happen next?"

What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
First of all, I can't listen to music when I'm writing -- it's too distracting because I'm always trying to figure out why this was written, or why that harmony line comes in there, and so on. And as for taste, I can't choose one form above another: Mozart, Keith Jarrett, Artie Shaw, Quincy Jones, Hoyt Axton, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Wagner, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Scriabin, Mussorgsky, bluegrass, pipe bands, good country (meaning Johnny Cash and Bonnie Raitt), Chopin, great Irish music, the Chieftains, the great rock 'n roll bands such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks -- it's an endless and kaleidoscopic list and always, always, always there's Elvis -- and Schubert.

If you had a book club, what would it be reading -- and why?
It would spend a year reading nothing but the novels of Cormac McCarthy, to study how prose works, how characters are built, how tension is created and how atmosphere is conveyed. No need to say more.

What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
I love reference books -- for obvious reasons; and for a less-than-obvious reason too. If I have a day when the story isn't flowing I turn to reference books and in there, whether it's a history of art or music or a thesaurus, I'm always stimulated and the writing cranks up again.

Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
No rituals -- except for the fact that I have to start in total silence. Any interruption within the first half-hour and I could lose the thread for the day. Temperamental? I guess you could call it that; I would call it an attempt to establish deep concentration.

On my desk right now: a silver paperknife given to me as a gift in 1973, a jar that sometimes contains nuts and sometimes contains M&Ms, a telephone; an "electric" stapler in which you can see all the works moving (another gift), a cooking timer, by which I work, setting it to the number of hours I mean to write without lifting my head, a slab of Post-it notes, a paperweight from Monticello (also a gift) in the form of the little brass dumbbell Thomas Jefferson made for himself; a box of paper clips, a little wooden tray of pens, and a brass lamp.

What are you working on now?
A novel of approximately the same length as Ireland -- to address what happened to the English in Ireland -- not quite a sequel to Ireland but it does move from a general picture to a particular strand of history. I intend it to be a big, powerful novel, centered on a girl who, as the novel begins, is 18 years old and discovers that she has a remarkable and beautiful heritage to claim -- but others want it too. It feels important to me to write books that are "necessary" -- that have a place in the world. And it feels very important to me to write books that hook the reader nonstop while delivering interesting knowledge told in the lives of arresting characters. This novel meets both of those criteria; while being a (I hope) highly readable and moving universal story of challenge and survival, it is located in the most fascinating period of Irish history.

Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I can't answer this question in a satisfying way -- because I am still developing, still getting to "where I am today" -- still traveling hopefully, never wishing to arrive -- in other words, changing and trying to grow all the time. My intention is to keep learning how to write; that is the wonderful thing about authorship -- my next book is always going to be my best (so far).

Horror stories? No, I've been lucky -- although, as a young journalist, one news editor did set fire to something I had written and told me to "go away and write it better."

Inspirational anecdotes? William Saroyan sent a story a week to The Saturday Evening Post for something like 14 years before he got published -- and then became very successful.

If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be?
I'm reading a book at the moment called Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean, who also wrote A River Runs Through It (the movie starred Brad Pitt). Young Men won the National Book Critics Prize in 1992 but I've only come to it now. This truly is a lesson in how to write from a first-person, nonfiction point of view. Every time I finish reading a passage I put the book down and praise the author aloud.

. What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
I have one piece of advice: write the next sentence. Whatever it is, whatever it is about, write it -- write a complete and total sentence that makes sense of the emotion you're trying to express, of the scene you're trying to describe. Afterwards, you can do all the polishing, and apply all of the lessons that you've gleaned from here, there and everywhere.

Features - Ireland Reading Group Guide Read an Excerpt Read a Sample Chapter Reading Group Guide Introduction

One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller -- a Seanchai, the very last practitioner of a tradition extending back hundreds and hundreds of years -- arrives unannounced at a house in the Irish countryside for an evening of storytelling. One of his listeners, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves abruptly under mysterious circumstances, the boy devotes himself to finding him again.

Storyteller extraordinaire Frank Delaney takes his readers on an epic journey through the history of Ireland, stopping along the way to evoke the dramatic events and personalities so critical to shaping the Irish experience. This is the true story of Ireland and the Irish -- of how the character of the land and its people were shaped by history, by neighboring England and by the Irish themselves-written by a native son possessed of his own prodigious storytelling gifts.

Questions for Discussion Is the storyteller a phenomenon unique to Ireland?
Why is Ronan enthralled before the storyteller even begins to speak? Can you imagine why Alison is so repelled?
There's nothing quite like Newgrange in the US -- or is there? What do public monuments represent in the United States? Were they built in anything like the same way?
Why is Ronan so much more interested in history than girls? What is it about the Storyteller that has made such a deep impression?
The Storyteller has a very specific method for reaching his audience. Is his method similar to that of an actor or a writer?
The Penal Laws made it very difficult for Catholics to become educated. How is a culture that is forcibly denied the growth and insight available through education and learning able to keep itself vitally alive?
In following the Storyteller for so many years, has Ronan, in fact, become a Storyteller himself?
Between the Norman-Irish and the Anglo-Irish, it seems difficult to define, who, really is "Irish." Is this similar to how "American" identity is formed?
How would have Ronan's life been different if he knew his family's great secret all along?
The book is called Ireland. To what extent is the country itself a character in the novel?

About the author

Frank Delaney was born in Tipperary, Ireland in a time and a place where itinerant storytellers, like the one featured in his novel Ireland, still haunted the country. The Irish oral tradition he celebrates may have played a part in Delaney's own choice of profession -- he began a career in broadcasting, first in Ireland and then in Britain, that earned him fame across the United Kingdom. Frank Delaney is a long time BBC reporter and contributor who has reported on subjects as diverse as the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, literature, and the arts. His first non-fiction work, James Joyce's Odyssey, was a top 5 bestseller in the UK, as were his next books, Betjeman Country and The Celts. He has been a judge for the Booker prize, writes frequently for American and British publications and has been a columnist and lecturer on many literary and historical subjects. Now, Frank Delaney has brought his considerable charm and talent to the United States. Ireland: A Novel is his first book to be published in the U.S. He now lives and writes full-time in New York City. Read an Excerpt HOW THE HARP WAS INVENTED

Here in Ireland we've received most of our inner riches from Mother Nature. In olden days, the monks in the abbeys made art from natural matters. They were inspired by the sights they saw every day -- a rabbit leaving its burrow; a fox running across a hillside with its red brush of a tail streaming out behind it; a horse standing in a field, its back to the rain; a hawk making its point far up in the sky. And even their painting materials also came from the non-human world -- bird's feathers and colors from the earth.

So: all our expression, all our means of saying what's in our souls, came first from the universe that we see every day all around us, out under the air. We were not alone in this. For example, Man made his first music from blowing air through reed pipes and kept rhythm by tapping a stick on another stick.

But here in Ireland we made music from one very unusual source. It's our greatest musical instrument, it's very contrary to play and it had its roots in the sea. This is the story of how we invented -- the harp.

Once upon a time, before swans learned to swim and before bears wore fur coats, the wife of Breffni O'Rourke, a Sligo chieftain, liked to walk the sands at Rosses' Point. She enjoyed looking out over the Atlantic hoping to see whatever glories might lie far away to the west. As she walked she listened to the crawk of the gulls, the hiss of the tide, the ocean's hush.

One morning, however, she heard a new sound. It was strange and wondrous, it was a melody so tinkling and beautiful she thought she must capture it forever. She looked around to see where it came from -- but nobody walked near her, the sands stretched white and empty and she could not find the source of these harmonies.

It was all very peculiar. The noise grew louder and then fainter and then louder and then fainter. She asked herself, "What comes and goes, and then comes again and then goes again?" After a moment's thought, she found the answer rising in her brain -- the wind! The wind comes and goes, and comes again and goes again. So the Lady Breffni looked in the direction the wind was coming from and she found the source of the glittering tunes.

On the sands of Rosses' Point, near the original Coney Island, lay the beached carcass of a whale, high and white like a monument. The silver noises she heard came from the ribcage, where the sea breezes danced through the bones. For many minutes the lady stood and watched and listened to sounds that moved her to tears. She returned enthralled to her castle and immediately summoned her musicians who played every night at supper.

"Visit straightaway the sands at Rosses' Point," she instructed them, "and listen to the sound of the wind in the bones of the whale and then come back here and devise a means of making that music."

The musicians mounted their horses, rode off to the beach and dismounted by the carcass. They also found the sound enchanting and they spent hours there that day, scratching their heads, walking north, south, east and west of the white shape, trying to divine how the music was caused. What structures, they asked, what tensions would be needed to create something so lovely? Like scientists, somber and grave, they debated and they questioned and they considered.

On their return to the court, they began work immediately with Breffni O'Rourke's carpenter. Some weeks later they produced a very large, ponderous-looking, wooden instrument with long thin staves running from top to bottom across a frame curved like a whale's ribcage. They wheeled this contraption into the castle yard and, as good fortune would have it, the wind blew from the west that very day. To their great delight, their instrument made sounds even more beautiful than the carcass of the whale.

Next, they wheeled it around to the front door of the castle and sent a messenger to tell the lady her music was ready. She emerged at once and could hear the melody as she approached; in fact all the people in the castle turned out when they heard these heavenly notes. As they stood and listened, some people felt that a miracle had come to the great house of Breffni O'Rourke.

But -- there were two problems. First of all, this instrument was as big as a van and the lady pointed out that she could only listen to it in the open air; it wouldn't fit through the castle door and, like the rest of Ireland, Sligo isn't a place where you can listen to music out of doors all the year round. The second point she made -- it was now late afternoon and after a time, as the sun began to sink in the west, the wind dropped. And, of course, the music ceased. The Lady Breffni looked at the musicians and said, "Where's my music?"

They replied quite reasonably that the instrument only played when the wind blew, to which she said, "Then how am I going to hear it when we sit to dine?"

The musicians looked at the carpenter and the carpenter looked at the musicians.

"Place it in the yard outside an open window of the dining-hall," suggested the carpenter, trying to solve two problems at once.

"But the wind may not always blow through that corner of the yard," answered the lady. "And if it does, it'll make the room too cold to sit in."

One of the musicians said, "Perhaps if the carpenter were to make some bellows, like a blacksmith uses for blowing on the fire?"

"I don't want a blacksmith's bellows inside or outside the banqueting hall," said the Lady Breffni. "Are you all dolts or something?" She was cross by now.

A child wandered forward, a boy of nine or so, blond and inquisitive. He leaned in to look at the great instrument, reached out to touch it and drew his fingers across the long, tall staves. But he pulled back his hand with an expression of distaste on his face.

"I'm surprised the wind wants to play this," he said.

He was the son of Lady Breffni's housekeeper and renowned in that house for his cleverness and powers of observation. The musicians knew him well because he spent a great deal of time listening to them and observing how they played; one of them had begun to teach him the whistle.

"What's wrong with it?" asked the carpenter.

The boy thought for a moment.

"It's too -- unfriendly," he said, after struggling to find the word. "These wooden bones -- they offer no welcome."

"And what would you find welcoming?" asked one of the musicians.

"Something easy, a supple thing," the boy said. "Something that would bend to the fingers. Then you wouldn't need the wind. Any of us could learn to play it."

"But how would that make music?" asked the carpenter.

"These don't make the music," said the boy, indicating the wooden slats. "The music is made down here, where the vibrations echo from the blown bones" - and he laid his hand on the broad frame of the instrument.

"He's perfectly right," said the musicians.

"And it could be a lot smaller," said the boy, "provided the box was deep enough to reverberate." They carried the huge instrument away, removed the wooden staves and replaced them with long strings of gut taken from the stomachs of cows and waxed with the grease of a goose. It took them no more than a few hours. They wheeled it back into the castle yard and that night, the Lady Breffni O'Rourke of Sligo sat down to dinner, listening to music that seemed even sweeter than that melody she had heard in the skeleton of a whale. Next day, they made a much smaller version and brought into the castle that very night. It was even sweeter than the first. And that, my friends, is how the harp was invented.

Did you know, by the way, that Ireland is the only nation on earth to have a musical instrument as its national symbol? Canada has the maple leaf; New Zealand has the silver fern; Scotland has the thistle; England has the rose; Wales has the leek; America has the eagle -- and Ireland has the harp.

Read a Sample Chapter Ireland By Frank DeLaney Harper Paperbacks Copyright © 2008 Frank DeLaney
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061244438
Chapter One Wonderfully, it was the boy who saw him first. He glanced out of his bedroom window, then looked again and harder - and dared to hope. No, it was not a trick of the light; a tall figure in a ragged black coat and a ruined old hat was walking down the darkening hillside; and he was heading toward the house.

The stranger's face was chalk-white with exhaustion, and he stumbled on the rough ground, his hands held out before him like a sleepwalker's. He looked like a scarecrow deserting his post. High grasses soaked his cracked boots and drenched his coat hems. A mist like a silver veil floated above the ground, broke at his knees, and reassembled itself in his wake. In this twilight fog, mysterious shapes appeared and dematerialized, so that the pale walker was never sure he had seen merely the branches of trees or the arms of mythic dancers come to greet him. Closer in, the dark shadows of the tree trunks twisted into harsh and threatening faces.

Across the fields he saw the yellow glow of lamplight in the window of a house, and he raised his eyes to the sky in some kind of thanks. With no fog on high, the early stars glinted like grains of salt. He became aware of cattle nearby, not yet taken indoors in this mild winter. Many lay curled on the grass where they chewedthe cud. As he passed, one or two lurched to their feet in alarm and lumbered off.

And in the house ahead, the boy, nine years old and blond as hay, raced downstairs, calling wildly to his father.

The stranger's bones hurt, and his lungs ached almost beyond endurance. Hunger intensified his troubles; he'd eaten one meal in three days. The calm light in the window ahead pulled him forward in hope. If he held their attention, he might get bed and board for a week - and maybe more. In the days of the High King at Tara, a storyteller stayed seven days and seven nights. Did they know that? Nobody knew anything anymore.

With luck, though, the child in this house would help. Children want stories, and the parents might stretch their hospitality, fired by the delight in the boy's eyes. Unlike last night's billet; high up on a hill farm, he had slept in a loft above the cows, where the east wind got at his bones. The ignorant people there, who had no use for stories, gave him no food and closed their fireside to him. It happened more and more.

But this house would surely prove better; and it was, after all, Halloween, the great time of the year for telling stories, the time of All Souls', when the dead had permission to rise from their graves and prowl the land.

Over the last few hundred yards the fog dispersed into flitters and wisps. At the house, a small white gate opened from the lane into a country garden, which in summer would shine with bunched roses and morning glories and tresses of sweet pea. The tall man in the black coat rapped twice on a brass knocker. Immediately, the husband of the house opened the door.

"Aha!"

The stranger and the householder exchanged a solid handshake, eye to eye. Behind his father, the boy waited in the hallway, jigging from foot to foot.

"God save all here," said the stranger; he hunched his shoulders nervously.

Over the years, his voice had grown deep and rotund. His manner and speech had an unusual formality, with trace elements of stately English from an earlier century and a hint of classical learning. Consequently, his language rang generally more colorful than the speech of the people he met every day.

The man of the house smiled and stood aside.

"Come in. You brought clear skies to us."

"With your permission, I'll bring clear thoughts too."

"Your coat is wet - let me take it."

The man extended a cold, bony hand to the boy peeking around his father's waist.

"A fine boy. God save you too, ma'am!" called the Storyteller to the woman of the house.

She looked irked, and he guessed that he, this stringy, unwashed man, with skin like canvas, would disrupt her rigorous household; nonetheless she set a place for him while her husband, pleased and comfortable, poured the visitor a drink.

The boy watched the stranger attacking the food like a tired hound. He sensed that the man's hunger fought with the man's decorum. Nobody spoke because the newcomer seemed too famished to be interrupted. The boy examined the man's face, saw the long, thin scar, wondered if he had been in a knife fight, perhaps with a sailor on some foreign quayside.

And the sodden boots - in his mind he saw the stranger fording streams, climbing out of gullies, traversing slopes of limestone shale on his endless travels across the country. Did he have a dog? Seemingly not, which was a pity, since a dog could have sat guard by the fire at night. Did the man ever sleep in caves? They said that bears and wolves had long been extinct in Ireland - but had they?

That evening, in that white house among the fields, a boy's most passionate dream came true. His father had long talked of the traveling storytellers. He said they possessed brilliant powers; they brought the long-gone past to life vividly, without what he called "the interference of scholars. Those professors," he said. "They dry out history in order to put it down on paper." In his father's view, a tale with the feeling taken out of it had "no blood and was worth very little."

But the old stories, told by traveling storytellers round the fireside on winter evenings - they came hurtling straight down the long, shiny pipeline of the centuries, and the characters, all love and hate and fire, "tumbled out on our own stone floor."