The Fields Of Athenry
A Journey Through Ireland
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In The Fields of Athenry , James Charles Roy leads us through the Irish past and present with the central theme of his own personal experience with the renovation of a run-down castle -- really a crumbled tower -- that he purchased more than thirty years ago. Moyode Castle, located near the County Galway market town of Athenry, was built in the sixteenth century by the Dolphins, an Irish-speaking family directly descended from French-speaking Norman adventurers who had invaded Ireland four centuries earlier. This old tower house and the rich agricultural lands it guards has witnessed every strand of Irish history, from the heroic exploits of Celtic warriors long celebrated by Yeats and Lady Gregory, through the Easter Rising of 1916 when IRA insurgents used the building as a lookout. It stands today as a powerful, timeless symbol of the tumultuous ebb and flow of fortune, both good and bad, that characterizes Irish history. Roy weaves his personal story of the purchase and renovation of Moyode into a wide ranging historical conversation, leading us to a topic of real interest to Ireland today and our sense of history more broadly: the historical nostalgia we attach to Ireland and the fact that our romantic image flies directly in the face of development and boom times in the "Celtic Tiger" of the twenty-first century. Few know, for example, that today Ireland produces and ships more software abroad than any other country in the world with the exception of the United States, though we all know the story of Angela's Ashes. With this theme in mind, Roy leads us to question what attracts us -- or perhaps more aptly him -- to the rubble of a castle from Irish days long past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is a book within a book. One book comprises the tale of how the author bought a crumbling tower in Moyode, County Galway, and eventually restored it. The second book is a history of Ireland, and of the local community in particular. Roy purchased Moyode Castle in 1969 for a mere 800, but as he lives in Boston, he took his time refurbishing. Along the way, as he relates the tale of the castle, we are introduced to all who have rambled the local territory through its history, from the blatantly sexual Celts of earliest times to the Normans of the 11th century ("illiterate savages"), to the followers of Cromwell who took his saying, "To hell or Connaught," to heart, and up to the Black & Tans of 1921. Roy's portrait of Ireland is somewhat dated since it is set in the 1980s and early '90s, before the Irish economic miracle, known as the "Celtic Tiger," fully blossomed. But it does highlight many things that have changed in Ireland over the last 20 years: the declining influence of the Catholic Church, the demise of pub life and the oral tradition ("The death of old Ireland... will be completed in the next twenty years or so by the television set"), and the increasing influence of the EEC. But the element of the story that will tickle most readers is Roy's daily give-and-take with barmen, workmen and farmers. His struggles with builders become legend ("In Ireland, if you don't watch it you can be skinned alive"); his encounter with tinkers, Irish gypsies now known as "itinerants," will amaze the uninitiated; and his battles bargaining for stone walls and slate roofs are all thoroughly amusing. Readers will find Roy (Islands of Storm; etc.) and this book the way the ancient Romans viewed the Celts: "high spirited and quick to battle, but otherwise straightforward and not of evil character."
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