Country Days by Alice; Taylor Page B

filled the day with laughter. Dan Keane traced the genealogy of every family home along the route back almost to Adam. That man had such a capacity for tracing family trees that Americans looking for their roots should run bus tours to him.
    The literary giants of Listowel knit Writers’ Week together and a small and dedicated team do trojan work. Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Chairman of Writers’ Week, seemed to be everywhere; with bundles of papers hanging out of his pockets, he laced all the events together. Then late one night he gave a poetry reading upstairs in a back room of the Listowel Arms. His rich voice took us on a journey to many places, but we wound up looking into dark brown bog-holes and exploring the beauty of a child’s mind. He spends his days with children and the child in him has never died.
    The genial Bryan MacMahon walked the streets of Listowel during Writers’ Week like a host at a large party. He welcomed newcomers and introduced them to locals, and while it was understandable that he knew everybody in Listowel he also seemed toknow everybody who had come there for the week as well. The Writers’ Week was his brainchild and now that his child had become a mature adult he was enjoying the fruits of his labours. He then told me about the night he had come home from Dublin when Listowel had won the All-Ireland Drama competition. He had danced in delight around his mother’s kitchen and she had advised, “Bryan, walk easy when your jug is full.” He laughed now as he recalled her advice and then he took us into a little tea-room where we had tea and buns.
    Who but John B. would silence the crowd and sing “The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee” to welcome us to his pub? He sat on a high stool outside the counter and regulated a continual concert, insisting that each artist was awarded respectful silence. If his requests did not penetrate to those minds intent on other business, his sons imparted his instructions to them and his charming wife Mary supervised behind the counter. Like a king on a throne, John B. was monarch of all he surveyed. On a stool beside him sat a small brown man like a wren on top of a holly bush. From his elevated position we were at eye level.
    “Have you a chirp in you?” he demanded.
    It took me a few seconds to interpret his enquiry as to my singing ability, which for the sake of the common good has to be confined to the privacy of home. Soon a girl with a beautiful, clear lilt brought absolute silence. The following morning at mass the same voice filled the church with its beauty. Shedefinitely had more than “a chirp” in her. She was the dawn chorus.
    At breakfast that morning we were joined by two native Irish speakers from Dingle, one of whom I had met previously. As my Irish was not too fluent they were forced into English, which did not come easy to one of them. His friend remarked jokingly, “This fellow is half illiterate: he has only one language.”
    To which the other man declared, “At least I’m only illiterate in one language. You’re illiterate in two.”
    He went on to tell me about an old parish priest who had been in Dingle when he was young.
    “He would always doze off in the confession box, but if you mentioned girls or sins of the flesh, he would straighten up and cock his ear and ask for every detail. The only sexual experience that man ever had was in through his ear.”
    He continued earnestly, “Priests should get married, I think. Do you know something: it is my belief that God did not give us any spare parts.”
    It was a most entertaining breakfast, laced as it was with Dingle theology.
    As we left the hotel we met Eamon Keane. Having listened to his wonderful voice on radio over the years, he was somebody for whom I had the greatest admiration. His dark brooding eyes in his thin ascetic face gave him the appearance of a medieval monk. He told me that he was meeting an old friend for lunch; they had gone to school together andbeen childhood