City of the Tribes, page 1
Walter Macken was born in Galway in 1915. A prolific writer, Macken wrote numerous short stories, articles, plays and children’s books, in addition to his 10 novels. Much of his early life was bound up with the theatre. A talented actor and playwright, he was involved in the production of some 77 plays between 1939 and 1947 alone, before becoming Assistant Manager and Artistic Advisor with the Abbey Theatre in the 1960s. Following his onstage success, Macken was offered an enormous sum of money to star in a US based film production. He refused, saying he had to ‘go home to finish a novel’. That novel became The Bogman (1952), and six further novels would follow. He died in 1967 in his native Galway at the age of just fifty-one. City of the Tribes was first posthumously published in 1997 by Steve MacDonogh at Brandon Books.
Praise for Walter Macken
‘As a writer, Macken was attuned to the menacing depths that lay behind the physical exterior: the infertile bogland that makes farming problematic, the harsh character of the inhabitants, their callous treatment of one another, their superstitious religiosity and frustrated love affairs.’
The Irish Times (2013)
‘Just how influential he had been in Irish theatre in his day and his body of work of plays, novels, short stories and children’s books is incredible. If this man lived anywhere else he would be revered.’
Connacht Tribune (2014)
Praise for The Bogman
‘Wise and compassionate and violently Irish’
Harper’s Magazine (1952)
‘Again, a born story teller has shared his seeing and feeling in words that sing to his readers.’
Kirkus Reviews (1952)
‘This, Walter Macken’s fourth novel in four years, marks the steady rise of a vigorous new talent in Anglo-Irish fiction. His “Rain on the Wind,” published here last year, was a very good novel. “The Bogman,” a fresh, free-flowing, affirmative story of life in a small Irish village of six families, is an even better one.’
The New York Times (1952)
Praise for The Irish Trilogy
‘A vivid picture of many striking personalities working in unison for a way of life under the most trying conditions. Poetic, but not sentimental--an engrossing and extremely well-written saga.’ — Kirkus Reviews on The Silent People (1962).
‘Action-packed entertainment…an explosive segment of history, filled with contagious emotion.’
New York Herald Tribune on Seek the Fair Land (1959)
‘It is an adventure story that is both exciting and moving.’
Times Literary Supplement on Seek the Fair Land (1959)
Also by Walter Macken
Novels
Quench the Moon (1948)
I Am Alone (1949)
Rain on the Wind (1950)
The Bogman (1952)
Sunset on the Windowpanes (1954)
Sullivan (1957)
Seek the Fair Land (1959)
The Silent People (1962)
The Scorching Wind (1966)
The Brown Lord of the Mountain (1967)
Short Stories
The Green Hills and Other Stories (1956)
God Made Sunday and Other Stories (1962)
The Coll Doll and Other Stories (1969)
Children’s Books
The Island of the Great Yellow Ox (1966)
The Flight of the Doves (1968)
Plays
Mungo’s Mansion (1946)
Vacant Possession (1948)
Home is the Hero (1952)
Twilight is the Warrior (1956)
City of the Tribes
City of the Tribes
Walter Macken
Introduction by Ultan Macken
CITY OF THE TRIBES
First published by Brandon Book Publishers, Kerry, 1997
This edition published 2020 by
New Island Books
Glenshesk House
10 Richview Office Park
Clonskeagh
Dublin D14 V8C4
Republic of Ireland
www.newisland.ie
Copyright © Literary Estate of Walter Macken, 1997, 2020
Introduction © Ultan Macken, 2020
The right of Walter Macken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–84840–763–3
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84840–764–0
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
New Island received financial assistance from
The Arts Council (An Comhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland
New Island Books is a member of Publishing Ireland.
Contents
Introduction
Ambition
Battle
The Passing of the Black Swan
New Clothes for the Giolla
Dad
Deputy Johnny
Tale of a Kid
Saga
Dovetail and the Turkey
Homecoming
Homing Salmon
Spanish Joe
Colm Comes to the City
The City
An Act of Charity
Pugnug
The New Broom
Gaeglers and the Greyhound
Introduction
Ultan Macken
In the 1940s, while working in Galway city as a producer and director for An Taibhdhearc—the national Irish language theatre of Ireland—my father came to understand that if he was ever going to realise his dream of becoming a full time writer, there was little chance of achieving this through the medium of the Irish language.
During his time working at An Taibhdhearc, he had written about ten original plays in Irish, three of which were published. By 1944 however, he’d altered his routine of writing every single morning; he was now writing in English.
He first wrote a stage play, Mungo’s Mansion which was accepted by the Abbey Theatre for a production in 1946. As a result of this production, the play was published by Macmillan in the same year. They were already the publishers of Frank O’Connor, Seán Ó Casey and Padraic Colum. My father then submitted his first novel to them. Written painstakingly in long hand under the provisional titleWith Men Of Blood, Oh God, the original manuscript was over six-hundred pages. The editors at Macmillan saw its potential, advising him to cut three-hundred pages and resubmit it. He cut away half the book over three weeks and resubmitted the manuscript to the publishers in London. They accepted the new, slimmed down draft, and proposed a new title for the work; Quench The Moon.
The eighteen stories gathere in City of the Tribes are all marvellous vignettes—written around complex and nuanced characters from a distant Ireland—that set out to convey the lives of the ordinary people of Galway, people who lived and worked in the city my father knew and loved. Each story is true to the manners and ways of the time, the early decades of the twentieth century, and what happens to each of these characters is portrayed with humanity, humour, and an essence you believe really existed.
My father’s childhood was a sad and difficult one. His father was killed in Saint-Omer in France on 28 March 1916, when my father was only 9 months old. His mother had then to raise three children on a widow’s army pension. To survive, she took in lodgers and provided services for her neighbours; when someone died, for example, she would prepare the corpse for their funeral.
As a child my father witnessed a number of tragedies that he carried with him through the years. He once recounted how a neighbour who had returned from the horror of World War I murdered his wife in their family home, all over a tiny argument. He was only a small boy of 6 or 7 when he and the other children of his street found a young woman in her back garden, her throat cut after committing suicide. Many of these memories inform the stories in this collection, such as in ‘Tale of a Kid’, where a young ten year old boy has found his mother lying dead on the kitchen floor. I feel my father writing about his own experience here, and the six months of sleepless nights he suffered after.
In the eighteen short stories in City of the Tribes I see echoes of his family background and the seed material or origins for so many of his plays and novels.
In ‘The Passing of the Black Swan’, which tells of the last days of a Claddagh fishing boat, there are three characters: the grandfather, his son and his grandson. These characters are mirror images of the three central characters in my father’s novel, Rain On The Wind.
In ‘Deputy John’, his portrayal of a successful politician’s confrontation with his past as an IRA gunman, is the seed material for my father’s play, Twilight of a Warrior.
Mrs Corcoran, the dying woman in the story ‘Saga’, offers her last confession to the parish priest, recounting how she as a young woman came to work in a bar in Galway and met and fell in love with a young carpenter. They married and had three sons. I am certain this story is about his mother and father, my grandparents.
He explores characters in this collection that he would go on to give greater life to in his novels, such as Dovetail and Mungo, who both became central characters in his first play written in English, Mungo s Mansion.
Gaeglers, a trickster who survives with no apparent employment, is introduced in ‘Dovetail and the Turkey’ and my father expands on his character in ‘Gaeglers and the Greyhound’.
In ‘Colm Comes to the City’, he explores the difference between the naive country man and the clever young city girl who offers him romance but really is out to cheat him.
Later, in ‘Pugnug’, he gives us an insight into the life of a young man in Galway from his early childhood days up to his teenage years, with the material seen in this story being drawn on for an unpublished autobiographical novel, Cockles And Mustard, which was rejected by his publisher in the 1940s, but which I hope will one day find publication.
I had for many years believed that once his first works had been accepted by his publisher, that Macmillan had published every book my father submitted. While researching biographical material for my 2009 biography of my father, Walter Macken: Dreams on Paper, I discovered that Macmillan had rejected three books he had submitted: the aforementioned Cockles And Mustard, And Then No More, a very accomplished historical novel, as well as a book of short stories, City Of The Tribes.
In 1997, the late Steve McDonagh, founder and director of Brandon Books decided that City Of The Tribes deserved publication. He published it as a hardback and later as a paperback. The book has however fallen out of print for many years, a great loss to Ireland’s and Galway’s literary history. That is why my brother Walter and I are delighted that New Island Books have chosen to bring a new edition of this extraordinary book of short stories into the world, giving a new lease of life to this underappreciated collection.
Ambition
Business was bad with Bill. He stood in front of the church door with his hand stretched out and a most pitiful look on his dirty face. It was a raw gusty day, and the wind blew coldly about him.
He was impervious to the wind, since his body was covered with three waistcoats, two cardigans, a black frock coat, a half-frieze coat, and three pairs of trousers, the holes in one covered by the places where there were none in the next. A raincoat tied with a piece of cart rope held the whole outfit together, and his toes peeped blackly and coyly from gaping shoes which were tied to his feet with lengths of twine.
He thought of the single penny in his pocket and raised a hand to scratch at the hole in his bowler hat where his hair came out. He was very hairy, with long whiskers and hair to the shoulders matted and streaked with grey. It should have been a good drawing card, but Bill was beginning to realise that he must be losing his appeal. Not even the poor who were the best touches seemed to have spare pennies in this hard weather. ‘I will have to think of something else to do,’ Bill thought, ‘because if I don’t I won’t see the colour of a pint until next summer.’
He saw a young man, sprucely dressed, coming towards the church, and he cheered up a little. As the young man dipped his fingers in the holy water font, Bill commenced his tale. He had said it so often that he never listened to it himself now. It was a harrowing story about a wife and nine children, with a dash of TB and starvation and cruel landlords thrown in. It should have softened a bank manager, but the young man merely looked directly at Bill and said, ‘Why don’t you go and get a job?’ and went into the church.
Insults. The terrible things people do to the poor nowadays. Wouldn’t give you the itch or if they did they’d cut your nails.
‘The curse a God on the bosthoons,’ said Bill out loud. ‘I hope I’ll see them in the pludder and I’ll be passin’ in me moty car, and I’ll spit in their faces so I will, I will indeed, the paupers.’
‘Now, now,’ said the voice of the sacristan behind him. ‘How many times must I tell you to keep away from the front porch of the church? If you must beg, do it outside the gates of the church. Off with you now!’
‘All right, all right, all right!’ said Bill, shaking a shoulder impatiently, glaring at the brother from narrowed eyes. He turned at the gate to look back at the black-cassocked man with the white hair. They were all the same, in or out of the church. ‘Up and up and up!’ he muttered back at the sacristan.‘The pludder for the poor, the pludder for the poor. Christianity, Christianity, hump the lot a ye!’ The brother waved his hand at him, ordering him away, and then turned back into the church tsk-tsking.
Bill shuffled along the pavement dully, his head down, muttering. It was a hard life. What was a man to do? The aroma wafting to his nostrils from the pub at the corner brought him back to reality again. He stopped at the door, like the Bisto Baby grown old and hoary, and he sniffed the air. He felt a great thirst at the smell. He could see his hand tightening around the cold pint glass and imagine only too well the feel, the velvet feel of the porter sliding down his throat. He opened the swing door cautiously and peered into the gloomy interior. Only two customers there and the buxom lady behind the counter leaning bare fat arms on the polished wood. He sidled in and went to the gloomy part of the counter. He saw the woman looking up from her talking and making a face and then continuing the conversation. There was a round globule of spilt porter on the counter where he stood. He dipped the tips of his fingers into it and sucked the porter off them. It nearly sent him wild.
‘Well, what do you want?’ she asked finally. He didn’t like the way she underlined the you.
‘Give’s a pint,’ said Bill.
‘Where’s the money?’ she asked.
‘Tomorra,’ said Bill.
‘Simple Simon,’ said one of the men, a sailor man with a peaked cap and a blue jersey with words in red written on the front of it. The two men laughed and finished their drinks. Bill watched agonisedly as their glasses emptied.
‘Tomorra,’ he said to the woman again.
‘Get to hell out of here,’ she said, coming over with a cloth and wiping the spilt porter from the counter. Even that she wouldn’t leave him.
‘Stand’s a drink?’ he appealed to the two men. ‘G’wan.’
‘I would,’ said the sailor man, ‘if I thought you’d take a wash in it.’
Bill tried to smile at their laughter. ‘G’wan,’ he said feebly again.
‘G’out a here; you stink,’ said the second man holding his nose.
‘Off with you now, off with you now,’ said the woman, ‘or I’ll get the Guards.’
Bill gave up hope and shuffled towards the door. ‘A mane crowd a gawks,’ he muttered, ‘suckin’ maneness from their ould wans’ dugs, them and dirty porter and bitches.’
He closed the door on their laughter and cursed his way around the corner and into the dusty small market-place. He bent into the mass of hay wisps and dirt that had been collected by the wind and extracted a cigarette butt. While he was bending, a small perky boy with a shopping basket running for a message paused to look at him. He gave up trying to remember what message his mother had sent him on to throw out a friendly feeler.
‘How y’, Bill?’ he asked then.
Bill looked at him furiously and raised his arm in a threatening gesture. The boy felt hurt, so he stuck a red tongue between thin lips and made a noise with it. It infuriated Bill. He bent again grabbing for a stone to throw, and the boy took to his heels, went around the nearest corner, put his red head back again to shout, ‘Bowsey Bill from Ballinasloe! Bowsey Bill from Ballinasloe!’ and then he was gone.
Bill searched his pockets and found a match. The butt tasted rank and sour, but Bill sucked it into his guts and went along the narrow lane leading out of the market-place. The butt lasted him the length of the lane, and then he came into the place where long streets stretched away, crisscrossing each other, the houses built in long rows, their fronts half-way rough cast and half-way smooth plaster, the doorways opening on to the concrete footpaths.
He heard a voice singing and he paused to look. In the centre of the first street, he recognised the Boogie Man, a man with a club foot and a tall supporting walking stick. He held himself straight and wore a green moulded coat that fell almost to his heels, a green bowler hat on top, his coat lapels held across his neck with a safety pin. He had a small clean face, and his greying moustache, close cropped, crept down the sides of his mouth, giving him an Asiatic look. This is what he was singing:
