BOOKKEEPING by Mary McWay Seaman
MOSTLY SHORT, MOSTLY TRUE STORIES FROM IRELAND by Jim Remington (Pineglenn Press, 2015, 110 pages, paperback, $12.95)

What would life be without stories and storytellers? How would the essential underpinnings of history, culture and language have been transmitted, not just in the far away and long ago, but also in our own time? Jim Remington’s thirty-one tales of his travels across Ireland from 1978 to 2010 underscore the fact that stories have always been a vital source for guidance in matters ranging from personal and tribal issues to international relations. His wanderings are the antithesis of programmed pilgrimages! Remington, “in the spirit of the ancient storytellers,” has published this collection of stories “gleaned from my personal travels and experiences in Ireland and the states.”

Readers accompany the writer on foot, bicycle, train, and by car through cities and hamlets across the country where his grandmother and aunt were born. In 1978 Remington hitchhiked from Dublin to a Wexford music festival. Along the way, our raconteur visited the early Christian monastic settlement, Glendalough (not yet a premier tourist destination). This tale, “When the Roses Bloom Again,” includes a magical pub supper during which an elderly man, “dressed in a farmer’s suit coat,” recited “complete poems from Yeats and Joyce and I believe he had some passages of Sean O’Casey and Brendan Behan sprinkled in. This man seemed a literary genius.” When Remington asked about the man’s background, he learned that “the man was a farmer who read a lot.”

The story, “Redbreast,” delivers a superb description of the Irish weather event known as “soft rain.” For readers who have not visited Ireland, it is “Almost a mist but still wet enough to qualify as rain, the frequency allows you to get used to it and kind of enjoy it . . . it is what brings the ‘emerald’ to Ireland.” Our tour guide adds a qualification concerning his ancestral homeland – at times the rain “turns into a real lashing, a total downpour, and almost any endeavor becomes impossible.” During one such drenching Remington sheltered in an East Clare pub, thereby discovering the joys of Redbreast whiskey with musicians by the fire: “The angels sang, the harps played and my taste buds rejoiced.” Jigs and reels flowed from fiddle, flute and concertina: “Even the sweet sound of the lark would have been an intrusion on their playing.” The barman and the players were the only others there, and Remington ached for a recording, “but a recorder was out of place and time.” Furthermore, “This was how it used to be, only better, as they say.”

On a trip through County Clare Remington heard “the Bothy Band, DeDannan, Christy Moore, Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine, Micho Russell and many other great players.” His story, “Paddy and the Spoons,” concerns the etiquette involved in Irish music sessions: “Traditional music sessions are not ‘jam sessions.’ A player is expected to know the tunes (reels, jigs, etc.) and not improvise over the melodies. Even a deviation from the standard traditional instrumentation is frowned upon.” Remington includes a tale about one such deviation that proved exceedingly instructive!

“Busted at Michael Coleman’s House” concerns that grand traditional Irish fiddler (1891-1945). Happily, recordings have captured much of Coleman’s music from the 1920s through the 1940s, and Remington reminds readers that “Coleman’s brilliant technical style and his heartfelt and expressive playing make him the benchmark for traditional Irish fiddling.” Even at age 23, when the man left Ireland for America, he was a virtuoso in the genre. In 2009, Remington visited the new Coleman Heritage Center in Gurteen, home to music archives, exhibits, a theater and a gift shop, and he ran into friends from Colorado at the Center. (His serendipitous dynamic marches on!)

The tale, “Joe McKenna,” features the author’s first encounter with the Uilleann pipe player in 1981 when Remington’s Greencastle Band opened for the musician during a New England tour. McKenna played the whistle as well as the pipes, while his wife, Antoinette, sang and played the harp. The man was “the wild, on-the-edge genius, and Antoinette the rudder that held the ship on course.” Remington was shown the “way that Irish music was meant to be played. Equal parts passion and possession, technique and daring.” He caught up with McKenna at Boston College festivals in the 1990s and in 2002 at the Willy Clancy Festival in County Clare where the musician gave “them a bit of the madness . . . Shaking the chanter over his head and swirling it around as if it was possessed. It was like he was holding a high-pressure fire hose.”

Remington recommends public transportation and hitchhiking in Ireland, and one charming tale features a joyous outcome to bus trouble (radiator needed water) between Cork and Killarney. The narrative, “Colonel Farrell and the Teapot,” has the driver approaching a farmhouse where the only vessel available for transporting water was a teapot; countless trips between house and bus proceeded apace. No matter, this was Ireland, and “there was no shortage of conversation. But just as if it was written in the script, someone slowly started to sing . . .” An Irish tenor led off the songs, and everyone on the bus sang the choruses, “including the foot stomping and hand clapping.”

In the story, “Saint Patrick and the Bowling Balls,” our intrepid traveler climbed Croagh Patrick, the pilgrimage mountain where St. Patrick had fasted for forty days: “Not tall by our Colorado Rocky Mountain standards but with a steep rise to the summit that looked challenging. I felt like it would be a good day hike.” His B&B hostess recommended the pilgrimage, and our writer responded: “I told her I wasn’t so much into the pilgrimage as into the hike.” She retorted: “Every journey is a pilgrimage of sorts.” Aha! On the trail, Remington observed “Flip-flops . . . street shoes, wellys, a man in cowboy boots and a number of women in high heels.” He was told that some individuals climb in bare feet as penance. The trail’s horrendous number of rocks were “ankle busters” that became “a thirty-foot-wide mass of moving bowling ball-shaped rocks. No switchbacks, no trail maintenance and no erosion control.” Casualties were coming down, but he soldiered on: “One step up and one-half step back. It was the hardest summit approach that I have ever done. The footing was impossible and looking down at each step while simultaneously watching for the out-of-control people careening down was like a nightmare video game.” But our reporter made it to the top, taking in spectacular views of Clew Bay, Achill Island and Westport. Descending was worse: “Everything was a mass of moving rocks . . . Why no switchbacks? I felt powerless to control the bowling balls moving under my feet . . . Every step I took created a small rock slide that rolled into the people below.” Remington “proceeded on a rant [to his B&B hostess] as to how dangerous the climb was and asked why the church or government didn’t improve the trail.” He was reminded that a pilgrimage is not meant to be easy: “There would be no point.”
Jim Remington’s book, chock full of humor and irony, marches on with the engaging tale, “The Aran Islands.” One memorable vignette occurred on a stormy boat ride back to the mainland from the lovely islands when the captain ordered passengers to join him in the wheelhouse. An American asked if there was an Irish Coast Guard. The captain replied that indeed there was, “but they would never come out on a day like this.” Remington reports that several passengers kissed the shore when they finally stepped onto terra firma!

These few reports are merely teasers for the writer’s many other glorious Irish encounters. Whether one is an intrepid wanderer, a serious historian, or an armchair traveler, Remington’s book will beguile and captivate. Tally ho!