The Star of the Sea (68 page)

HISTORY:
Wuthering Heights
by Ellis Bell was indeed published by Cautley Newby in December 1847 (not very well and rather unscrupulously). V.S. Pritchett, in a 1946 essay, was among the first critics to discuss the connection between Emily Brontë’s masterpiece and Ireland. It has been further explored by Terry Eagleton (
Heathcliff and the Great Hunger
, Verso 1995), John Cannon (
History of the Brontë Family from Ireland to Wuthering Heights
, Sutton 2000) and Christopher Heywood (Appendices to his 2001 edition of WH, Broadview Press). I have dared to allow Pius Mulvey to suffer the ‘separation’ system at Newgate in the late 1830s, but in fact it was not introduced until 1842, and at
Pentonville. No organisation called the Else-Be-Liables or Liable Men existed, but many others of cryptic names and violent activities did, and had done so in Ireland for at least eighty years.
³
The sending of anonymous or pseudonymous threatening letters to landlords was frequent. Litton’s
Irish Famine
quotes several. Often their authors were new to written English, thus their texts had mis-spellings or phonetic renderings of the kind appearing in the letter to Merridith. Its diagram of the coffin is borrowed from a note sent to a Kildare landlord in January, 1848.
⁴

MUSIC: Captain Francis O’Neill did not contribute to any work called
A Miscellany of the Ancient Songs of Ireland
. A Chicago policeman and native of Cork, his
Dance Music of Ireland
(1907) and endearingly titled
Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody
(1909) did much rescue a beautiful repertoire from a fatal diminishment. Admirers of Irish singing will know that the paradigm of Mulvey’s Recruiting Sergeant ballad is ‘Arthur McBride’, a 19th century song restored to the canon by Paul Brady and later recorded by Bob Dylan. (Brady’s version is on
Andy Irvine and Paul Brady
, Mulligan, 1976; Dylan’s on
Good as I Been to You
, Columbia, 1992). The ballad Mulvey sings on page 95 is ‘In the Month of January’. A version is included on Paddy Tunney’s
The Irish Edge
(Ossian Recordings, 1991). Tunney’s version is not ‘a macaronic’ (which Mulvey’s is), though many such songs exist in the Connemara
Sean-Nós
or ‘Old Style’ tradition. Several were recorded by Seosamh Ó hÉanai (like Mary Duane, a native of Carna). Examples may be found on
Joe Heaney: Irish Traditional Songs in Gaelic and English
(Topic, London, 1988). ‘Revenge for Skibbereen’ (or ‘Skibereen’) (Chapter XXXIX) is often given in live performance by that Caruso of the genre, Seán Keane of Galway. It features on his acclaimed album
Seánsongs
(
Circín Rua Teo
, 2002). Ciaran Carson’s
Last Night’s Fun
(Cape, 1996) is a brilliant work about traditional Irish music. It mentions a Loyalist drummer, Right McKnight, who borrowed his drum from a Nationalist band and forgot to give it back. I borrowed his name for Mulvey’s Glaswegian sidekick. I hereby give it back.

¹
Extracts at
www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish

²
Quoted frequently in Litton’s
Irish Famine
.

³
Miller’s
Emigrants and Exiles
and Foster’s
Modern Ireland
list many.

⁴
See Litton, pp. 42 and 101. Phrases similar to those quoted here appear in the note to Merridith.