Intriguing Titles from the Celtic Short Story Competition Submissions

Posted on December 14, 2016 by - Blog, Short Stories

irish-books

Well the entries are in and the submission folder has been removed to a separate hard drive.

Yesterday, while we were doing the admin for the registration and processing, we were struck by the number of intriguing titles this year. I’ve learned long ago not to put too much stock in a title, of course. A good one can draw a susceptible reader towards a book or a story but its effectiveness very much depends on the individual and the personal experiences/ interests of that individual. Titles can also be a double-edged sword, of course, in that if they insinuate or evoke one thing and the story delivers something different, that can work against it.

In any case, here are some that immediately appealed to me (only me – the other judges haven’t seen them yet) and my first thoughts on seeing them:

• Konla’s Dream (A reference to Connla – the son of Conn Céadcathach?)
• Lexi on her Sixty-Second Journey (Time travel or a journey across the room?)
• Mama’s Skin (Possibly a selkie but could really be anything)
• My Sprightly Tailor (I just love the image this brought to mind)
• Seasick (Brings back many pleasant memoires!)
• Strangers in a Familiar Setting (Lovely juxtaposition)
• The Black Hen (Intriguingly simple – for some reason I like that)
• The Curse of Ulster (Possibly a reference to the ‘Pangs’ of Ulster?)
• The King Who Could Not Die (now that certainly rouses interest)
• Tiny Broken Horses (?!)
• The Púca with the Swivelling Head (Actually, no. Sorry. I think I just imagined that one!)

How to Write Sex Scenes

Posted on December 7, 2016 by - Blog, Uncategorized

That made you sit up.

I suppose I should start by saying I really don’t particularly enjoy writing sex scenes. Writing protracted sexual encounters always seems to lead into pornographic territory or, even worse, purple prose. Then of course there’s always the thought of your mother peering over your shoulder, shaking her head and tutting with disapproval. Previous experience also means I’m pretty sure the first draft will come back from Madame Blackwing (editor extreme) pointing out some critical error (“That’s a physical impossibility”, “It’s not located there” or perhaps even more disturbingly, “Is this meant to be a sex scene?”).

Photocredit: Tertia van Rensburg

Photocredit: Tertia van Rensburg

Diligent individual that I am, to research this article I asked a few writer friends about how they wrote sex scenes. The responses included:

“I’m probably more of a ‘doer’ than a talker/writer'”

“Writers do it sitting down”

“Are you serious? My target audience are 8-12 years olds”

All very helpful, of course.

Carrying out even further research, I headed off to the Literary Review magazine and looked up the “Bad Sex in Fiction Award”. This particular competition has been around for over twenty years and I’ve always quite enjoyed it, not only because it’s deliciously funny but because it provides a good-natured but well-needed poke to the pomposity of the mainstream publishing industry. Think of it as a kind of antidote to the Nobel Prize for Literature and you’ll be on the right track.

Originally started by the Literary Review in 1993, the approach is simplicity itself. Every year, reviewers at the Literary Review nominate the worst sex scene passages they’ve read during the year and a committee pick the, eh, … winner. Although it’s never been intended to cover pornographic or erotica, it sometimes comes pretty damn close.

This year’s crop of nominees included a number of well-known names like Ian McEwan, Eimear McBride, Gayle Forman (a New York Times bestselling author) Erri De Luca (a European Prize for Literature winner) and many more. Here are a number of the passages that caught the judges’ attention this year:

“Anne,” he says, stopping and looking down at me. I am pinned like wet washing with his peg. “Till now, I thought the sweetest sound I could ever hear was cows chewing grass. But this is better.” He sways and we listen to the soft suck at the exact place we meet. Then I move and put all thoughts of livestock out of his head.
The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis

“His heart immediately started hammering like mad, and a fiery heat welled up inside him. He wanted to ask something, something tremendously urgent, something incredibly important, something that was tingling on the tip of his tongue but already her other hand was on his other buttock.”
The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler

“When she was sufficiently aroused, a hush would finally settle and then with a sigh she would roll over gently onto her back, like a doe turning in leaves.”
A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin

“She wiggled her breasts beneath my hands and intensified the pushing. I went in up to my groin and came out almost entirely. My body was her gearstick.”
The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca

“Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.”
The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca

“With one thrust I sank into her without coming back out. She took her hands from my hips and from my prick came the entire “yes” that had coursed through her. The “yes” of my emptying and my goodbye, my welcome, the “yes” of a marionette that flops without a hand to hold its strings.”
The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca

“During sex she would quiet, moving suddenly on top of him like a lion over its prey. Her eyes stayed wide, Andret liked to keep his own closed; but whenever he opened them, there she would be, staring down at him, her black pupils gyroscopically inert.”
A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin

“The act itself was fervent. Like a brisk tennis game or a summer track meet, something performed in daylight between competitors. The cheap mattress bounced. She liked to do it more than once, and he was usually able to comply. Bourbon was his gasoline.”
A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin

“He jerked off with the determination of someone within sight of Everest’s summit, having lost all his friends and Sherpas, having run out of supplemental oxygen, but preferring death to failure.”
Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer

I don’t know about you but most of this didn’t leave me hot and bothered so much as, well …. gyroscopically inert, I suppose. Just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything, I decided to check up on what’s considered to be this year’s strongest contender for the prize.

“His finger is inside me, his thumb circling and I spill like grain from a bucket.”
The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis

Spilled grain aside, I’m pleased to say that I’ve since come up with the perfect formula for writing sex scenes and because you’ve been so patient I’m going to share that secret with you. To start with, you really have to approach the whole sex scene in the correct manner. In that regard, I tend to make a bit of an effort. I usually wait until it’s a little late, put on some soft music, slip into my Hugh Heffner dressing gown. If I’m in the mood, I’ll have a sip of wine or two, dim the lights right down. massage the fingers in oil as I ease my way towards the computer and then …

[scroll down]
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
……. The next Morning dawned cool and rainy.

I won’t tell if you don’t.

Update:
The winner of this award was announced last week and it was …… Italian novelist Erri De Luca’s genital ‘ballet dancers’.
Congratulations and well done, Mr De Luca.

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Earthquakes and Irony on the Shaky Isles

Posted on December 1, 2016 by - Blog, Mise (Me)

A bit hectic this week and people have been asking so I figured I’d give some information/ context on what we’re dealing with here – at least from a personal perspective. Even after many years in New Zealand, coming from one of the most stable pieces of land on the planet (the good ole conservative rock that’s Ireland), means this earthquake stuff can still be a bit new to me.

Around midnight on 10 November, New Zealand’s south island was hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Normally, at least in my experience to date, when an quake occurs at night, you screw your eyes tight, snuggle deeper under the covers and wait for it to pass.

Unless it keeps going.

And boy, did it keep on going!

This particular quake went on for over a minute by which time we were all out in the hallway sheltering under the door jam (usually the sturdiest area in the house). Finally, it eased off but aftershocks kept rolling in over the next few hours. Nobody really got any sleep that night.

In most respects of course, we were exceptionally lucky. Although quite violent (the ground lifted in over three meters in places), the quake was centered in an area of the south island that had a very small population. Two people died but if it had happened at a different time and in a different place that could have been dramatically more. In Wellington – the closets city – because we’re on the coast, a tsunami warning went out with sirens going on and off irregularly. Many people evacuated to higher ground – not easy with the aftershock, others remained in bed. It was a complete shambles with mixed messages and nobody clear on what the safest course of action was.

When daylight came, the extent of the damage in Wellington began to become clear with damaged buildings, and lots of broken glass (this would have showered down and probably killed – or at least seriously hurt – people in the streets had it happened during the day). The city centre was blocked off until the city and government officials gave the all clear (which turned out to be a remarkably bad idea). Although the aftershocks had declined , a huge storm blew in over the subsequent two days, flooding parts of the city, the main roads in and out of the city and causing numerous landslides in areas already weakened by the shakes. Many people going into town for work ended up getting stuck and unable to make it home (we had two people stay over at our place). Conflicting messages kept coming out from the media. It’s safe/its not safe! Come in/ stay home!

After three days, a sense of normality returned. The storms stopped, the roads dried out. The tremors had reduced to an occasional perceptible shake but that was it. Everything seemed okay until, suddenly, people started being evacuated from buildings and told to go home. First it was one building, then two, then over ten and by the last count, somewhere between 20-30 buildings. It turns out the building owners and the government departments had demonstrated far more optimism than they had any right to. Many of the buildings considered safe turned out to be a major risk hazard. Three significant buildings in the inner city have now been programmed for demolition as they can’t be saved. There’s construction work going on all over the city and bizarrely, the most damaged buildings are those which were most recently constructed (to higher standards). A lot of people are asking questions that no-one seems capable of answering.

irish-earthquake

And there there was us:
Fortunately, our house is located on a hill inland from the sea. As a result, we didn’t have to deal with the whole tsuanmi issue. In addition, because I’m a complete paranoid, I’ve been carrying out major house strengthening work (removing the brick chimney, increasing the strength of the roof, screwing cupboards to the wall etc.) and as a result, we came through remarkably unscathed. At the time we had a lot of books falling off the shelves, food flying out of cupboards but, otherwise, nothing major. A quick look around the structure of the house the following day revealed a number of cracks in our garden wall and paths up to the house that may be a problem in the future but not for the moment at least.

We were also lucky in that we’d both finished our external contract work so anything we had to do, we could do in the home office and hence, didn’t need to go into town. As a result, we missed the flooding debacle, the initial construction work etc.(in fact, I didn’t leave the house for four days). We were also lucky in that although some of the city lost power and communications, we managed to escape all that. Our systems are also backed up on mirror servers in other countries. As long as we have access to a computer we can access most of what we need.

Overall, therefore, we were remarkably lucky and its seemed oddly surreal to be sitting in front of the television, in the comfort of our own home, watching “low-key Armageddon” as our city floundered from one event to another. It’s been twenty days since the quake now and although we still get the odd aftershock everyone seems to have put it behind them. Underneath it all of course, they’re still going around with baited breath and frayed nerves. Generally speaking, I consider myself quite brave and even heroic (except where it comes to actual danger!) but I have no problems saying this whole event scared the crap out of me.

God, the trauma!

You know, this has actually been quite therapeutic. It feels oddly liberating to vent all this onto someone. I haven’t really spoken to anyone else about it (they usually start running away). But, hey! I feel a hell of a lot better!

Eh … How much do I owe you?

Update:
Since originally writing this article, I returned to the city centre for a very short external contract to facilitate a conceptual workshop on – get this – impacts on the Christchurch earthquake sequence in 2010-2013. Ten minutes before the workshop was due to start, the alarms went off and the building was evacuated. I had to escape down the stairwells from the seventh floor.
Now THAT’s irony!

A Cultural Theft in the West Cork Heartland

Posted on November 24, 2016 by - Blog, Folklore

Travelling to a favourite West Cork site this July took on a somewhat surreal edge. Over the morning, the drizzle congealed to mist then back again (several times) before finally deciding to settle on a light grey fog of soupish consistency. Taking the old road right some time after the Coosane – a road I’ve taken all my life – I somehow went astray, heading up into the mist coated hills and ended up negotiating an unfamiliar labyrinth of grey-green botharíns. Beside me, my French friend said nothing, calmly trusting my driving skill as he did his best to locate a view.

When we got to the lake, the water was black and still, the air heavy with moisture. Even as I parked the car however, I could see a busload of tourists down by the water and exploring the island so we retired to the Gougane Barra Hotel until they were gone. Before I went inside, I looked back just in time to see the fog come down hard, swallowing up the tourists. In the odd, fog-bound silence that followed, I could hear the sound of clicking cameras and an occasional laugh and wondered what they could possibly be taking photos of.

One of the girls serving in the café told me that there’d been a theft from the island two months earlier.

‘The mass box?’ I asked, assuming they’d have gone for the little donation box in the rectory, the only cash on the island.

‘No,’ she told me, her voice full of unexpected outrage. ‘An altar stone.’

That threw me. The altar stones are flat, very heavy stones that mark some of the stop points for pilgrims doing a round on the island (the prehistoric ritualistic route still followed by pilgrims today). Most are a few hundred years old and bear deep white marks on the surface where generations of pilgrims have carved crosses when they stop to pray or meditate. The stones themselves have no monetary worth. Their value is entirely historical, cultural and spiritual.

irish-mythology

There was a lot of talk in the café about who might have stolen the stone. No-one believed it was local people. The alter stone was a respected fixture in their lives and, more importantly, it would have taken at least 2-3 people to carry it. Impossible then, to keep it secret.

The initial suspicion had fallen on vandals from Cork city but given the amount of effort required, it seemed uncharacteristic behaviour. Divers had also searched the shallow waters around the island but there was no sign of it, suggesting it had been transported away from the site.

The latest theory was that it was some over-avid tourist or an overseas collector of antiquities, individuals so impressed by the site they decided to destroy it.

Later, on the island, a small poster and photo in the rectory confirmed the theft and plaintively asked anyone with information to pass it onto the Gardaí. Staring down at the empty spot where the stone used to sit, I shared some of the girl from the café’s outrage. I wondered whether the stone was now lying in some idiot’s garden, or in their home like a prized museum piece.

I’ve always had a sense of key aspects of Irish culture being eroded but generally these have been mostly at an intellectual level – the different way of thinking we have compared to other cultures, the different way we look at and see the world. The stone however, was a physical representation, a corporeal snippet of native culture.

In some respects, we can consider ourselves quite lucky. The stolen stone is now just a stone with a few crosses on it and has no other meaning that that. In Gougane Barra however, the ritual continues, more popular than ever.

And there are plenty of other stones in West Cork.

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Update on the Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition

Posted on November 14, 2016 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, Short Stories

competition-small
Less than four weeks now remain before submissions close for the Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition (closing date is 10 December 2016).

Feedback on your submissions:
After some discussion amongst ourselves, we’ve decided to offer the possibility of feedback (from the judges/editor) to those authors whose stories didn’t make the final Celtic Mythology Collection. Having gone through a number of competitions ourselves in the past, we know what it’s like to have work rejected and this is our way of giving something back to those of you who’ve made the effort of submitting.

Given that this is a last-minute decision however, we’re going to implement the process as a limited pilot (to see how it might be more effectively implemented in future competitions):
At this stage therefore, we propose to provide the feedback:
(1) as a scanned file of the hard-copy submission with hand-written notes (this will be emailed to the author)
(2) for a percentage (yet to be decided) of the total submissions that didn’t make it to the final selection.

photo-1470169048093-08ac89858749

Given that we’re still feeling our way on this we can’t guarantee your submission will receive feedback but if you’d like to be eligible for this feedback, please make a note of that in your email when you make your submission.

Obviously, any feedback provided will be based on ‘judgements’ of the various judges and is only meant to be of assistance. Because of workloads, we won’t be entering into any further correspondence once that feedback is provided.

A link to this post will be sent out to those authors who’ve already made submissions.

The Last of the Fir Bolg (Irish Mythology)

Posted on November 11, 2016 by - Blog

Earlier this year when visiting the Aran Islands I came across a story I’d not heard before concerning the Fir Bolg.

But first, a bit of context:

According to that very dubious source of Irish history/mythology, the Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of Invasions), the population of Ireland was derived from a series of numerous (well … six) consecutive colonising invasions from six different population groups. The fourth of these invading groups were known as the Fir Bolg and were said to be descendants of the third group (the Nemed) who died from disease or fled the country (commencing the long tradition of Irish emigration!)

According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Fir Bolg were enslaved by the Greeks and obliged to toil by carrying bags of stone and soil, an uneasy rationale for how they got their name (one possible interpretation for “Fir Bolg” is “Men of bags” although it’s now believed actually mean “those who swell up” with battle fury). Somehow surviving 230 years of slavery, the Fir Bolg manage to depart from Greece and returned to Ireland where they divided the country up into Ireland into five separate provinces.

irish-mythology

Unfortunately, after all that effort, a mere thirty-seven years later, the fifth invading population group (the Tuath Dé Dannann) turned up and defeated the Fir Bolg in battle at Mag Tuired (Moytirra). At this point the narrative of the text varies with some versions indicating the Fir Bolg left Ireland altogether and others saying they retreated to Connacht to live in peace.

For a long time, as a result of the Lebor Gabála Érenn and other sources, many people believed that the inhabitants of the more isolated islands off the western Irish coast were the descendants of the Fir Bolg. More importantly, these people were also believed to be almost direct descendants as the population on the western islands had remained relatively untouched and unspoiled by the undue influences of civilization and progress.

From 1859 onwards, this particular belief became more important as a result of Charles Darwin’s “On The Origin of the Species”. Following its publication, there was immense interest in theories of evolution and the idea that physical characteristics such as height, hair and eye colour etc. might show a direct line of progress from ‘ape/uncivilised’ man to ‘civilised’ man. With reference to the Irish situation, Alfred Haddon (an English anthropologist and ethnographic) co-founded Dublin’s Anthropometric Laboratory in 1891, ‘with the explicit aim of understanding the racial characteristics of the Irish people’.

The people of the islands in the west of Ireland suddenly became very important because their “pure pedigree” (as descendants of the Fir Bolg) meant that they potentially held the key to the origins of the Irish race. In an increasingly nationalistic Ireland, there was keen interest from many nationalists to use these new ‘sciences’ to justify and support their own political beliefs. From the English camp meanwhile, there was also great interest in locating evidence that might explain the existence of the ‘black’ or ‘Africanoid’ Irish and the presence of such a primitive (white) race living so close to the United Kingdom (during this period, the Irish were regularly portrayed as apelike in English newspapers such as ‘Punch’ etc.)

It came as no surprise therefore, when Haddon and an Irish doctor by the name of Charles Browne arrived on the Aran Islands in 1893 and started recording the head size, cranial capacity, eye colour, skin pigmentation etc. of every islander (whom they referred to as “Aranites”) they could get their hands on. Women, of course, following the prejudices of the time, were excluded from analysis.

The study created immense interest and in the end, the results were published in 1893 in the Proceedings if the Royal Irish Academy. In terms of the Fir Bolg theory, unfortunately it all turned out to be something of a damp squib for all concerned with the report author’s summarizing it as follows:

“To what race the Aranites belong we do not pretend to say, but it is pretty evident they cannot be Firbolgs, if the latter are correctly described as small, dark-haired and swarthy.”

[Final Note: These days, the general academic consensus is that the Fir Bolg were an early Celtic group called the Bolgae (not to be confused with the Belgae) who established a settlement in Ireland.]

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Literature, Bob Dylan, and the Emperor’s New Clothes

Posted on November 5, 2016 by - Blog, Uncategorized

litearture competition

I’ve never really been a Bob Dylan fan. That’s not because he particularly annoys me or anything, it’s simply because I never actually got around to listening to his music. Growing up in Ireland, we had a significant number of local and national musical influences that competed strongly with the international acts in demanding our attention. Bob kinda fell between the cracks and as a result, even now, if I tried to name one of his songs, I’d be struggling to come up with would anything beyond “Mr Tamborine Man” (and I’m sure he’s put out one or two more tunes since then).

All the same, Dylan came to my attention over a week ago when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (this is one of the five Nobel Prizes – the others are for Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine and, of course, the Peace Prize). This was all fine and dandy of course. Yet another celebrity getting an award (or a knighthood) is hardly anything new. What did prick my interest however was the reported absence of any reaction from the singer/songwriter in response to the announcement. Dylan never issued a public statement, he didn’t return the Swedish Academy’s phone calls (the group responsible for choosing and awarding the prize), he made no comment on his website. Strangely enough, although Dylan didn’t actually decline the prize, neither did he acknowledge it.

litearture competition

literature-competition

Again, I probably wouldn’t have taken much notice of that either if it hadn’t been for the surprising bitchiness of the Swedish Academy’s subsequent commentary. One member of the Academy sounded particularly petty when he came out publicly and stated that Dylan’s behavior was “impolite and arrogant”. There was a delicious kind of irony to the fact that what he was really saying, was ‘how dare Dylan not acknowledge the prize that WE decided to award him.”

And therein lies the key problem with the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s chosen and awarded by a small group of Swedish critics (and occasionally some exclusively invited add-ons). When you think about it, that’s pretty weird. How can such a small group have such influence and power with respect to international literature.

The reality of course is that it can’t. Unless …
Unless it has the tacit support of a whole sector or infrastructure behind it.

And that’s pretty much the situation here. The infrastructure consists of the Nobel Foundation (which is of course a renowned institution, although it’s just not entirely clear whether it’s a good one or a bad one) and the mainstream commercial publishing industry. The latter in particular has strong vested financial interests in ensuring society as a whole accepts the authority of the Swedish Academy, the Man Booker Prize Committee, the Hugo Award Committee yadda, yadda, yadda, in deciding whether a book has merit or not.

The reason for this is fairly simple. Despite the millions of published works available out there (more than any one person could possibly hope to read over their lifetime), the only ones you’ll ever hear about are those that are commercially advertised or which you’re told have literary merit (as decided by someone you don’t know and who doesn’t know you).

Oh, and you should really go out and buy them, by the way.

That pressure from the commercial literary sector has an important downstream effect. Because so many critics, publishers, and arts funding agencies accept the authority of entities like the Academy to decide ‘literary merit’, writers too are obliged to toe the line and go along with the established storyline. There’s prize money associated with the prize after all. And lots of publicity and prestige which the more insecure writers seek for validation and, the more canny ones, for leverage.
Given its subsequent influence, the Swedish Academy is accustomed to a degree of ‘forelock pulling’, bowing and scraping from the privileged individuals blessed by their munificence.

This time around, in awarding the Prize for Literature to Dylan, the Swedish Academy shot itself in the foot. Bob Dylan is someone who doesn’t have anything to prove. He’s already made his millions, he’s achieved more fame than he’s probably ever wanted. He has no need for the official validation the Swedish Academy offered and he has no need to pander to them. In essence, they probably have no little relevance or value to him.

The Academy are furious with Dylan of course and it’s not because he was “rude” but because he’s exposed the whole “Emperor’s New Clothes” scenario associated with literature and, in particular, revealed the worthlessness of what the Swedish Academy offers. That revelation threatens the justification for their existence (and possibly the Nobel Foundation’s existence) but it also threatens the personal income/ kudos of those connected with the institutions. In their view, what Dylan has done is unforgiveable and as a result you can probably expect a substantial number of ‘safe’ (mainstream) winners of this award for the years to come.

To quote the New York Times, “Dylan’s refusal to accept the authority of the Swedish Academy has been a wonderful demonstration of what real artistic and philosophical freedom looks like.” It would be fascinating to see writers who are brave enough to step forward in that regard.

[Note and update: This article was originally published in the October Irish Imbas Books newsletter. Since then, a vague reference has been included on Bob Dylan’s website in that it now includes the declaration “winner of the Nobel prize in literature”. No other statement has been made. Go, Bob!]

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What If New Zealand Maori Colonised England?

Posted on September 30, 2016 by - Blog, Mise (Me), My Writing, Short Stories

Few things get my blood curdling but one was a media announcement in New Zealand yesterday when an individual by the name of Don Brash introduced a lobby group of ‘like-minded individuals’ vowing to vanquish radial separatism of the New Zealand political landscape (i.e. suppress the uppity indigenous people).

maori-the-dead-lands
[Pic: Maori woman warrior wielding ‘patu’ from the film ‘The Dead Lands’]

To be honest, I was a bit surprised they gave this racially-prejudiced lunatic any media time. A previous Reserve Bank Governor and past leader of New Zealand’s ‘National Party’, he ran a campaign back in 2004 based on pretty racist, anti-Maori sentiment. His claim at the time, was that the indigenous people of New Zealand (the New Zealand societal group who are the worst represented in terms of education, income, health and crime statistics – in fact every feckin quality of life statistic you can measure) were apparently being more favorably treated than whites and received special privileges that white people didn’t.

[I should probably mention here that my kids are Maori (and Irish, of course) and have a very strong sense of both cultures].

Unexpectedly, at the time, that appealed to large mass of the New Zealand population who’d been conned (by the National Party and a pretty inept New Zealand media) into believing Maori were going to ‘own’ all the beaches in the country and block white New Zealanders from using them. Fortunately, sanity prevailed, Brash lost the election and over time the dodgy tactics he was using came to light (as did a better media understanding of the genuinely poor state of Maori in New Zealand). Since then, Brash has become something of a figure of amusement/contempt although he still has enough friends in the political and media establishment to get a hearing when he has some money to throw around.

Seeing Brash on screen, peddling his well-heeled prejudice like some kind of high-end, soft porn, was genuinely infuriating and brought back a lot of memories of 2004/2005. Back then, I was so furious at the injustice of it all I wrote a short story called ‘Morris Dancing’ which imagines a scenario where Great Britain is visited by Maori explorers and missionaries and subsequently colonised. Most of the story reflects key aspects (and events) of New Zealand’s colonisation by the English Crown but by putting the boot on the other foot, I was able to play around and have a lot of fun with the concept. Much of the narrative in the story incorporates material from Don Brash’s speech notes of 2004, much of which is recognisable to New Zealanders.

The story was originally published in the short story collection Leannán Sidhe – The Irish Muse but I’ve put a free version of it here (see below) if you’re interested. I don’t think it’s one of my best stories by any means, but it was a way of dealing with the anger. To my surprise, when it was released it received quite a lot of positive commentary and a lot of Kiwis seemed genuinely intrigued (and amused) by the idea. It turns out that sometimes, we can better more effectively see our own faults and prejudices through a contorted mirror image.

If you’re interested, you can download a copy (PDF) of the story here at morris-dancing.

The Truth About Irish Woman Warriors (Irish Mythology)

Posted on September 9, 2016 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology

There’s a lot of fantasy out there when it comes to women warriors, particularly where it relates back to those in the Irish or Celtic realm. To be fair, the subject is hardly a new one. Since the development of literature itself, writers and readers have been enamoured by tales of fighting women (particularly Herodotus with his notes on the inaccurately-named Amazons), probably because they’re such a rarity in ancient warfare, an area generally dominated by men.

That’s not to say, of course, that woman don’t or didn’t fight. There are numerous historical and contemporary examples of women fighting to defend themselves or, more often, fighting to protect the ones they love. And, in most cases, that’s the key difference. Men were most often portrayed as fighting for abstracts like patriotism or glory. Women, less so. Women’s role in ancient warfare obviously differed within cultures but, in a (very) general sense, women were portrayed as fighting only when it was absolutely necessary or when it was necessary for some other element in the tale. People have different opinions on whether that’s a product of biology, society, upbringing or something entirely different. Either way, it’d be foolish to ignore the patterns of millennia across ancient (and modern) societies.

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When it comes to the concept of women warriors in the ancient Irish mythological context, there’s certainly a lot more literary references compared to other contemporary societies of the same period. Some people use this fact to argue that female fighters were common in early Irish society and that it was a far more ‘gender equal’ society but that’s a pretty big leap to make. In general, most academics tend to agree that this discrepancy is simply due to the fact that the Irish mythological narratives (and here you can loosely use the term ‘Celtic’ as it also covers modern-day Scotland) were much more successively conserved in Ireland than they were in the other, more directly colonised countries.

Whatever you believe, the ancient tales still have to be treated with a lot of caution. The writers/recorders of that time were not above a bit of creative licence or prejudice. People forget that just because something was written a long time ago, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

If we look at Irish mythology then, the best known women warriors tend to include:

  • Scáthach – a woman warrior who appears in the Ulster Cycle who was based in modern-day Scotland. She instructs Cú Chulainn in a number of martial feats and when he catches her with her guard down, is forced to take him as a lover
  • Aífe – a rival of Scáthach who Cú Chulainn forces to lie with him at swordpoint and subsequently bears him a son
  • Neasa (Ness) – a woman warrior forced into marriage at swordpoint by the warrior/druid Cathbad and future mother of the famous Conchobhar mac Nessa
  • Liath Luachra – a guardian of the young Fionn mac Cumhaill, briefly mentioned in the Fenian Cycle but for whom there’s very little information available

In the first three examples, one gets an overpowering impression from the literature that the character of the powerful woman warrior was created specifically to highlight the sexual accomplishment and domination of the male ‘hero’ who subsequently overpowers her (a pattern also found with other women warrior characters in the mythology). With the third example, Liath Luachra is actually a guardian to the young hero, a relationship that, in a sense, is desexualised.

Other women mentioned in the ancient Irish literature who are often offered as examples of women warriors include:

  •  Meadhbh (also spelt Medb, Maeve etc.) – Queen of Connacht in the Táin (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
  •  The Morríghan (or Mór-ríoghain)

In fact, neither of these actually make the cut if you look at them in any kind of detail. All of the literary and archaeological evidence to date suggests the characters are personifications of female deities as opposed to warrior women. Articles or literary works suggesting that they are, generally indicates the author hasn’t done his/her homework or is pushing an argument that’s probably driven more by wish fulfilment than fact.

Over the last twenty years or so, representation of women warriors has become much more prevalent, particularly where entertainment aligns with more contemporary underlying themes of gender equality etc. Given the prevalence of characters in the Irish mythology, there’s also been a tendency to ‘borrow’ them for contemporary fictions but without any real consideration of the underlying cultural context. This occasionally results in works that are not only overly romanticised but which ignore some of the strong negative gender undercurrents associated with the characters, something of which the authors often seem – disturbingly – unaware.

Souvenirs from Ireland – Battle of the Books

Posted on August 31, 2016 by - Blog, Mise (Me), My Writing

Every time I come back from Ireland it’s a ‘Battle of the Books’ in terms of permitted baggage weight on international flights. I suppose the only good thing is that its something of a natural restriction to excess reading.

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This is a selection of the books I carried in my bag (but not all) last week. It also doesn’t include a number of graphic novels, some additional fiction and, of course, the numerous old local history books (about 20) I’ve had to photograph into digital form (the libraries don’t allow you to photocopy theses nowadays in case it causes damage). I reckon there’s at least 1.5 years of analysis, additional research and conceptual thinking associated with all this.

Still! Keeps me off the street and out of trouble.

Fierce Times at the Black Fort (Irish mythology)

Posted on August 26, 2016 by - Blog

We did some exploring around Na hÁrainneacha (the Aran Islands) for a few days this month, carrying out research on a number of the prehistoric fortresses and hoping to get a few photos that we could work into future covers for the Fionn mac Cumhaill series.

Most people tend to associate the islands with the more famous Dún Aoghonsa and although that fortress is undeniably spectacular, our favourite actually turned out to be the lesser known Dún Dúchathair. Incorrectly translated into English as ‘The Black Fort’ (the name is more correctly translated as the “Fort of the Black Stone”).

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This formidable site sits up on an isolated cliff promontory on the south-eastern side of An Árainn Mhór (Inishmore), the largest of the three islands. As prehistoric buildings go, this one is old, so old there’s very little actually known about it (although it’s believed to be contemporary with the equally dramatic Dún Aoghonsa which was built around 1110 BC). On a bright day, seeing the edifice silhouetted against the startlingly vivid horizon you can also understand the origin of its Irish name.

Although An Árainn Mhór is only nine kilometres long, the Black Fort is surprisingly difficult to access, set as it is on the far side of network of rocky channels that have to be traversed with some caution. Crossing the flat – but very pitted and uneven rocky surface – is a bit like walking across a benign minefield. It’s all very possible but you’re obliged to keep your eyes on the ground at all times unless you stop moving. If you don’t, it’s inevitable that you’ll become a cropper. That was one thing that really struck me about the entire island. Because the terrain’s so rough, unless you’re walking on a modern road or flat, you always have to walk with your head bowed.

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The most immediate thing that comes to mind as you approach Dún Dúchathair is that it was obviously built with a defensive purpose in mind. Even today, it’s a site that’s not easily approached due to the reasons outlined above. Add to that, the cliffs on three sides, the chevaux de frises (dense series of rock obstructions placed in a vertical position that make the difficult surface even harder to traverse) and a six-metre high wall spread across the edge of the promontory, and you’re seriously left wondering how successful a land-based assault could possibly have been. Even with dramatically superior numbers, any attacking force would also have been exposed to sling-shot, javelins and spears and suffered losses that were almost certainly unsustainable.

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Ironically, despite its immense defences, Dún Dúchathair turned out to be most at risk from its own defensive positioning. At some stage in the distant past, a large section of the flat promontory making up the interior of the fort, fell into the sea, its base eroded over centuries by the crashing power of the waves below.

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Love on the Aran Islands

Posted on August 18, 2016 by - Blog, My Writing

The attached photo will be the cover shot for Irish Imbas Books’ exciting new range of romantic and erotic novels under the brand “Love on The Aran Islands”. Titles include:

  • First Touch at Killronan (Cill rónáin)
  • Fast Times at the Dark Fort
  • Fierce Goings On at Dún Aonghasa
  • Forty Shades of Bungolwa
  • Hot Sweats in Innisheer

 

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Hopefully, you actually didn’t believe all that.

This photo was taken during some extraordinarily hot weather out on the islands last week, just a day after a storm that knocked the telephone mast down.