"...stories birling through my mind..."
A literary journey
Prose
Irish culture & folklore
Ulster-Scots
Literary Essays
Book reviews
Photograph by Billy McWilliams
"...stories birling through my mind..."
![]() This book is page turner and a wonderful unintended excursion. It is ironic that I got lost in a glen on the way to Jo Zebedee’s book launch for Waters and the Wild, and I certainly gave my friends a wee titter on facebook when I described that journey from Larne to Carickfergus. How can anyone from Larne get lost on the back road to Carrickfergus?
At first I blamed the majesty of Glenoe, but maybe, just maybe, there were wee winged creatures in the undergrowth guiding my destination! I recently stumbled across the Ordnance surveys of the 1830s and discovered that apart from drinking copious amounts of whiskey and dancing their socks off, Presbyterians and Catholics of County Antrim in Victorian times were united in an unerring belief in the fairies! The Glens of Antrim surround the town in which I live and they have claimed a great big part of my heart: Sunday drives to buy ice-cream in Carnlough; childhood beach trips to Waterfoot; practice hikes and expeditions through marshy mountains on Duke of Edinburgh awards; romantic flights of fancy in a white Fiat Uno with my boyfriend in 1994; guiding tourists (without getting lost) around the waterfalls at Glenoe and Glenariff; leafy walks with my children around Glenarm forest and the music and laughter of the annual Dalriada festival. In short; enough to inspire my own literary endeavours. “It’s set in the Glens!” she said, and that’s all it took for me to be compelled to read Jo Zebedee’s Waters and the Wild.
0 Comments
|
ProseScene from Snugville Street
The Wedding Wisp 82 Waterloo Road Ballysnod The Teacher Voice The Last Day of Summer Scheme The Children of Latharna The Band Stick The Bully up the Brae God Created Butlins History & folkloreLanguage Blog I
Language Blog II Language Blog III Language Blog IV Kailyard & Dusty Bluebells Jean Park of Ballygally Fiddles and Melodeons Martha Taylor's diary Jean McCullagh at 104 Ballymena & the McConnells Arms in Irish Dancing Catholics & Protestants in Irish dancing EssaysIrish Times:
Irish Dancing: The Festival Story The Protestant in Irish Fiction. The Protestant in Irish fiction II Ulster-Scots in Irish Fiction An author in Wonderland Belfast Telegraph: Irish Dancing Miscellaneous Dancing in Victorian Ulster Learning the Irish Language. John Hewitt Summer School Book reviewsArchives
December 2020
|