Mayo God Help Us is a multiple love story set in Co Mayo. Princess is a troubled girl, who had a traumatic childhood experience, is drawn to Hermit in his humble abode (an ancient church and burial ground).
Princess is also attracted to Vet, a renowned animal doctor. But Vet already has a fine Lady since their college days in Dublin. She is a professional musician and is composing her masterpiece, a Donkey Concerto. Another fanciful character is Paw Around, who is not the best dancer in the world. He has an obsession with the Showband era.
And if you are looking for an eccentric character, there is Penny Farthing, who circumnavigates around Mayo on an ancient bike with one giant wheel and one small wheel. He is organising the World Olympics Penny Farthing Tour de Mayo. Merry-Go-Round is a Civil Servant who has seen it all. He is into reincarnation, and recalls horrific experiences from past lives.
However, the main character of Mayo God Help Us is Mayo itself; an unashamed paean of praise for the beauty of its landscape; its heroic sons and daughters, who have achieved noble status in Mayo and around the world. Mayo spirit. Mayo spirituality never lapses into maudlin sentimentality and is brought out by the characters, with tongue-in-cheek wit and merriment.
Lady calls Mayo an Unfinished Symphony. Mayo pride and love of place dominate the novel.
Mayo God Help Us has been germinating in my psyche for decades. It had to out. It’s my terrible beauty slouching towards the sacred summit of the Reek, after a respectful genuflection at Knock.
A scribbler all my life, I graduated from the Bohola Post and on to David Marcus’s New Irish Writers in the Irish Press, picked up a few quid as a freelance journalist. I wrote the Davitt play, A Broad Canvas, and The Madness Pulpit for Andrews Lane Theatre. I am like the Dice Man creeping, ever so slowly, to where? Mars? The life of the world to come, hopefully. Who knows. But I do know that God is helping Mayo in His own mysterious way.
Born in Bohola, I know about emigration – I am a returned emigrant. I was one of the hundreds of thousands who left Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. I still have my bus conductor’s badge from Birmingham City Transport. I did a few night-shifts at Cadbury’s in Bournville, mostly eating the chocolate. I spent six years in Australia, working briefly in Mount Isa Mines in Queensland with two young men from Louisburgh.
When I first left Ireland, the CIE steam engine was still puffing smoke out at Ballyvary railway station. And without being too sentimental, my love for Mayo has not diminished.
In Mayo God Help Us, I have fictional characters and real-life heroes. Every town and village have so many fascinating stories to tell – The Quiet Man and The Playboy of the Western World are only scratching the surface of this enchanted county.
Per head of population, Mayo far exceeds any other county for real heroes and heroines – read the Roll of Honour of the Mayo Association of Dublin, Persons of the Year. And there is so much dignity in the diaspora. A section of the novel deals with the so-called “undocumented” in the US.
If given half a chance, the "undocumented" would become real heroes like John King of Ballinrobe, who won the Congressional Medal of Honour twice for outstanding bravery, and had a ship named in his honour. And Patrick Gallagher, a US Marine from Ballyhaunis, who was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest medal of honour, for saving the lives of his comrades.
And Admiral Browne from Foxford, Michael Davitt of Straide, Mary Robinson from Ballina – oh, stop me, somebody stop me! – Maggie from Mayo, Margaret Burke-Sheridan: they are all in the mystical mix of Mayo God Help Us, in this novel which bounds merrily from the parochial to the universal.
