The first thing to note about this book is that the body parts in question are not specific to one individual, so Dr Ian Miller is not extrapolating a hypothesis from Daniel O’Connell’s kidney or Michael Collins’s fibula. Rather, Miller has taken a broad look at how certain bodily sections were treated throughout the centuries on our island, with chapters devoted to brains, stomachs and sexual organs, for example.
Beginning with one of Ireland’s most famous corpses, the iron age bog body of Clonycavan Man and his ancient Celtic hair gel, Miller delves into myth as well as historical record, from the legends of the Tuatha dé Danann to the origins of Irish dancing. Along the way, there are a host of titillating anecdotes, such as St Patrick being asked to suck the nipples of a ship’s crew in Wexford (an ancient means of apologising, apparently) or the rise of Belfast hip-hop collective Kneecap.
Under the yoke of the Catholic Church, Ireland was renowned as a pious, sexually repressed nation, particularly in the early decades of the Free State when jazz was denounced from the pulpit as “sexualised, degenerate, corrupting and morally indecent”. Miller reveals that pre-Christian Ireland had very different attitudes to sexual relations, however, with polygamy, divorce and remarriage allowed under Brehon law.
Given his day job as senior lecturer in medical history at Ulster University, it’s not surprising that the author delves into our questionable relationship with mental health in a country where we locked away more citizens per capita in psychiatric institutions than anywhere else in the world.
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He examines the reasons behind the Great Famine and its repercussions, including how 700,000 young Irish women emigrated between 1885 and 1920, fleeing limited employment opportunities and a single life, contributing hugely to Ireland’s population decline.
The author’s views on Patrick Pearse are somewhat controversial, decrying the rebel leader’s “all-consuming yearning for martyrdom”. Pearse, he claims, “conjoined Christian doctrine and political violence” in a manner considered by religious authors to be “aggressively unorthodox and discordant with mainstream Christianity”.
Miller often brings us on the road less travelled, introducing us to Bram Stoker’s less famous brother, a leading doctor in the late 1800s, or revealing what he believes is the saddest song relating to Irish history, penned by a British author, in a fascinating potted history lesson.
John Walshe is a freelance critic
