A couple of lines from a poem by F. R. Higgins are going round in your mind and, in desperation, you ring three Dublin bookshops to find out if they have any of his works. Result: nil. Then you hope that Ben Kiely will turn up at a function later in the day, for it was said he hoped to be there. He did come and, asked about the relevant lines, he delivered the whole poem: "they've paid the last respects in sad tobacco/And silent is this wake house in its haze . . ." and on to: "They'll miss his heavy stick and stride in Wicklow/His story-talking down Winetavern Street . . . "and so on to the end. It is from Higgins's peom Padraig O'Conaire, Gaelic Storyteller. This was up in the atmospheric presence of Antony Farrell and his Lilliput Press. Surrounded by Viking land which you, as a southsider, know not: Antony is at Sitric Road, and all around are Northman and Olaf and Viking street, road or place. Houses neat and shining, spick and span doorsteps. But we were there to welcome in a book on the O'Nolan family, specifically The early years of Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen. Authorship is given on the cover to Ciaran O Nuallain, who wrote it in Irish over 20 years ago. Then it was translated by his sister Roisin Ni Nuallain into English, but now comes to us edited by brother Niall O'Nolan. It is short, 110 pages, and, apart from the always interesting family, carries with a light touch a good deal of social history. To today's academic-minded population it reveals that, after moving from Tullamore to Dublin (the father was a Customs and Excise man and was drafted here and there), the three brothers Gearoid, Brian and Ciaran were sent, to school for the first time. Gearoid was 15 years of age, Ciaran was 13 and Brian (Myles) was 12. Of the earlier, non-school years, Ciaran writes: "the halcyon years of freedom were priceless."
Oddments of knowledge include how to spear flatfish. In 1934 Brian/Myles found a comic paper called Blather. Part of the introduction read: "Blather is a publication of the Gutter, the King Rat of the Irish Press, the paper that will achieve entirely new levels in everything that is contemptible, despicable and unspeakable in contemporary journalism . . ." it aimed at "making Ireland fit for the deprived readers of Blather to live in."