The Last Storyteller

The classical mythologies had conspicuous purpose—to teach us how to live. Not only that, it was to their design that we built the drama that entertains us on film, on the page, on the stage. Action, betrayal, murder, romance, politics—the gods had it all. Every archetypal figure known to us—for good or bad—had a legendary beginning: the sage, the hero, the villain, the virgin. Every plot that stirs our blood, whatever its technological sophistication or contemporary reference, can first be found in the antics of Zeus and all who sprang from his forehead (or elsewhere), or the deities of China, India, Indonesia, Peru, Scandinavia—gods put their feet everywhere. Every fictional ingredient that we relish today was first savored at the feet of those mythic figures—heroism and cowardice, deed and retribution, revenge, obsession, passion, unrequited love, gain, loss, remorse, grief, redemption. Mythology was a bible ever before there was a Bible.

The Irish own an especially rich seam of mythic literature. If its themes consist in common humanity, it has a personality like no other. Warriors, naturally, play leading roles, as do impressive women, jilted lovers and wise men. Beautiful apparel features, and exquisite jewelry, and gorgeous horses, and food, and bards, and evil magicians—but to find where Irish legends differ from other mythologies, look for ambiguity, and a capacity to feel conflicting passions with equal force.

And the Irish keep regenerating their mythology. In the middle of the twentieth century, as though to keep the warrior forces of their legends rolling onward, revolution broke out again, twenty years after most of
the island believed that ancient matters with England had been somewhat resolved. The Partition, if not a wholly satisfactory result to many, had at least proved workable. Some gods, it seems, thought otherwise. And when matters turned bloody, the Irish saw, once again, the greatest and subtlest of all mythology’s ingredients—irony.

PART ONE
The Living Legend

He comes back to my mind when I smell wood smoke. We had a clear and crisp October that year, and a simple white plume of smoke rose through the trees from his fairy-tale chimney. The long, quiet lane ended at his gate. My nose wrinkled as I climbed out of the car.
Applewood? Not sweet enough. Beech? Possibly, from the old mansion demesne across the road. Could it be elm?
Twenty years later it would be, as the elms died everywhere.

A white fence protected his small yard and its long rectangles of grass. He had a yellow garden bench and rosebushes, pruned to austerity. Around the side of the house I counted one, two, three fruit trees. If, on a calendar, a tourist brochure, or a postcard, you saw such a scene, with the golden roof of thatched and smocked straw, a pleased smile would cross your mind.

Not a sound to be heard, not a dog nor a bird. My breathing went short and shallow, and I swallowed, trying to manage my anticipation. Somebody had polished the door knocker so brilliantly that my fingers smudged the gleaming brass.

They said that he was eighty. Maybe he was, but when he opened the door our eyes came exactly level, and I was six feet three and a half inches. He shook hands as though closing a deal, and I was so thrilled to meet him at long last that my mouth turned dry as paper.

“Do you know anything about houses like this?” he asked as he led me into the wide old kitchen.

I knew everything about the house, I knew everything about him—but I wanted to hear it in his words, his voice.

“It feels nicely old,” I ventured.

He laughed. “Hah! ‘Nicely old’—I’ll borrow that.” Then, with some care, he turned to survey me, inclined his head a little, and smiled at me as though I were his beloved son. “I’m very pleased to meet you at last.”