Thomson's Woodbrook and the poetry of Kavanagh

From my last trip to rural Ireland.

Many times while reading Woodbrook, David Thomson's beautiful memoir of his ten years in rural Ireland in the 1930s and 40s, I was reminded of the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh (see Poem by Patrick Kavanagh), which so often described the inner lives of Irish farmers. Thomson writes about how financial troubles often meant that men in rural Ireland would get married quite late in life and sometimes never. They would end up, like Macguire in Kavanagh's famous poem, "The Great Hunger," living with their mother most of their lonely lives. In a happier section, Thomson's description of the preparation, anticipation and final pleasure of a post-harvest barn dance at Woodbrook brought to mind very specifically Kavanagh's poem "Iniskeen Road: July Evening," which I will put below an excerpt from Woodbrook about the Harvest Dance.

I knew one man who walked thirty-three miles to get to it in one day and thirty-three miles home when it was over. Some came in traps or on sidecars, a few on horses or sharing a motor-car or ass-cart -- old people that is -- but mostly they were young and had bicycles. The assembly of bicycles, traps, tethered horses, jennets, asses made it seem like a fair held at night...

The weather sometimes stopped us from fixing the date ahead. We would decide in the morning to have the dance that night. Tom, who was a good accordionist and leader of the band, would then be out most of the day on his bicycle gathering the players. One of the fiddlers lived at Ballyfarnan, seven miles to the north; and the best man on the squeeze-box, the old type of melodeon, at Croghan, five miles to the south. Drums and tin whistles were nearer. We would stop the Dublin-Sligo bus which passed Woodbrook gates at about two o'clock and tell the driver to spread the word along the Sligo road. The news would pass from farm to farm at dinner time. No private invitations were needed.

                                                                                 from Woodbrook by David Thomson

Now the Kavanagh poem I was reminded of. (I have never been able to figure out what the Selkirk reference is supposed to mean exactly, like it as I do...)

Iniskeen Road: July Evening

A friend I made on an Irish walk one day.

The bicycles go by in twos and threes --
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing. 

               - Patrick Kavanagh

                 from Ploughman and Other Poems