kwalsh

It was a bright summer’s evening a few years ago. We were driving home on the main road westwards between Tallow and Fermoy, when my eyes fell upon the familiar dark silhouette of Conna Castle against the fiery blaze of the setting sun. So many times before I had seen this much loved quintessential local landmark, without paying it a second thought, as is so often the case with everyday things.

But at that moment, in its splendid setting of green and gentle countryside already filling up with the shadows of falling dusk, the whole atmospheric scene appeared suffused by the most extraordinary dreamy picturesque qualities of a kind which, once engraved upon that mysterious corner of the heart that we call home, remains ever with you for the rest of your life.

I am not a native of this area, but have lived happily here since 1985. But it takes time for the metamorphosis to occur by which the place where you merely live becomes part of your soul. Certainly, from that moment onwards I knew that I had set down roots here, that this truly was home, that place of shelter from the storm, of happy and genial remembrance, where the fullest joy of life is nourished and shared with those we most care for and love. “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain”, wrote Oliver Goldsmith long ago.

Villages can cast a strange, mysterious spell over you. While always excited and stimulated by the colour, exuberance and vitality of cities, you can never pass through a quiet village street without seeing the charming houses, each with their windows opening into the depths of unsung private worlds, evoking a feeling of real peace and a vague but certain longing to stay. For the most wonderful thing about any village is that it is built on a human scale, one that you can comprehend and encompass, where you are not just another face in the anonymous crowd but a true individual with the dignity and uniqueness that goes with that, in a setting where human relationships are close and intimate, woven into a community with its own identity derived from an incomparable richness of history and tradition.

By contrast what mind can absorb or even begin to understand the vast, impersonal, grey concrete suburban sprawl that now surrounds every great modern city with its motorways, flyovers, its miles of identical semi-detached dwellings and apartment blocks spreading in all directions for as far as the eye can see. You could be anywhere, and yet you could be nowhere, perhaps you are in Dublin or maybe it is London or New York. Then too villages are amazingly resilient. It is hard to believe that the gentle field directly across the road from St. Catherine’s Parish Church once teemed with hundreds of bivouacked khaki-clad soldiery bound for the battlefields of the First World War. They are long gone now, all vanished without trace, just like the immense conflict to which they marched and died.

But the village remains strong and vibrant, still the locals worship every Sunday morning in their fine, welcoming church just as their forebears did a century and more ago, in eloquent testimony to a proud way of life based on freedom, respect, tolerance, hard work, good humour and neighbourly compassion, a belief in the things of the spirit and the promises of the heart that open the way to eternity, a way of life untouched in its essentials by the rise and fall of empires or the raging of wars across the earth that eventually dissipate completely away in the vastness of time.

This is a spiritual place. It was the small world of that well-known and familiar colourful local character, the late Con Hartigan, outside of which he seldom strayed. As I write, I can see him now, slim, wiry little man, with his ragged coat and cap, walking along the endless roads, surrounded by a dark fluttering mass of crows eager for the crusts of bread he always threw to them. To many, his life seemed lonely and one of great discomfort, but not to him: all that mattered was that he was free to come and go as he pleased, always with a cheerful old ballad on his lips. For he loved and respected nature and understood its unity and purpose, seeing humanity’s place in the scheme of things, together with his own, with a clarity unknown to most of us. “They’re all goin’ some place”, Con would so often say of the birds and the animals whom he described as his brothers and sisters with the dazzling wisdom and insight of a latter-day St. Francis of Assisi.

His geographical horizons may have been small, but his imagination knew no bounds, for “the world is full of places”, he thoughtfully remarked, before passing on his way for the umpteenth time down to Conna for yet another loaf of bread. Such was his simplicity of life in these sylvan surroundings where I too have so many times across the years heard the rhythms of the life of this whole community as in the shrill cry of the hunting horns and the clatter of the chasing horses’ hooves, the febrile drumbeat of the rock concerts on sultry late June nights emanating from the castle grounds, the sweet pealing of the church bells through the still Sunday morning air calling the faithful to prayer, reflecting so much of what typifies life in this rural area in all its aspects whether rooted deeply in traditional practice, full of the resounding exuberance of modernity or rich in the mysteries of ancient belief. And it is precisely this blending of so many different influences that gives Conna and its surroundings their peculiar zest and most appealing charm, in a lifestyle that derives its ways of thinking and value-systems from the land. The time-honoured disciplines of agriculture demand the character-forming qualities of patient application and hard work, while the cycle of seasons offers the certainty of change that is such an irrepressible source of optimism and hope.

The advances of technology have ended the old rural hardships, so that we may all enjoy in our homes comforts and amenities undreamt of even by emperors of old. In the age of the Internet, nowhere is remote, nowhere is far away. Conna has long quietly spread its radiance through the world in the form of its exiles and its missionaries, but now it is accessible to the uttermost ends of the earth at the mere press of a switch. By its proximity to the industrial and commercial hub of the Greater Cork region, this area has also fully shared in the prosperity of the new confident, successful and dynamic Ireland. Large new housing developments have served to notably swell the local population; the number of addresses for mail delivery has doubled in recent years. In a sense, Conna has become an outpost of suburbia in the heart of the countryside, but a strong and forward-looking community rightly sees nothing to fear in any of this, but rather that the arrival of so many new families to build their future represents a huge vote of confidence and a great new source of strength.

Then too the new developments have not been on such a scale as to dwarf or overwhelm that which has gone before, but while providing a stimulus both economic and demographic, will not disturb those essential slender golden threads of continuity that give to this place its proud and special heritage, so that Conna can march forward into its future, while never forgetting its past in a balancing of human faculties that is the secret to a peaceful, happy and dignified life. With all these changes, life here has thankfully not lost its relaxed and gentle pace in a frenetic age when millions sit in traffic jams every day.I have already mentioned Conna’s great spirit of resilience, facing all adversity to forge a better tomorrow.

To my mind, nothing so graphically illustrates this than the opening date inscribed above the door of the original Muintir na Tire Hall: 1945. At a time when all of Europe from the English Channel to the Urals lay in ruins and the world huddled under the shadow of a mushroom cloud, this rural community, small in numbers but so great in imagination and generosity, made a grand and emphatic gesture of hope by inaugurating this new centre to serve the needs of that local generation and of those yet unborn. The opening ceremony was performed by that great visionary priest of those days, Canon Hayes of Bansha, who was escorted into the village by mounted outriders, among whom was numbered Ms. Nellie Flynn, a truly great lady possessed of a wealth of stories and a heart rich in kindness, someone who personifies all that is best about her community and who I am glad to say is a very dear and special friend of ours. The hall opened that day has been superceded by another erected as a result of a massive community effort in the 1980s, as a centre of sport and recreation, the forum of local democracy, a popular venue of entertainment, a flourishing place for the pleasure and cultural edification of all generations, continuing and furthering an admirable tradition begun in dark and troubled times into today’s brighter and more peaceful world.

I recall some years ago while sitting in a dentists’ waiting room - of all places - meeting a man whose conversation served as a welcome and warm distraction to the painful ordeal we were both about to face. Telling him that I now resided in the Conna area, his mind revisited the very wet summer of 1946 that he spent helping to save hay and gather the crops for a local farmer. He mentioned the names of certain people, most of whom I did not know; indeed they are probably long since gone to those golden fields of the everlasting tomorrow. In all the years since, he remarked, he had never come back to the Bride Valley; but one thing that intrigued him was whether the GAA tradition here was as strong and as celebrated as it had been back in those distant days? He went on to relate how day after day of that long dreary summer, the dark clouds glowered and the rains had torrentially poured, except for one Sunday morning that dawned so memorably clear, bright and blue skied. With such a heaven-sent opportunity, he hastened for an anticipated hard day’s haymaking once Mass was over. But to his astonishment the whole area was deserted; the fields were silent.

The whole community almost to the last man, woman and child had decamped for Midleton to see St. Catherine’s play in the county final. I will leave it to the historical experts in such matters to say as to whether all this zeal was rewarded by victory. But in an ever-changing world, one thing remains assuredly the same: the almost religious pride and loyalty inspired by the skill and prowess of St. Catherine’s hurling club, by which not even the darkest cloud is allowed dampen the enjoyment of life. Long may it so continue.

My family and I have lived here for the past seventeen years, just a couple of miles from the village, enjoying almost direct line-of-sight with the castle. Beyond it rise the gentle, rolling southern hills, a pastiche of wide fields and scattered woodlands. So many times I have watched the dark shadows of passing clouds chase each other across the face of those mild slopes, interspersed by dazzling beams of flitting sunlight. In the words of one old native, “It is God’s Own Country down there”. And I can see what he meant by that. As did my own late father John, who came here in retirement and who so loved this place, whether stopping to chat in a village shop, admire the glories of the countryside, enjoy the many peaceful walks, sing in the church choir at Sunday morning Mass, so that those twilight years which he passed here in the valley of the Bride were the happiest of his life. No one can draw the lineaments of the future or foretell what turnings may lie ahead on the road of life, but wherever the unfolding of personal destiny may lead, nothing can ever change how this sweet locality and its people were so deeply cherished and appreciated by my father, something that will ever ensure that Conna will be to me, as it was to him, a place apart.

A place is its people. I have had the inestimable privilege of knowing some truly fine and wonderful personalities here and the supreme pleasure of counting them among my very best friends. How can I fail to mention one of Conna’s most illustrious, highly distinguished and accomplished sons in the person of the late Commandant Denis Mellerick, for many years conductor of the Curragh Command Army Band, whose musical genius graced and enhanced some of the most significant and momentous public occasions in twentieth century Irish history, one in whose hallowed memory Conna people can take the greatest pride. This was a man who received the personal congratulations and warmest thanks of President John F. Kennedy for the striking originality and excellence of the musical arrangements accompanying so many of the ceremonial highlights of the triumphant June 1963 homecoming to the shores of ‘this green and misty isle’ of this most charismatic son of the Irish Diaspora. After JFK had vowed to return in the springtime that he would never see, he stood to attention for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, its noble strains wafting across the tarmac of Shannon Airport and throughout the world via live television coverage, under the baton of Commandant Mellerick, a moment forever steeped in the rarest poignancy.

And it was again at another airport - that of Dublin - on a crisp autumn morning in 1979, that Pope John Paul II became the first reigning Pontiff to set foot on Irish soil. For weeks Denis had deliberated exhaustively as to how he could celebrate in musical terms the grandeur and uniqueness of the coming to this country of this Pope from Poland and Rome. Then he conceived of writing a wholly original arrangement of a most famous classic piece by a long dead Polish national hero and artistic genius of the past as a handsome tribute to another great son of Poland now raised to the greatest position of leadership in the Christian world. The Pontiff himself registered his appreciation of the gesture by the measured, dignified manner in which he inspected the drawn-up honour-guard in perfect harmony with the regal and stately rhythms of Frederic Chopin’s Polonaise, a choice that was truly a masterstroke of appropriateness by an outstanding musical maestro.

Others perhaps might not have cared so much or thought so long and deeply as he did to achieve something so memorably impressive. But Denis was a man driven not only by dedication to a much-loved duty but above all to a lifelong search for excellence that is truly inspirational. For music was not his living, it was the greatest pleasure of his life, the celebration of his pleasure in living. When I came to know Denis (known affectionately to us as ‘the Commandant’) following his return to his native Conna to enjoy a well-earned retirement, these glorious moments had become the stuff of gilded memory. Above all, I remember him as an ever larger-than-life character, a gregarious host and irrepressible wit, a polished and refined man of culture and exquisite taste, a brilliant raconteur and gastronome, as whose guest my brother David and I spent so many unforgettably happy and tumultuously laughter-filled evenings in his lovely home in the lee of those same gentle, green rolling hills that he so aptly called ‘Halcyon’. But this place was not always a haven of calm, an Auburn of idyllic tranquility.

When you approach the village from the northern side along a narrow, winding country road, the familiar shape of the castle tower dominates the local skyline standing on a high bluff protected on three sides by the river, whilst the commanding height on the remaining landward side ensured the impossibility of surprise attack. From this vantage point more than any other, I think you appreciate more fully the shrewd strategic insight of those who built this fortress four hundred years ago at a time when endless wars swept to and fro across the face of Ireland. In times of great danger, constant fighting and utter lawlessness, those sombre walls and battlements alone afforded any modicum of security, around which the original trading settlement developed. Now the watchful sentry eyes that so often scanned the horizon from up there for the first signs of oncoming danger have long since filled with dust.

The fortress that for so long stood as an instrument of war, is now a venerable, picturesque ruin overlooking a peaceful, modern, thriving and progressive community beside the serene waters of the River Bride, its people leading rewarding and successful lives at the dawn of a new millennium. Such a contrast between the barbarism of the old and the bright, confident civilization of the new is a powerful metaphor of hope for that future which is our shared promise. Conna’s achievement has been one of quiet but tenacious enterprise, of a gentle place where a gentle people can work, rest, play and live in happiness. An elderly gentleman once said to me outside the church gates, “we are in the very best area in the very best country in the very best part of Europe”. Truly, indeed, this is God’s Own Country!