Book Review: The Enchanted Bay – Tales and Legends from Ernie O’Malley’s Irish Folklore Collection.
Edited by Cormac K.H. O’Malley & Patrick J. Mahoney
Published by Irish Academic Press, 2024
Reviewer: Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc
ISBN: 9781785375286
Ernie O’Malley is one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from the Irish Revolution of 1913 -1923 who led an event filled, rich and varied life. Born to privilege in rural Mayo he was raised in urban Dublin at the beginning of the 20th Century. As a medical student, he joined the fighting in the 1916 Rising and later joined the IRA, where he became a Staff Officer. He was a prominent IRA leader throughout the Irish War of Independence and Civil War.
He endured torture at the hands of members of the British Army in Dublin Castle, escaped from Kilmainham Jail, suffered lengthy terms of imprisonment and hunger strike, survived being shot several times in a gun battle with Free State soldiers, was captured and imprisoned before being elected a Sinn Féin TD whilst still in prison. He went on to write probably the two finest memoirs of the period On Another Man’s Wound and The Singing Flame.
That part of O’Malley’s life is relatively well known. Few people know however about the latter half of O’Malley’s life such as his travels in New Mexico and his transformation into a historian who interviewed several hundred IRA, Free State Army and British Army veterans about their experiences during the Irish Revolution. Fewer still know about O’Malley’s role as a folklorist who gathered an invaluable collection of folklore in both the English language and Irish which might otherwise have been lost forever.
Folklore and Irish mythology were always of interest to O’Malley. His brilliant memoir On Another Man’s Wound opens with the lines “Our nurse-maid ‘Nannie’ told my eldest brother and I stories and legends … Tales of the King of Ireland’s Son, his strange adventures and his exploits; fairy tales about the ‘good people’ … The story of mighty Fionn [Mc Cool] and his giant strength; the epic of Cúchulainn… of Ferdia of Connacht whose loss … was the best of all her stories.”
He went on to study the classics and was almost as well versed in Roman and Greek mythology as he was in Irish myths. It is no surprise then that at critical junctures in his life when he faced loss of life and limb folklore often flashed back into his mind.
When he was hidden in a hidden room in an IRA safehouse in Dublin, preparing to fight seconds from discovery and a shoot-out with the Free State Army during the Civil War the myths of The Táin his nursemaid had told him ran into his mind.
“I knelt on one knee to pray for courage, then I sat at the end of the bed revolver in hand listening in the darkness. Why The Táin should come into my mind I don’t know … but I was trying to remember what Ferdia wore on the last night before the battle of the ford. … ‘He put his solid very deep iron kilt over a huge goodly flagstone. On his left side he hung his curved battle sword which could cut a hair against the stream with its keenness and sharpness’ … There was nothing so splendid about my Smith & Wesson and my one grenade but they were the most effective weapons especially against a crowd of men when they were bunched together.”
The publication of The Enchanted Bay helps for the first time to bring O’Malley’s deep love and knowledge of Irish folklore to the public. O’Malley’s son Cormac K.H. O’ Malley (one of the editors of this book) has to be complimented for his work over several decades in bringing O’Malley’s lesser known writings and his interviews with IRA veterans to light – but the publication of this book is the first time that O’Malley’s invaluable contribution to Irish folklore has been emphasised.
The folklore stories relayed in this book were largely collected from people O’Malley knew in County Mayo but they are of as much national significance and as important as the contribution W.B. Yeats and Lady Greggory made in their book “Visions and beliefs in the West of Ireland”.
Amongst my favourites in O’Malley’s collection are “The Seal Who Spoke Irish”, “The Foretelling of the Ship That Sank”, “Saint Patrick Recreates a Bull” and the very humourous tale which opens the collection “The Loughra Man’s Three Wishes”. Some tales are more geared towards an adult audience but others could happily be read to young children at bedtime.
As well as folklore the book also details rural country life and folk traditions in the early 20th Century with fascinating details about supernatural belief’s and píseógeanna (traditional ways of imposing a curse on a foe or to ward of curses by foes).
Several folk tales O’Malley recorded will also be of interest to folklorists further afield as stories like “The Tinker That Bested Death and the Devil” which is a uniquely Irish re-telling of the traditional Russian folktale “The Soldier and Death.” The Enchanted Bay will also be of huge interest to historians of the 1798 Rising like Cólm Ó Ruairc and Guy Beiner for the wealth of oral history accounts O’Malley collected of the Rising and French landing in Connacht.
The only, very minor criticisms that I can offer of this book are that it would have benefited from more footnoting of Irish language and folklore terms which might be unfamiliar to non-Irish readers. Also the cover is a beautifully designed work of art and it is a pity that a selection of the illustrations O’Malley collected were not included in the book. However, this aside, I can unhesitatingly recommend the book to anyone with an appreciation of an interest in Irish culture, history, heritage and folklore.
Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc has a PhD in modern Irish history and is the author of nine books including the forthcoming “BURN THEM OUT! – A History Of Fascism And The Far-Right In Ireland which is available to pre-order now at: Burn Them Out!: A History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland: Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc: Apollo