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Jenny Farrell
Young, gifted and working-class: a different kind of Irish children’s anthology These stories and poems contrast with the middle-class values of mainstream literature
Land of the Ever Young is the final volume of a set of three anthologies of working people’s writing from contemporary Ireland, published by Culture Matters. This present work is unique – it is the first ever anthology of children’s stories in Ireland penned by working-class writers.
The project is a pioneering venture that has been fully supported by the Irish trade union movement in recognition of the importance of creativity and the right of the working class to express the wealth of their culture and to articulate their experience of life.
In this regard, the 30 stories and poems for children present an understanding of the world that contrasts with the conventional middle-class social values extolled by mainstream children’s literature over a century. For very many children in Ireland and elsewhere, such books do not reflect their life experience.
In this volume the authors present heroines and heroes who confront wrongs, challenge superstition and injustice. Together, they highlight the qualities necessary to make society a fairer, better place, a home for a happy future, a Tír na nÓg, the Land of the Ever Young. A modern re-working of Grimm’s fairytales and Irish folk tales play a novel role in imparting this vision. These writings have a subtext of inclusive humanity that are rooted in Ireland and the Irish imagination.
As in the two preceding volumes, this anthology includes texts in Irish as well as English, emphasising the Irish-language tradition in working people’s writing. This includes Tomás Mac Síomóin’s poem An Teachín Liath/ The Grey House, an appeal to the radical power of imagination. To find your utopia, you must think outside of the box: “Paidrín ná paidir fós ní leor/ ná dlíthe dorcha an tréada/ ach síneann staighre id’ chroí istigh/ chuig a theaichín ar chúl na gealaí.” .” (“stale formulas or with words/ Prayers also will not serve,/ the laws obscure the way/ only the stairs of your heart’s desire/ can bring you to his secret.”)
James O’Brien’s autofiction, A little table for Packy, describes a childhood experience that children who have witnessed the current pandemic can easily relate to: “an epidemic of diphtheria had broken out across the city and claimed scores of lives”. Packy’s father cannot visit him despite his lifethreatening illness, because he has to work in England.
Also set in a hospital is Alan Weadick’s Four Eyes, which explores seeing, literally and metaphorically. Like Packy, the boy at the centre of this contemporary story is away from home, the safety of his world shaken, with a dawning realisation of another, not entirely benign reality outside of his own mind.
Several writers re-tell older texts, both Irish and European. Ross Walsh reimagines three fairy tales popularised by the Grimm brothers, writing grim tales of today. Puss in Boots and the Ogre begins: “Once upon a time, there was a big tall apartment block in a huge city. Most of the people who lived in these apartments did not have much money.” A female cat helps these people set things right. In The Blue Lighter, a magician helps a worker to help the workers in a factory. In Walsh’s version of Little Red Riding Hood, both Wolf and Grandma act decisively faced with a modern-day dilemma. Things in Walsh’s new fairy tales do not have to stay as they are, and the “weak” have power when they stand together.
Eileen Keane tells of a small sheep farmer’s relationship with his young daughter, teaching her about the work, folklore and traditional songs of north Connemara. The people who work the land are its true inheritors. Anne Mac Darby-Beck’s The Fairy Fort tells of a child’s courage in defeating some of the more distasteful characters of superstition, showing that a human child can defeat a fairy king. Gabriel Rosenstock shows in The Blind Ones how superstition and prejudice blind people and remove them from their true heritage.
Blindness of another kind is at the heart of Michael Casey’s Fabled Isle, which leads to the collapse of an island, where only a boy can see what is happening: “He wondered how it was that no one else on the island had known what was going on under their very noses.” Frank Murphy, in his take on class society in A New Deal, shows the decadence and hollowness of the ruling class in the tradition of Dickens and Tressell.
Alan O’Brien, in The Old Man and the Blackbird, and Moya Roddy, in Seagull, explore the kindness of an old man and a young girl towards injured birds. People’s bond with nature is a theme in many of the stories, including Anne Mac Darby-Beck’s re-telling of Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose. Assuming responsibility for the natural world, of which we are a part, is shown to be an aspect of ourselves. Kindness to animals and nature is a measure of humanity.
Several authors explore aspects of Irish history. Gráinne Daly re-imagines the famous meeting of 1593, between the Irish pirate queen Gráinne Mhaol and the English (also pirate) queen Elizabeth. Liz Gillis takes a look at more recent history in her story about three young girls involved in the Irish Revolution, working-class girls who wanted to and did, make a difference. Celia de Fréine’s Wearing the Trousers propels readers into 1950s Ireland and the important question of stereotyping and prejudices against women at that time.
Several authors set their stories in schools, or on the block. Karl Parkinson (Blockhood) uses phonetic spelling to create great closeness to the world of children growing up in working-class estates. Set in Dublin schools, Declan Geraghty challenges the dictate of advertising (Saturn 2000s), and Camillus John’s zany humour informs The Sponsored Cat-Squeeze. Moya Roddy imagines Galway children’s action in helping to save the environment in Your House is on Fire Your Children will Burn. The Covid pandemic, its impact on the lives of inner-city Dublin children, is the theme of Cathy Scuffil’s essay Children Making History. When we look back at historic events, we very rarely hear or read of the experiences of children, especially children from working-class areas.
Children re-read stories many times, often the tales and pictures stay with them for a lifetime. Land of the Ever Young has been sensitively illustrated by Karen Dietrich. Her images expand the humanist themes contained in the texts and help make them truly memorable for children and adults alike. Land of the Ever Young: An Anthology of Writing for Children by Working People from Contemporary Ireland, edited by Jenny Farrell, is published by Culture Matters, at €12, and is available from its website; Connolly Books, Dublin; An Ceathrú Póilí, Belfast; Charlie Byrne’s and Kenny’s Bookshop, Galway.
