A Tuneful Irish Tale
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 17 Mar 2025
Edward J. Curtin, Jr. | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service
“Accomplished fingers begin to play./Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”
– W. B. Yeats, Lapus Lazuli
14 Mar 2025 – The old man in the Irish cap sat on a chair on the sidewalk outside his house across from ours. I would usually see him on my way home from school. He would raise his shillelagh to greet me and sometimes played a tune on the penny whistle he kept on his lap. Often he was puffing on a pipe which I could smell even as I kept to my side of the street because he frightened me a bit, but when he played his fipple flute, the sounds of his playing enchanted my young ears. It struck some secret ancient chord in me.
One Saturday morning in spring when I came home wild with sweaty hot excitement from playing basketball in the schoolyard, I ran up our flight of twelve stone steps and froze on the landing before our wooden porch steps. To my shock, the Irishman was sitting on our porch, shaded by the canvas awning I had recently rolled down, a glittering one-eyed Cyclops to my young eyes. I ran into the house without giving him a nod.
My father was home and I told him the man from across the street was on the porch. He said it’s okay, he’s a friend, his name is Eamonn McGillicuddy, he was a good friend of my father’s and his brothers and sisters, your great uncles and aunts, and I’ve told him he can sit on the porch whenever he wants. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll introduce you to him.”
That was my introduction to the Irish rebel tradition, the man who taught me to never be bullied and to remember where our family came from and why. Something else as well – the power of music. And he taught me this while he showed me how to plant rows of potatoes, leeks, and peas in our back yard. I was eleven years old and our yard was quite barren except for a small beautiful Japanese maple tree my father had planted. Something soon blossomed in me and in the garden. To name it is to lose it.
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Tags: Ireland
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I love Ed Curtin stories!!! Even when they are sad, they are somewhat…like a bandaid on the heart