The local - Village Magazine

5 6 September 2016

eneral disparagement that anyone con-

cerned with their own patch must be a

small-minded xenophobe fuelled the Brexit

debate. Such lazy stereotyping of Leave

voters by the liberal collective undermines

its own self-perception as open-minded.

In the midst of this continuing existential maelstrom,

my metaphysical GPS has been happily trekking a ter-

rain of books based on the idea of place and our

connection to it. The volumes are very different in style,

sensibility, and age. But each one possesses a common

thread: a love of the local, be it knowledge; the land; or

the language we attach to it.

This convergence of homegrown thought enveloped

a strong environmental message too. The books are a

perfect rebuke to anyone who vaingloriously carries a

lumpen backpack around the globe (with the associ-

ated grotesque carbon footprint) in an effort to

accumulate knowledge about the world. The writings

prompt questions: why do we disdain knowledge of the

wild ﬂowers that grow in our own ﬁelds, for example;

why do we think learning is only

impressive when the ﬂowers

grow 6000 miles away?

One of the books is by Hubert

Butler, who died 25 years ago

this year. His relatively little-

known voice is fortunately

abloom again in a collection of

essays published by Notting Hill

Editions called 'The Eggman and the Fairies'. I am grate-

ful, otherwise I might not have found this tactful and

enlightening writer. Butler's unfussy talent might have

been tucked away quietly in his home county of Kilk-

enny, travelling no further than the libraries of the

literati.

The central philosophy of Butler's connection with

civic consciousness literally jumps off the page - the

engraved quote on the cover reads: “I have always

believed that local history is more important than

national history. Where life is fully and consciously

lived in our own neighbourhood, we are cushioned a

little from the impact of great far-off events which

should be of only marginal concern to us”. His inherent

sense of locus is a refutation to the hate-lacquered

acronym NIMBYISM and its implied curtain-twitching

malevolence. Instead, Butler's cipher could read: KYO-

BISM, Know Your Own Backyard: for there you will ﬁnd

a world of wonder to be getting on with.

In his introduction to the book John Banville places

Butler alongside Hazlitt, Orwell, and Robert Louis Ste-

venson in the canon of great essayists. Banville

describes him as “the least noisy of writers”, which is

delineating as one moves through the pages with

Butler, for he seemingly shufﬂes through places such

as the River Nore or Fethard-on-Sea.

His markings are usually near to hand, but his mind

is always large, pan-European, in spirit.

The sensibility can remain broad, even if the eyes are

restricted. “These essays appear to be about Russia or

Greece or Spain or Yugoslavia, (but) they are really

about Ireland”, he writes in the preface, before

expounding on subjects as diverse as Wolfe Tone or

plans to build 'a new Geneva' on the River Suir in Water-

ford. “I go on believing that the strength to live comes

from an understanding of ourselves and our neighbours

or the diaspora that has replaced them”.

Butler was born in 1900. After an education at Char-

terhouse in England and St John's College, Oxford,

followed by some travel through Europe, he returned to

his birthplace Maidenhall in Kilkenny for the rest of his

days. His family was part of the landed gentry, yet he

was staunchly Irish, describing himself as part of Ire-

land's rich strain of Protestant Republicanism. The

essays were written over a period of sixty years for vari-

ous newspapers and magazines, as he cleaved – to use

Banville's word – steadfastly to the home place. The

book is a treasure trove of knowledge, shared with dig-

nity and a deliberate style. The topics are

unapologetically indigenous, yet the themes resound

universally, in an artful synthesis akin to Orwell's

musing on that quintessential English subject: the per-

The local

Three books explore fresh

antidotes to the global

by NJMcGarrigle

CULTURE

Each book manifests

a love of the local,

be it knowledge; the

land; the language we

attach to it

September 2016 5 7

fect cup of tea.

Michael Harkin contrasts markedly to Hubert

Butler in background, but when it comes to wit

they could have been brothers. Born in Carn-

donagh, Donegal in 1830, he penned a precious

jewel of local history while working as a post

ofﬁce master, 'Inishowen – its History, Tradi-

tions, and Antiquities' under the nom de plume

Maghtochair. “Our legends

and traditions are dying, the

customs and habits of the

olden time are nearly extinct,

but in order to preserve some

of them from total oblivion I

thought it well to gather this

collection”, he declares. The

book is a tidy volume of rural

life and community in micro-

cosm: mixing topography,

history, songs, anecdotes,

and verse. Just like Butler,

Harkin drew beauty and depth

and anchored a deep-seated

affection, in the local. Pre-

sented in gazette format, these segments also

appeared initially in a newspaper, The Derry

Journal (how many local or regional papers

carry such columns today?). The stories were

inspired by Harkin's travels around the Donegal

peninsula in a rattling little car, stuffed with

books of poetry and prose, collating informa-

tion from the local seanachies all the while. In

Maghtochair, the people in the Big Houses are

sidelined. Instead we ﬁnd monks or clergy, and

issues such as the ﬁght for better rights for

farmers in rural Ireland: “Was it the landlords

who made our valleys smile with plenty and

teem with fertility?”, Maghtochair asks point-

edly. “Certainly not; it was the peasantry”.

A chapter on 'Illicit Distillation' is a joy to

drink in, combining fact with plenty of ﬁction in

all likelihood. It humorously sends up ofﬁcial-

dom's presumptive interference and folly in

trying to reform human nature. He seems to say,

"we like things that are bad for us: if you commit

to the futility of preventing us from enjoying

them, we will only enjoy them even more".

Maghtochair describes “the lynx-eyed consta-

bles of the Revenue Board” tilting at windmills

with their still-hunting and concludes, not with-

out reason, that the production of contraband

Inishowen whiskey “probably will be carried on

while light and dark succeed each other”. The

imagination flickers at the

thought of the Donegal night

sky being lit up with torches

ﬁring across the landscape as

a warning of custom men on

the prowl.

Scraping and shaping of lan-

guage is local too and can be

carved in the land, as John R

Stilgoe argues in 'What is Land-

scape?'. Landscape is a noun,

he tells us, stripped of orna

ment and necessity. Stilgoe is Orchard Professor

in the History of Landscape at Harvard University

and his love of language and the land sees him

ploughing through outdated and specialist dic-

tionaries for our beneﬁt, in this illuminating and

entertaining book (apparently Chambers Diction-

ary still champions Scottish perspectives unlike

the Anglocentric Oxford English Dictionary

(OED), he tells us). Reading this will have you

thinking anew about words, as it breaks down

both the language and the land that it may origi-

nate from or be attached to. Some words have

been simply lost through time, fallen through

sinkholes in our syntax. “Swashbuckler”, for

example. Does it have any relevance in modern

terms? Swash as a verb or noun can relate to

water; but usually we take it to mean

ﬂamboyantly to swagger about, or to wield a

sword (the word's origin is to “make a noise like

swords clashing or beating on shields” accord-

ing to the OED; combined then with “buckler”, a

small round shield worn on the forearm). We use

the word rarely now, describing a ﬁlm or a sport-

sperson's style say, but swash still has everyday

usage for local ﬁsherman: to them it usually

means a stretch of low-tide water snaking

through sandbars.

Stilgoe's book ﬂows with sparkling streams

of enlightenment; how language with the land

can give it different meaning, and he unearths

such diamond words as ensamhet, unique to

Sweden, meaning “the restorative, relaxing

effect of being solitary and thoughtful, but not

lonely”. Along the way he notes plenty of quirks

too: how experienced beach-goers know how

to sit on sand; the idea of classrooms in the sky

momentarily posed by the advent of aviation;

how the mariner measures land with his ﬁst. All

robust and succulent.

‘What is Landscape?’ is a great read to dip

into (another phrase I'm sure Stilgoe could give

many new shades). Reading part of its preface

again, it could apply to any of the three books

mentioned: “neither dictionary nor ﬁeld guide,

it is only an invitation to walk, to notice, to ask,

sometimes to look up and around, sometimes

to look up in a dictionary...”. A nudge, to look

around.

The Eggman and the Fairies - Irish Essays By

Hubert Butler (Notting Hill Editions)

What is Landscape? By John R Stilgoe

(The MIT Press)

Inishowen - its History, Traditions, and Antiq-

uities by Maghtochair (Three Candles Printers,

Dublin)

'Ensamhet':

the restorative,

relaxing effect of

being solitary and

thoughtful, but

not lonely

Deep, rich and homegrown