An Irish country childhood Memories of a bygone age

One of 14 children, Walsh was born in Attymass, County Mayo, in 1929. She tells of her life on the family farm and fondly recalls childhood experiences such as catching trout with an old sack, talking to a tree to comfort it before cutting it down and watching the local parish priest read his breviary while taking a drop of Irish whiskey to help his prayers along. There is a strong sense of nationalism and church as Bearla-English-is forbidden to be spoken on school grounds and everyone looks forward to missionaries coming to preach the gospel. There are tales of neighbors, ghosts, poteen (moonshine), wakes, the local bogeyman and church holidays such as St. Patrick's Day. This delightful memoir of Eamon DeValera's rural, Catholic Ireland of the 1930s and '40s is a paean to a gentler, simpler epoch. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

These two memoirs celebrate the magic of growing up in small villages in the British Isles during the 1930s and 1940s. For Walsh, it was a time of contentment in a closely knit Irish farming community where "luxury was a full stomach and being clothed." Her reminiscences of odd neighbors, local customs, holy days, and school are interspersed with folklore and ghost stories. She looks back at her childhood with fondness and delight. Novelist Ellis's (Serpent on the Rock, LJ 10/1/95) nostalgia, on the other hand, is filled with melancholy, not only a yearning for what is gone but also a sorrow for what has changed. Her portrayal of the unspoiled beauty of the North Wales coast contrasts sharply with her depiction of its present-day ugliness, a condition brought about by tourism and suburbia. Along with details from her childhood, Ellis presents legends, myths, historical facts, and memories of raising her own children in an isolated wilderness area. Her scenic descriptions are enhanced by an abundance of evocative black-and-white photographs of the Welsh landscape. Though their moods are quite different, both books are well written and suitable for regional collections.‘Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, Tex. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A slight, affectionate meander through scenes from a County Mayo childhood of the 1930s and early '40s. Luxury was a full stomach in the peaceable parish of Attymass, where the word Protestant was never uttered and ``people made the most of . . . landmarks in our calendar,'' like threshing time. Entertainment was watching nature at work, and Walsh was an appreciative audience--seeing in a mass of spongy fungi the perfect trampoline, or covering her mouth while stealing a peek at eggs in a nest lest her breath betray her presence to the mother bird. She also recollects the impromptu fiddling (``God's concert'') of neighbor Kitty D'Arcy, who quite lost her bearings after being left at the altar, and of course the Mission, a bazaar-like affair with stalls displaying all manner of holy goods, which was simply ``the greatest event in our young lives.'' Weaned on stories of ghosts and fairies, Walsh had her fair share of childhood terrors. There were also corporeal sources of disquiet, including Tom Lynch's mule and the Connor's bull, and the Tinkers (gypsy tinsmiths) who regularly made camp in the district and helped themselves to what they couldn't get by begging. Walsh, the ninth of fourteen in the largest family in Treanoughter, lingers over memories of each of the nine households in the village. Cousin John, visiting from the States, was aghast at the paucity of reading matter in the homes and sent over Colliers, National Geographic, and the Saturday Evening Post--which may account for Walsh's transformation from the enchanted provincial she portrays into an migré (to Britain, in 1946), and now into an author. A parochial paean to a circumscribed world of folkways that survived long past their time.