ONCE, WHEN I was in the land of my ancestors, I heard a story about the annual Mass for the family of Kevin O’Higgins and the families of his killers. I do not know whether the story is true, but it seemed very Irish to me and typical of the complex and fascinating culture of the country. This story is about how that Mass, should it exist, might have come to be.
There are, as I note in the book, different stories about who killed O’Higgins on his way to Sunday Mass in July of 1927. It would appear, however, that like the death of his hero Michael Collins, the assassination of O’Higgins was a chance event. It is astonishing that no one has written a scholarly biography of him. More than anyone else he created peace and stability in the emergent Irish State. My explanation of who killed him and why is fictional, but there is no doubt that he died because of his vigorous efforts to end the violence and the terrorism at the end of the Irish Civil War.
There is no Castlegarry or Garrytown on the bank of the Shannon Estuary. All the people and events that occur in that place are fictional. Major General Sir Henry Hugh Tudor, however, did command the Black and Tans during the Troubles. He did withdraw in disgrace to Newfoundland, where he lived in exile till 1965. I am grateful to Superintendent James J. Lynch, Ret., of the Canadian Railroad Police for telling me the story of Tudor’s forty years of exile in Newfoundland. My attempt to explain his disgrace is a work of my own imagination. He will, I suspect, forever be a mystery.
The material about Connemara is based on the wonderful book Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, by F. H. A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan, and Matthew Stout.
I am grateful to President and Mrs. Edward Walsh of the University of Limerick (which is a lovely city when it’s not raining) for inviting me many times to that wonderful part of Ireland and for introducing me to the CD Faith of Our Fathers, which gave me the idea for Nuala Anne Goes to Church.
I am, finally, grateful to the monks of Glenstal Abbey for their constant hospitality. Though Abbot Fabian and Brother Killian are creatures of my imagination, the abbey in reality is at least as wonderful as I describe it.
I’m not certain where Nuala Anne acquired all her insights into Irish mysticism. Maybe she was born with spiritual mists floating around in her lovely head. But patently, as her friend the little bishop would say, she also has read Father John O’Donohue’s wonderful spiritual essay Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
AG
First Sunday in Advent, 1997