"The Weaver's Grove" by Seamus O'Kelly

"The Weaver's Grove" by Seamus O'Kelly  (1902, 46 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Seamus O'Kelly

County Galway
(A Second Reading)

I have a question-If you know where Seamus O'Kelly's story, "The Leprechaun" can be found online, please let me know.  

Resources and  Ideas 

" She was beginning to understand why people love wakes and the intimate personalities of wakehouses." 

Please join us for Irish Short Stories Month III-March 1 to the 31.  All you need do is to  post on your blog about an Irish Short Story and leave me a comment so I can include it in the master post.   Guest posts in most any format are very welcome.  Just email me if this interests you or if you have any questions or suggestions.  

Last March during ISSM2 I first read and posted on "The Weaver's Grove" by Seamus O'Kelly (1875 to 1918).   I knew from reading William Trevor's introduction to The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories that it was considered a work of transition from the older forms of the story teller to the modern Irish short story.  I was simply stunned by this story.  Nothing prepared me for the sheer beauty and depth of this work.   I read it again late last night, maybe it is a read late at night kind of story.  It really is incredible, both for the story it tells and for the sheer beauty of the prose. 

Tell me if you can how Ireland could not have an obsession with Death?   There is a fear and a love of Death in the best of the Irish short stories.   There is a lot of "whistling past the graveyards".   How could it be otherwise?  During The Great Famine, 1845 to 1852, over a million people died and another million left the country for good.   The memory of this huge die off is burned into the consciousness of the Irish Short Story writers.   

Seamus O'Kelley (1878 to 1918-County Galway) began his writing career as a journalist.   He wrote a number of plays, novels and short stories.   His acknowledged by all masterwork is "The Weaver's Grave".  It is one of the most beloved of all Irish Short Stories.    "The Weaver's Grave" is a work of near stunning beauty and power that goes deeply into the Irish fixation and very real love of death.  

I think this story would repay many readings.   There just is so much in this story it is amazing.  

This story is so haunting and so packed with meaning that I do not wish to say to much about it.  It is set partially in a very old pauper's cemetery with only a few spaces left.   It is a story about looking for the proper spot to bury a weaver.   The central character is the widow of the weaver, his fourth wife, the others all died before he did.   We also have two twin grave diggers and, two very old man who are helping the widow find the spot where her husband is to be buried.   In an amazing section of the story, the widow goes to visit a contemporary of her husband who is said to possibly know where the weaver was supposed to be buried (he was much older than her and she knew it was not love that made him marry her).  The ancient man is half mad but still has a very powerful mind.  He is kind of a pauperized King Lear.   He is taken care of by his very dedicated never married middle aged  daughter.   

Sometime ago, when I read and posted on Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, I said, I thought it was firmly in the tradition of the Irish Short story which celebrates mad strangers, grave yard conversations, and a crushing destruction of old values and "The Weaver's Grave" for sure supports this claim.   My guess is Beckett read this story many times.  (This is just me speculating.)

William Trevor says that short stories can cast a spell in a way that novels cannot and "The Weaver's Grave" for sure cast one one me!    The prose is just beautiful and some of the insights are amazing.   

I will, I hope, read this many more times.  I do not think I will soon get tired of it.   

I also read and posted on his very interesting and fun to read "The Shoemaker"

You can find this story online.

Mel u