"The Can With the Diamond Notch" by Seamus O'Kelly (1902)

Event Resources  Everyone Is Invited to Join Us for Irish Short Story Month Year Four

Ways to Participate-do a post on your blog and let me know about it-I will keep a master list and I will publicize your post and blog.

If you are an Irish author and would like to be featured, please contact me.   There are several options open.

If you would like to do a guest post on my blog on anything related to Irish short stories, contact me.

"The Weaver's Grave" (1902) by Seamus O'Kelly  (1881 to 1918- Loughrea, Ireland) is one of the most loved of all Irish short stories.  I never tire of the reading of this story.  William Trevor in his his introduction to The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories said it was "an example of the antique form in the process of drifting into modernism".  I have posted on it and two other stories by O'Kelly, "The Shoe Maker" and "The Building".  

"The Can with the Diamond Notch" took me to the beautiful country side of western Ireland, circa 1900.  ( I speculate that the portrayal of Travelers - called by the old term "Tinkers", might offend some with its treatment of them as roving bands of tricksters outside main stream society but it represents the views of the time.)

I really like how this story so much made me feel I was back in time in the West of Ireland.  It's central character is a shop keeper who sells to everyone in the area, on credit when needed.  His thinking was "my terms are long so my profit should be also".  Everyone respects him, no one haggles over prices in his store.  One day he is on a buying trip to local farms for things to sell in the store when a tinker approaches him offering to sell him a tin can, used for milk and such.  The tinker praises the can, which he claims he made, in extravagant terms and says it breaks his heart but family needs push him to offer it for sale.  A really delightful bargaining session is depicted and the merchant ends up buying it, thinking he will easily double his money.  Then the trouble starts, a traveler woman approaches him and tells him the other man stole this can from her husband, who is famous for putting a diamond notch in his cans.  I laughed out loud when the woman starting telling the merchant what a fine figure of a man he was and how any woman would be proud to have him as a husband.  Chaos begins when a group of travelers descend on his wagon!

The conversations in this story are just totally wonderful. The characters are perfectly brought to life.   I read this in a collection of his stories, The Wanderers that I downloaded from Manybooks.net.  

First read "The Weaver's Grave", then either this story or "The Shoe Maker".  I really want to read his longer work, "The Leprechaun" but I cannot find it online.  If anyone can help me with this, please contact me.

 

"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

"The Building" by Seamus O'Kelly

"The Building" by Seamus O'Kelly (1908, 22 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Resources

I have not yet been to Galway, Ireland but I do not think you would find another city of its size on the planet that has produced so many great writers, among them Seamus O'Kelly (1875 to 1918)  I have previously posted on his "The Weaver's Grave", "The Rector", and "The Wayside Burial" and his tremendously fun to read story about a cousin of the leprechaun, "The Shoemaker".    "The Weaver's Grove" is a beautiful story that is considered on the classics of the Irish short story.  The short stories of O'Kelly are considered transitional works from the tradition of the story teller with a transition in some to modern short stories.   His stories are set among the people of the west of Ireland and show a great love for the traditions, people and beauty of the area.

"I love Irish Short Stories"
Ruprecht

I am currently reading a very informative and interesting book that helped me understand this story, Occasions of Sin:  Sex and Society in Modern Ireland by Diamaid Ferriter.  He talks about how the famines resulted in delayed marriages and reduced the number of possible marriage partners.  He says in Ireland in the time when this story was published (1907) a marriage was commonly entered into almost as a business arrangement and I see that in this wonderful story.

"The Building" is the story of one Martin Cosgrave.  We first meet him after someone had read him a letter from America saying a woman he had always loved from afar, Rose Dempsey, was coming back to Ireland proposed marriage to him, if he did not already have a wife.  Cosgrave has some land and we can really feel his love for it.  We learn of his life history.  When young he took to the road and learn the stone mason's trade and knew how to construct buildings.   He was gone a long time and when he came back his father was dead but he was the joy of his mother's old age.   Then he looks around his house and thinks it is not a fit place to bring a woman.   He imagines that Rose is used to grand houses.   He sees a beech tree grove and sets to building a house there.  O'Kelly does a great job of letting us see the building of the house and feel the man's pride in his work.   Cosgrave begins to abstract himself from all but the construction of the house.   "His whole attitude was one of detachment from everything that did not savour of the crunch of stone, the ring of steel on the walls of a building".  More and more he cares only for the building and the coming of Rose.  

He knows the train she will be arriving on.  His anxiety increases as people get off the train but he does not see Rose.  Then he sees a woman he thinks is Rose.  He calls out for her but it is her sister.   He asks where Rose is and is told she is not coming and the sister told him Rose is not worth troubling himself over.   She speaks her sister's name with some bitterness.  We witness the crushing of Cosgrave's spirit as his world comes crashing down on him.   His work now seems a cruel joke.   

The ending is really emotionally complex and brilliant.  I read the last few pages several times they were so beautiful.  

"Ladies, discount shoe
repairs now offered"-
Rory

"The Building" takes us deeply into the life of William Cosgrave, we feel his pride, his love of the land and his struggle to keep himself going.   It was a time of emotional reticence and we can for sure see that in this story.    

You can download the collection, The Waysiders, in which I read this story, along with other stories by O'Kelly at Manybooks for free.

   

"The Shoemaker" by Seamus O'Kelly

"The Shoemaker" by Seamus O'Kelly (1918, 20 pages)

The Irish Corner

A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to July 1

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

Posts on Emerging Irish Women Writers

Posts by Participants 

"Welcome, Cousin"-
Rory

A  Clurichaun

Please consider joining us for this event.     Everything you need to participate is in the resources page, including links to 1000s of short stories, from brand new ones to stories now in the public domain.   Guests posts are also welcome.  


"The Weaver's Grave" by Seamus O'Kelly (1878 TO 1918, County Galloway) is considered one of the greatest of all Irish short stories.   I posted previously on that story and "The Rector" and "A Wayside Burial".   Semaus O'Kelly's stories are a great way to learn about Irish folklore and customs and they are also beautifully written.   "The Shoemaker" is a really fun story to read.   It is about two shoemakers, a real one and a cousin to the leprechaun, the clurichaun.   Leprechauns are famous as shoemakers and the clurichaun also is a shoemaker, but not for humans or fairies.   He makes shoes for swallows.    I wondered when I read this why swallows needed shoes and the story explains this to us, perfectly plausible of course.   It seems in their migrations the swallows need to cross the Dead Sea, and they cannot fly over it so the clurichauns have set up shop on the banks of the dead sea, with millions of tiny shoes made just for swallows.   We learn this story from a human shoemaker who is telling the story to one of his customers.   He also tells a lot of other very interesting stories about greedy and good landlords, how cats discovered electricity, and other marvelous facts.   According to tradition  clurichaun are drunk most of the time and have nasty attitudes.  

"Just what we don't need, one of
Rory's Cousins"-Carmilla

The story is very "old fashioned: in its narrative framing through the use of the device of one person in the story telling a story to another.  




This story is contained in The Waysiders which is a public domain work and can be easily downloaded.

Mel u

"The Weaver's Grove" and other Stories by Seamus O'Kelly

"The Weaver's Grave"  (1902, 46 pages)
"The Rector" (17 pages, 1911)
"The Wayside Burial" (18 pages, 1911)

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death-W. B. Yeats

The most important literary work published in 1906 was The Heart of Darkness.   In Australia women were given the right to vote, except for Asians, Aborigines, and Blacks.    Edward the VII became king of Ireland.   Teddy Roosevelt was the first American President to ride in a car.  The Americans crushed the revolt of the people of the Philippines.   George Bernard Shaw's play Mrs Warrens Profession opens in London.   The London Times Literary Supplement begins publication.   Meiji was Emperor of Japan.

Death

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an email and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.   You can post on as many stories and as many days as you like.

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.   It is not the love of boy for his mother or a woman for a man that always treated her well but something deeper and darker.

William Trevor in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories says that "The Weaver's Grave" is a tale in transition from older Irish modes of story telling to modern literature.   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 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.

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.   

"Join us"-Rory

"The Rector" was published in O'Kelly's The Waysiders.   It appears to me a rector was a colonial tool sent by the English to convert the Irish away from Catholicism. The rector in this story has an interesting uneasy relationship with the members of his church.   He suspects they are not really converted away from the Catholic faith in their hearts.   He knows little of the history of Ireland.   I felt ashamed for his ignorance of the history of Ireland.   It is a very good story.

"The Wayside Burial"  centers on a parish priest (lots of priests in the Irish short story).    The story opens in an Irish work house where the very poor and often the very old are sent to die.   He is there to provide the proper rituals for a passed pauper.   Here is a sample of his prose from the close of this story.

Much of the history of Ireland is in this conversation with the priest.

"You see the great mounds at the end?  he asked.  "They are the Famine Pits".  "The Famine Pits?"  Yes the place where the people were buried in heaps and hundreds, in thousands, during the famine of '46 and '47.   They died like flies, by the roadside.   You see such places in almost every part of Ireland.  I hope the people will never die again die like that-die gnawing the gravel on the roadside".


I loved "The Weaver's Grave".    It is a work of dark beauty with many lines that will amaze you.   I hope I can read it many more times.   There is real wisdom in it, wisdom that it took great pain to produce.

All of these stories can be found at Manybooks

Mel u