Gems from Irish places

Press, 22 June 1985, Page 20

Gems from Irish places

The Gems She Wore. By James Plunkett. Arrow Books, 1985 (second edition). 176 pp. $9.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Ken Fraser) Irelandphiles and others with a sense of history and poetry can read this book in leisurely snatches, or totally absorbed, polish it off in two or three hours.

The cover describes the contents as a book of Irish places, but it is a great deal more as the author delivers bejewelled insights about literary giants and folk heroes. Not forsaken is representation of the obscure whose kin have gone; the writer knew a Connemara man who tells a story at his fireside of loneliness squeezed into the little space of his heart. The Rock of Cashel in Tipperary is one of Plunkett’s meaningful places with its view of changing landscapes including broad and fertile acres which once supported a long dynasty of Munster kings and was seized, in turn, by Norman and Cromwellian settlers. Oliver Cromwell’s troops murdered 3000 Cashel townspeople who had taken refuge in the cathedral. It was also at Cashel where St Patrick is said to have plucked a three-leafed shamrock from the sod at his feet in the fifth century to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity — three. Gods in One.

But which St Patrick? The author recalls the great scandal of 1942 when a professor advanced a theory, later scotched, that there were two contemporary missionaries of the same name getting around. James Plunkett, before he dies,

wants to speak his native tongue, Gaelic, adequately enough to converse with countrymen who have it from birth, so they will not shame him by changing to English on his account. Yet his English writing with its association of place, charm and strength influenced by people such as Sean O’Casey and W. B. Yeats, does a special service in giving understanding of Ireland’s unique character.

Yeats’s grave in Drumcliffe Churchyard. The inscription, which the poet chose himself, reads: “Cast a cold Eye on Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by! An illustration from “The Gems She Wore.”