J. P. Monninger - Seven Letters

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To Susan, who lives by the brook

The sunlight has never heard of trees.

A. R. AMMONS

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.

ANONYMOUS

The Irish tell a story of a man who fell in love with a fairy woman and went with her to live on an island lost to time and trouble. They lived in a thatched cottage overlooking the sea with nothing but donkeys and gulls and white chickens to keep them company. They lived in the dream of all lovers, apart from the world, entire to themselves, their bed an island to be rediscovered each night. In all seasons, they slept near a large round window and the ocean wind found them and played gently with their hair and carried the scent of open water to their nostrils. Each night he tucked himself around her and she, in turn, moved closer into his arms, and the seals sang and their songs fell to the bottom of the sea where the shells held their voices and relinquished them only in violent storms.

One day the man went away, mortal as he was; he could not resist his longing to see the loved ones he had left behind. She warned him that he would grow old the moment his foot touched the soil of the Irish mainland, so he begged her for one of the donkeys to ride back to his home for a single glance at what he had left behind. Though she knew the risk, she loved him too much to deny his wish, and so he left on a quiet night, his promise to come back to her cutting her ears with salt and bitterness. She watched him depart on a land bridge that arced to the mainland and then turned back to her cottage, knowing his fate, knowing that love must always have its own island. She raised up the fog from the ocean and she extinguished all light from the island and the chickens went mute and the donkeys brayed into the chimney smoke and the gulls called out her anguish.

After many days of travel, and through no fault of his own, he touched ground and became an old man in one breath. Even as age claimed him upon the instant of his foot striking the soil, he called to her to save him, but she could not help him any longer. In the seasons afterward, on certain full moon nights, she permitted the island to rise from the mist and to appear to him, or to any broken-hearted lover, the boil of the sea stilled for an unbearable glimpse of what had been lost so thoughtlessly. To his great age he lived for the moments when he might hear her voice rising above the sea, the call of their bed and their nights and their love, the call of his heart, the call of the gulls that held all the pain of the world. He answered on each occasion that he was here, waiting, his heart true and never wavering, his days filled with regret for breaking their spell and leaving the island. He asked her to forgive him the restlessness, which is the curse of men and the blood they cannot still, but whether she did or not, he could not say.

To: Dr. Fowler/Dissertation committee

From: Kate Moreton

Subject: teaching release, spring semester

Dear Dr. Fowler:

As we discussed, I am taking leave of my teaching responsibilities for the spring semester, 2019. Dean Howell has already given her permission and the attendant paperwork is attached. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

I am using the Brady Milsap Scholarship moniesawarded by the Dartmouth Alumni Associationto fund a research trip to Ireland, and, specifically, to the Blasket Islands off the southwest coast of Ireland. My dissertation, as you know better than anyone else, centers on the narratives of the Blasket Islanders and their emigration from the Blaskets to the United States. I hope to gather as many narratives as I can, including all those already published, and compile the definitive anthology and bibliography of oral accounts of the islanders relocation to the Springfield/Chicopee areas of Massachusetts. As you know from my proposal, the island is now abandoned except for a tourist cafeteria to handle summer visitors who come to explore the remnants of the original village. The Irish Land Commission ordered the island vacated, and by 1953, this community of twenty-two people and their furniture were transferred over the sound to four newly built cottages at Dunquin with three acres of arable land attached.

To the extent that it is possible, I hope to compare and contrast the narratives of those former Irish citizens who, in the middle of the twentieth century, found themselves living in a new land in America. Its an ambitious project, and I could not have undertaken it without your endorsement. I will be housed, for at least part of my time in Ireland, at the University of Limerick.

The citizens of the Blasket Islands represent, to many linguists, the purest, and oldest, Irish language constructions. My travel will inform my research and I cannot imagine finishing my dissertation without having this experience. I regret leaving the classroom, but I am energized by the scholarship that awaits me. I grew up in the Springfield/Chicopee region of Massachusetts, and I have long been fascinated by this population. It has been a lifelong dream to travel to Ireland to further my research and interest. It is a part of my heritage.

Thanks to you and the members of the dissertation committee for encouraging me in this regard. I appreciate the letters of recommendation committee members sent on my behalf to the Brady Milsap Alumni Scholarship Fund. I am confident my research will prove invaluable in fleshing out my dissertation and will, perhaps, make a small contribution to our understanding of the Blasket Island populations.

Respectfully submitted,

Kate Moreton