Roy - The fields of Athenry: a journey through Irish history

Moyode Castle, 1969

Familiarity breeds contempt runs the old saw, and though my affection for most things Irish remains as strong as ever, the mundane reversals of fortune that plague any substantial building projectand especially those of a Third World nature, as County Galway revealed itself to becan strain the credulity level of any would-be zealot. Shards of Elizabethan prejudice infected my vision: delays, procrastination, financial sleight of hand, interminable tea breaks, the gush of brave talk unbacked by resolution, all caused me to think as a foreigner. Moyode became in many respects more of a burden than a respite.

But familiarity also breeds knowledge. Submerging myself in the details of Moyode Castle and the few immediate acres surrounding it inevitably transformed the obsession I had cherished for so many years. As the scattered physical remnants of this landscape revealed themselves to my wandering eye, as their essentially nondescript and often pedestrian character became apparent, I found myself overwhelmed at just how unglamorous, violent, grubby, and desperate so many details of this history indeed were.

With increasing fascination, moreover, I discovered that just about every phase of the Irish saga had left its physical imprint on Moyode Castle and the fields over which it stood. From the unrecorded blur of pre-Christian Ireland to the Norman invasion of 1169; from the murderous passage of the great de Burgo barons of Connaught to the wild Celtic Burkes into which their line degenerated; from the ravaging Tudor wars to the Confederation of Kilkenney to the fiasco of the Boyne; to the coming of the Protestant Ascendancy to revolt in 1916 and the ensuing Troublesall these events dispersed their generally catastrophic marks on this seemingly bucolic site.

Arnold Toynbee had it all wrong. History is never neat, never concise, never predictable. Generally speaking, it is never fair either. I came to understand, rummaging about the environs of my new home, that Irelands story is a hugely disorganized froth, and that attempts to sanitize the incoherent shambles of its surge through the centuries benefits the countrys major growth industry (tourism) but little else. The personalities, pressures, events, and incongruities of fate all burst our desire for a clean summation of trends and fortunes in what is, I believe, a tragic story and certainly a tragic land. It is easy to bog down in chaos, but no more apt metaphor for the Irish saga is available than in that single word.

The rebuilding of Moyode Castle seemed to me at times a reflection of this lurching narrative that constitutes Irish history, and I record the ups and downs of that experience in this book. I have also attempted to relate Irelands past through what I know happened here in these fields, pastures, ruined buildings, all so amply watered both by sweat and blood. Familiar individuals will enter and leave various scenes in this chronicle, but for the most part the reader will meet characters whom records and annals have tended to ignore. It has been my happy task to bring them, I hope, to life, giving the lie to my friends sarcastic inquiry, Why Ireland? with the rejoinder, Is there anywhere finer?