Was youse ever in Coolmain? A grand ould place that ended up owned by a Disney; the Mickey Mouse clan.
The castle has a pedigree that would do credit to a mongrel with connections. “It was originally built by the de Courcey family in the early 15th century, but they lost it to the MacCarthy Reaghs, the Princes of Desmond, the following century. Over the years it passed through the hands of a number of families, including that of the Earls of Cork. In the middle of the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell acquired the property.”
Before Roy Disney bought it in the 1970s it had an interesting owner – Donn Byrne. When I was in Wales recently Alan threw this book on the kitchen table and asked if I knew it.
I didn’t and I’d not heard of Donn Byrne. His “life was as paradoxical and romantic as his writing. Although he remained throughout his life a champion of Ireland and its literature, he was in fact an Orangeman, born in Brooklyn Heights, facing New York Harbor, became the focus of the New York branch of the American literary renaissance … “ I have ordered O’Malley and just read his novella, Messer Marco Polo.
Did you ever read Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier? A magical book. MMP has some of the same poetry and magic – a fairy tale for grown-ups, if you will. It is the story of Marco Polo’s journey and time in China, as told by old Malachi of the Long Glen, a nonogerian Antrim windbag, perhaps the author thinly disguised. I will make my mind up about Donn Byrne when I’ve read O’Malley of Shanganagh.
O’Byrne was only thirty-nine when he died. In June 1928 he went out in his car for a drive along the coast. The steering was defective and he ended up in the sea and drowned not far from where RMS Lusitania was sunk in 1915 claiming 1,198 lives. He is buried in Rathclarin churchyard. The inscription reads:
Tá mé mo codlath is na duisigh mé
I am in my sleeping and don’t waken me
