Dublin launch for Máirtín's fine book

A good news story out of Dublin last week was the launch of On This Day In Mayo, Máirtín G. Ó Maicín’s fine new book. The launch event was a ray of sunlight in an otherwise grim week in the capital.

There was a great crowd in the Croke Park Hotel on Wednesday night to give the book its Dublin launch. Máirtín is well known as a contributor on a wide range of matters, particularly history, language and lore, and most especially for his writing and broadcasting in our native tongue and about our native home. He is perhaps best known locally as a contributor to the Connaught Telegraph and on the national media, where he broadcasts both in Irish and English.

Mayo people from all over the county therefore appeared in great numbers and in good spirits, with Enda Kenny doing the honours in formally launching the book. There was a lovely feeling to the occasion as old friends and new said hello, and it was a classic example of a typical experience up here. When people from Mayo meet each other in the capital, we always sound each other out with the formula ‘where you from?’ – the ‘are’ is unnecessary. The answer always produces a feverish search to locate someone we know in common. It never takes long.

We exiles are always a good crowd when you need a crowd and this launch certainly deserved one. The mood was jolly, the attendance large and the sales – thanks be to God – were brisk. There are several good reasons that the book sold well and will continue to do so. It is an excellent read, it is beautifully produced and it will make a super Christmas present. The Mayo Books Press has done a fine job on it.

The book has a very clever premise, telling the story of Mayo by connecting the 366 days of the year with an event or story about a personality relating to the county. Each page has one story for each date of the year, every one of them telling a tale about Mayo people and their adventures. They span the centuries and the different aspects of life: events, tragedies, and triumphs.

There are stories of Olympians and inventors, and missionaries and basketballers. There is – for the date 14th July – an important story about the founding of this newspaper back in 1883. There are many more like it. And as you would of course expect from the author, there are stories as Gaeilge as well as in English.

Readers will encounter the story of Margaret Knight, a suffragette from Westport; an account of the last edition of the Ballina Herald before it merged into this newspaper; and the great day when Jim Fahy asked Monsignor Horan what on earth he was doing on what someone else called a ‘foggy, boggy hill’, only to be told ‘we’re building an airport’.

The book will fill in your knowledge about who we are and where we come from in a charming and engaging way. You will have stories to beat the band after reading it, though some of your listeners may of course have read the book before you. The hope is that it will stimulate many to find out and read more about these people and the events described. I am sure the County Librarian, Austin Vaughan, along with the team in libraries around the county who hold so much knowledge of who we are, would be only too glad to facilitate that (re)search.

We were told that four years of research went into it and the signs are on it. Máirtín, in his own address, paid tribute to the many people who helped him produce it, among whom was a nod towards his son Aonghus. I also give a nod towards Aonghus on account of our friendship and his membership of our parish here in the Western People. He was not present on the night on account of his own adventures in Brazil, a tale I will leave to him – and his fine use of words – to tell you.

The book is a perfect present for anyone interested in the adventures of Mayo people at home and around the world because it is so suitable – as Enda Kenny pointed out at the launch – to be left on the kitchen or coffee table. For it is not a book you would read all at once, but one which you could pick up on any day and see what happened ‘On This Day in Mayo’. It is a conversation starter.

The entry for 28th November could start many a conversation because it is a story about the Nally Stand. Now, this is appropriate for many reasons, not least that the book’s author is a resident of the same village as Nally himself.

You could of course tell a hundred stories about PW Nally and still have change. You could tell about his friendship with Michael Cusack, or his refusal to give false witness against Parnell. But the story that is told on this page and on this day (in Mayo) is not about PW Nally; it is about Paddy Mullaney, who in 1959 made sure that the corner stand in Croke Park would be named after his fellow Balla man.

People naturally enough will be drawn to whichever story is detailed on the day of their birthday. For my birthday, that brings the sad story of those from the parish of Addergoole who drowned following the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Reading that story will prompt you to visit the memorial to them in Lahardane, if you have not already done so.

They will also search out stories from their own backyard. One from my own was easy found, and was the 366th story. The Leap Year is not overlooked in this book, and Máirtín, a generous writer, does not give us a quarter of a story for the 29th February, but a very full one. And what a story it is. It is of Michael Hogarty, a native of Kiltimagh, whose family emigrated to the United States when he was 10. He had the later years of his childhood in Brooklyn, and after technical training, army service and engineering training, he took charge of the development and testing of the Apollo spacecraft for the 1969 lunar mission. From Pulroghnane to Houston: one giant leap for a (Kiltimagh) man indeed! There are further details of Mayo connections in that story, but if you want them, you will have to buy the book!

But that is no hardship, and an easy recommendation, for this is a great read. If you want to make sure one arm is not as long as another when you visit a Mayo house this Christmas, putting this on the kitchen table will make you an even more welcome visitor.