Tag Archives: Irish

Part 2: The Man Who Loves ‘Ulysses’

by Woody

My new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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There was no tinkling bell above the door. Instead, my entrance was greeted by a singsong voice as warm as a Writers’ Tears toddy: Helloooo, and where are you from?”

It was not the last music the proprietor of Sweny’s small bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, would treat me to. Shortly thereafter, he retrieved a handsome guitar and sang—in Gaelic, so I have no idea what the words meant, much like reading James Joyce can sometimes feel; yet nonetheless, again like Joyce’s prose, was lovely to the ear.

Patrick Joseph Murphy, introduced in this space two weeks past, is as Irish as his name suggests; so Irish his family founded iconic Murphy’s Stout Brewery in County Cork, some 150 miles southwest from Dublin, in 1856, its dark nectar becoming the first beer transported around the world on refrigerated ships; so Irish his accent makes you think of leprechauns.

Patrick James Murphy, proprietor of Sweny’s bookshop, in song…

In appearance, however, “P.J.”—as he prefers to go by—brings to mind America and Hollywood and “Back to the Future” movies, specifically the charismatic mad scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown, with longish wild electrified white hair and the enthusiastic verbal energy of a lightning bolt.

Also like Doc Brown, and in a nod to his fourth-great-grandfather Frederick William Sweny, who originated the store as a pharmacy in 1853, P.J. always wears a white lab coat at work. Too, on this day, P.J. wore an easy smile and a bowtie as colorful as a stained-glass window.

His family continued to own and run “F.W. Sweny & Co. Ltd. Dispensing Chemists” through 1926, at which time it remained a pharmacy in other hands until 15 years ago when it was sold to become—“Great Scott!” as Doc Brown would say in exasperation—a dispenser of upscale coffee. Unable to bear that thought, P.J., then in his late 60s, reacquired the store and turned it into a bookshop devoted solely to famed Irish writer James Joyce, who frequented the original Sweny’s and included a lengthy encounter within in his epic novel “Ulysses.”

At well over 700 pages, treading fully through the tome is the literary equivalent of climbing Mount Everest; many who begin the journey do not reach the summit—or final page. P.J. admits he quit in the early going the first time, at age 18, he set out to conquer the voluminous volume. Many years later, he tried again and succeeded, and has kept climbing as untiringly as Sisyphus ever since.

At last count, P.J. has scaled Mount “Ulysses” a staggering 73—yes, seventy-three—times! Adding to this Herculean erudite feat, he has done so in all seven languages (English, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian) he speaks, often reading aloud to groups he hosts at Sweny’s nearly every evening. Not surprisingly, he readily quotes passages from the novel at length from memory.

“I’ve earned an unofficial PhD when it comes to Mr. Joyce, I should think,” Professor P.J. noted. “I’ve read everything he wrote, though of course ‘Ulysses’ is my favorite.”

Later, during our hour-long visit, he cajoled: “After being in Dublin, you must read ‘Ulysses.’ It’s all about Dublin. After you finish it you can come back from California and we can talk about it more.”

With a wink, P.J. added a nudge: “ ‘Ulysses’ is best enjoyed with the book in one hand and a whiskey in the other.”

“That’s a lot of Jameson,” I laughingly replied, then asked for a shorter Joyce recommendation. Thus I purchased a copy of “Dubliners” that, at only 202 pages, was no threat to push my suitcase overweight as would “Ulysses.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Old Treasure Proves Quite a Bargain

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

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“How much for this one?” I asked the proprietor of a time-portal-in-the-wall antique shop in the charming Ireland town of Kilkenny.

The hurling stick I held forth looked as ancient and weathered as the cobblestones of the narrow street outside the front door. This “hurley,” as the Irish call the bats used in the ancient Gaelic sport, had obviously been game used for many, many seasons before perhaps being forgotten in an attic for half a century.

Its age and scars only made it more attractive, not less so, much as my wife is more beautiful in my eyes now than when we first started dating in college for her laugh lines and smile crinkles illuminate her prettiness, not diminish it.

Having again fallen in love at first sight, this time with a hurley in a storefront display window, I was prepared to pay handsomely.

“Twenty’s fair, I should think,” George said, meaning British pounds which equated nearly equally in dollars.

It was so beyond fair that I felt obligated to buy something more as well to up my tab and decided on a “Guinness For Strength” tin advertising sign featuring a brawny man pulling a horse riding in a cart.

“I’m a fan,” I told George, raising my pants leg to reveal a tattoo of an Irish harp which is also the trademark symbol of the famous brewery. Throughout my Ireland trip the black body ink had been a Willy Wonka-ike Golden Ticket garnering me free Guinness pints from countless bartenders. Its magic expanded now.

“Aye, an Irishman at heart you be!” the true Irishman fairly sang and made it his gift to me.

I now felt like I was stealing from this wee elderly man with a big kind heart. Back, back, back into the bowels of the shop I ventured and returned with a second Guinness sign, this one larger and of heavy wrought iron weighing about what George charged me for it—30 pounds—and I felt our transaction was now less one-sided in my favor.

George told me a hurling stick can be a nose-breaker—“Busted it more times than I can count playing,” he said of is own beak—but my hurley quickly proved also to be a conversation icebreaker.

Still in Kilkenny, a bartender named Eoin admired my souvenir and noted, his pride emphasized at the tail end: “Had me nose broken a few times on the pitch, but never went to hospital!”

Later that day, in a taxi in Dublin, the driver pointed to his nose that zig-zagged like a slalom ski course, then traced a long, straight scar above his left brow and said: “Lucky I didn’t lose my eye. If someone has a pretty face, don’t believe ’em if they say they played the game.”

Earlier, down the block from George’s shop, a souvenir store filled with T-shirts, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets also had a large offering of brand-new hurling sticks for it turns out the Kilkenny Cats have been a dynasty the past century, the New York Yankees of their sport.

Eying my old-but-new-to-me hurley, the clerk behind the counter asked to examine it. He flexed his fingers around the age-worn handle finding a comfortable grip, took a couple slow-motion swings, then offered to trade a new stick for it that cost 75 pounds.

I declined without hesitation and without hesitation he upped his offer to two pristine hurleys.

“No, thanks,” I again told the clerk who had the nose and face of a guy who has played his fair share of hurling.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Column: Irish laughs and wisdom

by Woody

By Popular Request, Irish Leftovers

A number of readers kindly said they enjoyed my recent four-column series on my Ireland travels and asked if I might have more stories to share.

In response, here are some Irish sayings I saw in various pubs and on headstones, all bookended between two tales told to me by cabbies.

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1guinnessAn Irishman pops into a Dublin pub one evening and orders three pints of Guinness. When the bartender brings them the Irishman carefully lines them up and proceeds to take a sip from each glass, one after another, over and over, until all three are empty.

He orders three more pints, prompting the bartender to ask: “Suit ye’self, but mightn’t you rather I bring ’em one at a time so they’re cold and fresh?”

“No, no,” the Irishman replies. “I’m preferrin’ ye bring ’em three at a time. Ye see, me and me two brothers used to meet up and have a good time drinking together. But now one’s in Canada and the other’s in America so we drink in each other’s honor this way once a week.”

“That’s a brilliant tradition,” says the bartender, bringing three more pints on the house.

Months pass and the Irishman becomes well known in the pub for his honorary quirk. One day, however, he orders only two pints.

A somber hush falls over the pub. Setting two beers before the man, the bartender offers his sincere condolences.

For a moment the Irishman is confused but then realizes the mistake and laughs: “No, no, one of me brothers ain’t dead. It’s just that my missus has made ME give up drinking.”

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“May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.”

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“No man ever wore a scarf as warm as his daughter’s arm around his neck.”

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1irishsaying“May the road rise to meet you.

“May the wind be always at your back.

“May the sun shine warm upon your face.

“And rains fall soft upon your fields.

“And until we meet again,

“May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.”

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“Always remember to forget, the troubles that passed away.

“But never forget to remember, the blessings that come each day.”

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“May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door.”

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“There are good ships, and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea.

“But the best ships, are friendships, and may they always be.”

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“May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, and never catch up.”

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1glassguinnessAn Irish farmer walks three miles into town on a Friday night after a long week in the fields and orders a pint of Guinness. The pub is unusually quiet so he decides to liven things up, announcing to all: “I bet 100 pounds that no one here can drink 15 pints in 15 minutes.”

A man in the far corner seems angered by the broken silence and abruptly leaves. No one steps forward to accept the challenge.

About 20 minutes later the insulted man returns, strides up to the bar and slaps down a 100-pound bill: “I’m in!”

“Fifteen Guinness and line ’em up!” orders the farmer, excitedly. When the glasses are ready he takes out his pocket watch and the contest begins.

The farmer calls out each passing minute and like clockwork the challenger downs a pint every 60 seconds. After 10 minutes he has finished 10 pints, but his pace is slowing.

With the call of “Fourteen minutes!” there remain two full pints.

Just as the bet seems lost, however, the challenger theatrically raises a glass in each hand and triumphantly chugs them one after the other with 15 seconds to spare.

“Congratulations!” says the farmer, handing over 100 pounds. “But I do have one question – where did you storm off to before you came back.”

Came the answer: “One hundred pounds is a lot of money, ye know, so I went to the pub across the street to make sure I could do it.”

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Wooden&Me_cover_PRWoody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Column: At Home in Ireland

by Woody

Feeling Home in Distant Land

This is the final of four columns in a series on my recent travels to Ireland.

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In 1792, at age 14 – while claiming to be 18 in order to board a ship bound for America – James Dallas sailed out of Ireland’s Cork Harbor seeking a new life, likely never again to see his Old World loved ones.

1-corkbillboard

A billboard honoring poets in lovely downtown Cork.

Nearly two and a quarter centuries later, I marvel at my great-great-great-grandfather’s hardihood.

James Dallas is the earliest documented branch of my family tree. Visiting his homeland has long beckoned me.

My roots grow deep in the fertile soil near Ohio’s Mad River where James Dallas settled. The next four generations, beginning with my great-great-grandfather John Woodburn (who married James Dallas’ daughter), remained nearby until my dad moved our family to Ventura four decades ago.

Heritage is dear to me: my son’s middle name is Ansel, in honor of his great-grandfather; my daughter’s first name is Dallas. Thus, my summer fortnight in Ireland, and especially five days spent in ancestral County Cork, promised to be a trip for the ages.

Flying 12 hours to London and two more to Dublin, before taking a three-hour train ride to Cork seemed an arduous journey. Yet I could not help think how embarrassingly easy this was compared to weeks at sea in an 18th century ship.

In a movie, I would have arrived in Cork and taken a taxi to a farmhouse, knocked on the front door and been greeted with open arms by a distant blood relative. Real life, of course, is rarely so Hollywood.

For starters, where would I possibly knock?

When asked about the surname “Dallas,” tour guides, locals and even a historian in the Cork City Central Library did not recognize it as Irish. It was suggested the Gaelic name “Dalgash” might have been anglicized upon arrival to the New World.

On a nine-hour bus tour of bucolic southern Cork, our guide/professor Dan O’Brien spent an hour expounding on dairy farming. It was an invaluable lecture.

Dairy cows dot the County Cork landscape -- and milk cans are common as well.

Dairy cows dot the County Cork landscape — and milk cans are common as well.

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Importantly, I learned that dairy farming was “the jewel of the crown” in Cork in the 1700s and 1800s. In fact, Port of Cork was the world’s leading exporter of butter. So it makes perfect sense James Dallas was a dairy farmer.

Making sense of why he left Ireland may be answered by the question in this lyric from an old Irish folk song: “Was it poverty or the call of adventure?”

Likely, both. Three decades of economic difficulty preceded James Dallas’ emigration. Add to this a system of powerful landlords and hardscrabble tenant farmers, and perhaps as much as fleeing hardship James Dallas was running to adventure in America and the opportunity of land ownership.

Gazing out the tour bus window at farm after farm, cows after cows, mile after mile, I wondered if against all odds I was at one moment looking at James Dallas’ boyhood pasture. As Hemingway wrote in “The Sun Also Rises”: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Two more pretty thoughts: strolling through historic English Market Cork it came easy imagining James Dallas once shopping here; visiting Guinness Brewery, established in 1759, I could not help but picture my forebearer, even at age 14, drinking a pint of the legendary black stout.

An example of a very old stone fence still standing despite no mortar.

An example of a very old stone fence still standing despite no mortar.

One more prettiness: Hearing Irish accents and pronunciations, like the silent “h” in “th” – tirty, tousand, tirsty – I wondered if James Dallas carried the lilt of a leprechaun.

Prior to arriving in Ireland, James Dallas, born 182 years before I was, had seemed less a real person and more a painting faded a tousand years. But in the context of this ancient land where farmhouses are routinely a century old or more; stone fences built masterfully without mortar stand 300 years later; and castles date back half a millennium, time collapsed and I suddenly felt a closer connection.

Spiritually, I felt his presence.

The day I arrived in Cork a small sign above a house doorway caught my eye – and heart: “Welcome Home.” It brought to mind a poetic thought by Maya Angelou: “When you leave home, you take home with you.”

Traveling to Ireland, I felt this true. Returning to America, I felt it equally.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Column: Splendid Irish People

by Woody

Ireland takeaway: Splendid People

Third in a four-column series on my recent travels to Ireland to explore my distant family roots and much more.

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            In the southern Irish town of Clonakilty, a plaque below a statue of famed patriot Michael Collins bears the final entry in his diary from August 21, 1922, the day before he was assassinated: “The People Are Splendid.”

Lisa and I at the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher.

Lisa and I at the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher.

During my wife’s and my recent fortnight in Ireland those words proved emblematic. The people we met were splendid, indeed.

And, in deed, from journey’s start to finish. Wheeling our suitcases in downtown Dublin the night we arrived we got lost looking for our hotel. Struggling with a map and double-checking street signs we must have looked pitifully confused even for tourists.

Suddenly four people jaywalked over to ask if we needed help. Instead of offering directions, they walked us to the hotel. A similar kindness later happened when we arrived in Limerick.

Yes, time and again the Irish made even famously amiable Midwesterners seem grouchy by comparison.

At St. James’s Gate Guinness Brewery, Jenny, a lovely young woman whose accent was as thick as she was thin, took a full 10 minutes to ring us up in the gift shop because she was so busy conversing. Learning we were headed to County Cork, her hometown and the land of my distant family roots, she told us about a hidden gem of a café – and drew a map – where we “must” have an authentic Irish breakfast.

In Cork City, the taxi ride from the train station to our hotel proved unforgettable not just because our driver spoke even faster than he drove but because he turned down a tip. I insisted; again he refused, saying warmly: “You paid me fairly. Have a brilliant time!”

Another brilliant example of Irish kindness occurred during a tour of Old Galway City in an open-top double-deck bus. At a stop midway out, two middle-aged women stepped on thinking it was a public bus. Told it was not, they asked where they could catch one because their friend was waiting for them at the city square.

“I’ll take you,” the bus driver cheerfully responded and refused to accept any fare.

Kissing "a tall, dark blonde in a gold dress."

Kissing “a tall, dark blonde in a gold dress.”

On the drive to Bunratty Castle our cabbie, Patrick Murphy – who was as perfectly Irish as his name suggests – patiently explained the native sport hurling. He also told me, with a wink to my wife, of a favorite nearby pub where I could have “an affair with a tall, dark blonde in a gold dress” while waiting for a return taxi.

This, he noted, is how locals order a Guinness in reference to the legendary stout’s ebony color and light head served in a trademark pint glass with a gold-leaf harp logo.

Over and again, we found that even more important than the places you visit are the people you meet. And not just the locals.

Our final night, Lisa and I went to a pub for dinner and surprisingly saw a familiar face. Seated alone was a man who had been on our Cliffs of Moher bus tour several days prior. We invited him to join us.

What a memorable ending to an unforgettable trip the evening became.

A French Canadian from Quebec, Jasan was originally a forestry engineer before switching careers a few years ago at age 60 to become a suicide prevention counselor and university professor on the subject.

The seeds for this fascinating life path detour were planted decades earlier.

About 30 years ago, when a temporary home was needed for an abandoned infant from Senegal in West Africa, Jasan, who is white and has never married, opened his home. Too, he opened his heart and soon legally adopted the boy.

Five years later, Jasan adopted not one more child in need, but eight 10- and 11-year-old girl refugees from Vietnam. The fact that three of his new daughters had relatives who had committed suicide eventually led Jasan into his new career.

“It makes me happy to help others,” Jasan, now a grandfather more than a dozen times over, shared.

Michael Collins was right: People are splendid.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon