An Irish Country Childhood: Memories of a Bygone Age [Hardcover]

Marrie Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

The reminiscences of a Irish woman's childhood takes the reader to a magical Ireland where the reality of spring wells and peat fires mixes with the fantasy worlds the adults are always spinning in their tales.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

These two memoirs celebrate the magic of growing up in small villages in the British Isles during the 1930s and 1940s. For Walsh, it was a time of contentment in a closely knit Irish farming community where "luxury was a full stomach and being clothed." Her reminiscences of odd neighbors, local customs, holy days, and school are interspersed with folklore and ghost stories. She looks back at her childhood with fondness and delight. Novelist Ellis's (Serpent on the Rock, LJ 10/1/95) nostalgia, on the other hand, is filled with melancholy, not only a yearning for what is gone but also a sorrow for what has changed. Her portrayal of the unspoiled beauty of the North Wales coast contrasts sharply with her depiction of its present-day ugliness, a condition brought about by tourism and suburbia. Along with details from her childhood, Ellis presents legends, myths, historical facts, and memories of raising her own children in an isolated wilderness area. Her scenic descriptions are enhanced by an abundance of evocative black-and-white photographs of the Welsh landscape. Though their moods are quite different, both books are well written and suitable for regional collections.?Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A slight, affectionate meander through scenes from a County Mayo childhood of the 1930s and early '40s. Luxury was a full stomach in the peaceable parish of Attymass, where the word Protestant was never uttered and ``people made the most of . . . landmarks in our calendar,'' like threshing time. Entertainment was watching nature at work, and Walsh was an appreciative audience--seeing in a mass of spongy fungi the perfect trampoline, or covering her mouth while stealing a peek at eggs in a nest lest her breath betray her presence to the mother bird. She also recollects the impromptu fiddling (``God's concert'') of neighbor Kitty D'Arcy, who quite lost her bearings after being left at the altar, and of course the Mission, a bazaar-like affair with stalls displaying all manner of holy goods, which was simply ``the greatest event in our young lives.'' Weaned on stories of ghosts and fairies, Walsh had her fair share of childhood terrors. There were also corporeal sources of disquiet, including Tom Lynch's mule and the Connor's bull, and the Tinkers (gypsy tinsmiths) who regularly made camp in the district and helped themselves to what they couldn't get by begging. Walsh, the ninth of fourteen in the largest family in Treanoughter, lingers over memories of each of the nine households in the village. Cousin John, visiting from the States, was aghast at the paucity of reading matter in the homes and sent over Colliers, National Geographic, and the Saturday Evening Post--which may account for Walsh's transformation from the enchanted provincial she portrays into an ‚migr‚ (to Britain, in 1946), and now into an author. A parochial paean to a circumscribed world of folkways that survived long past their time. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312151535
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151539
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,462,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgic and fun, April 29, 1999

By 

Donna L. Hagen (Nokesville, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: An Irish Country Childhood: Memories of a Bygone Age (Hardcover)

This is a marvelous little book recounting a childhood in Ireland. It is eminently readable and will transport you to a simpler world for a few hours.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Irish Childhood Warmly Remembered, February 11, 2006

By 

Virginia Allain "(retired librarian)" (Poinciana, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: An Irish Country Childhood: Memories of a Bygone Age (Hardcover)

"Irish storyteller Marrie Walsh pens a memoir rich with the gifts of warmth, magic and wonder, revisting the scenes of her youth, where every neighbor was family, where hermits and bogey men and ghosts were all equally real and frightening, and where time seemed to have stopped for a while." (synopsis by Alibris)
I love personal accounts of growing up in an earlier generation. This is not the gritty, struggle that was Frank McCourt's experience of a city, depression era childhood. Instead the reader gets the country view of that same period.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A country life classic, March 25, 2003

By 

Mark Newbold (Pittsburg, KS United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Irish Country Childhood: Memories of a Bygone Age (Hardcover)

Reading this book recently allowed me to discover a worthy successor to Flora Thompson's "Lark Rise to Candleford". Which to my mind stands as the classic textured literary time machine, that allows the reader to taste, touch, hear & smell a bygone era in full measure. Marrie Walsh has created a minor masterpiece with her (first?) book. Not only will those devotees of the country life memoirs find similarities with Thompson, but also touches of Miss Read as well as WB Yeats and Thomas Hardy here. The bitter as well as the sweet with a magical touch of folklife for good measure. Highly recommended. And may we see many more works from Ms Walsh's pen.