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Last of the Donkey Pilgrims

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Only from a genuine son of Ireland could such a wonderfully whimsical book about a pilgrim's progress across its emerald expanse emerge. Kevin O'Harahas been alifelong friend of mine, as he grew up in a duplex on Wilson Street, a street or two away from me in quiet Pittsfield Massachusetts, the bright and charismatic son of struggling immigrant parents who had a heady brood of children, an Irish Catholic family so large that Kevin, Dermott and several other of the O'Hara boys caddied for golfers to get extra clothes money when barely into their teens. As a fellow afternoon paperboy along with his older brother for the local paper, the Berkshire Eagle, I gradually got to know the family pretty well, although they all went to the local parochial schools while we went to the public schools. And what a family of memorable characters they are!

Returning from Vietnam on the late 1960s, like many of us, Kevin was restless, and while attending the local community college decided to reward himself after graduation in the registered nursing program with an extended sojourn in the 'olde country', attempting to find his roots and himself, and hoping to end the wanderlust by exorcising it in the flesh. And though his leap of exploration took some explaining to his new young wife, he managed to carry it all off with a bit of blarney and bravado, setting out on an impressively improvised journey of self-discovery even as he discovered the Irish people themselves.

Indeed, what he discovered while shuffling across the land in the company of a donkey was the stuff of first novels; he was soon became as Irish as the rest of the denizens of the land of the little people, passing among them as one their own. After lolling about a bit and attempting rather humorously and disastrously to apprentice himself out as a thatcher, he eventually devises an ingenuous idea, to travel across the land with a donkey cart, retracing a old Irish tradition and living off the fabled generosity of the land and its people at the same time. In so doing, O'Hara unlocked a lot of doors, those of the trusting people who thrust open their doors and their hearths to him (and his four-legged friend), to aspects of his own personality that he had learned to bury over the years. On many levels then, this was a journey of discovery and liberation.

His footloose perambulation became a publicized event, both in local Irish papers and intercommunity gossip, so he often found people alerted to his approach and more than willing to exchange some food and shelter for a chance to both learn more about his own journey and the discoveries he was making about their fellow countrymen. Amazingly, many of the common folk he spent time with had never been far over the horizon, and were immensely curious about what lay over it, as to whether the neighboring counties were as clannish as they said, etc. So this psychically healing American-born Vietnam vet came to act as an ambassador among the Irish for the Irish as he wound his way through the valleys and hills of the emerald isle.

I remember being regaled with such tales more than twenty years ago whenever I bumped into Kevin, whether it be at the local pub or just on the street, and he would always tell his tales with a twinkling eye and a storyteller's gift. He has been struggling to reduce it all to print for all these years. The fact is that he has succeeded rather marvelously, capturing the essence of a land which is too quickly evaporating from our midst. Ireland is changing, and many of the aspects Kevin describes so lovingly herein are vanishing. This is, of course, all the more reason to treasure this wonderful set of essays and observations from a fresh, vibrant, and singular voice, a genuinely Irish American writer from whom we all hope we can expect much more. Hope we don't have to wait another twenty five years for the sequel! I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

At a time when changes in the culture of Ireland began making the legends of the Tinkers extinct, Kevin O'Hara took his experiences with alientation from the Viet Nam War and transformed his close observations of beautiful people and landscapes into a remarkable tale of healing and insight. Much like the Canterbury tales, O'hara's stories are enlightening, revealing, and close to the balance of human truth. He has captured the essence of places and experiences that will never pass this way again. These stories read aloud in a way that will make anyone an Irish story teller. It is eaily imagined that this book could make its way into every night time story, livingroom book club, library reading series, and literate pub in America, not to mention Ireland, where it captured the attention of an adoring public. These are the unique stories of a very unique man who has been spinning these tales for decades from well garnered truths and enrapturing his listeners with soul searching, vision, and amazing obsevations that is couched in deep humor. This is a book that cannot be missed and should belong in every book collection in America as well as across the pond beacuse this is werhe we find so much of what we need to recapture the humanity that has fast slipped away in the digital age.

This is an amazingly funny, cute, and touching account of a man's journey around the coast of Ireland. I toured the southern part of Ireland a couple of years ago and reading Mr. O'Hara's tale brought back memories of how beautiful the country is and how wonderful the people are. The book is combination of Irish history, geography, and humor. Reading this book makes me want to head to Ireland, find a donkey and cart, and set off on my own adventure!

I seldom stray from the safe haven of sci-fi/fantasy books, but the comical cover of this book drew me in. The relatable author kept me in, and kept my heart warmed throughout. Just tonight, I finished this book. After a long and weary day at work, I thought of what I could do to relieve the heavy burden of stress upon me. As is my nightly ritual, I cracked this book and headed for the home stretch, the last few chapters. With each chapter finish, my burden was releived. I laughed out loud, I got a little weepy, but I loved every sentence.

To the author - Thank you for finishing this book!

What makes Ireland Ireland? What makes the Irish Irish? Kevin O'Hara had reason to wonder, and it let him to wander, led him on the wonderful journey recounted in this book, looking for the remote old Ireland soon to be absorbed into the modern world. Though born to emigrating parents in England and raised in America, Kevin felt himself to be Irish and believed that if he came to know Ireland he would wind up knowing himself.
So, on the brink of age 30 in 1979, with a stint in Vietnam and training as a psychiatric nurse behind him, Kevin embarked on a personal quest to discover the country of his ancestors and the nature of his heritage. A wacky back-to-the-land scheme to become an apprentice thatcher fell through like an old roof, but Kevin came back with an even wackier idea: He would get a donkey and cart, and walk the circumference of Ireland, living off the land and the hospitality of its people.
In peregrination he would find his position in the world, among the people he would discover the person he was, and in contact with the blessed earth he would find the strength to complete not just this mad 8-month journey but the journey of his life as well.
So off he set, saying good-bye to his grandmother in Roscommon and waving farewell to the crowd of cronies at Rattigan's bar, elder countrymen each with his own view of the Yank's quirky quest. Bets were laid on the outcome -- would he complete his circuit of the island or would he fail to make it out of the county? Was he idiotic or merely idiosyncratic, a wise fool or simply foolish?
He was touched to be sure, be it with wonder or whimsy or wand of faerie, but could this oddfellow circle the island and find the center of the eccentric, the heart of a divided country? Now, 25 years later, readers can decide for themselves, since the story has finally been published.
What happens when a city boy takes a donkey named Missie for a traveling companion? When a nightly roof over their heads depends on farmers and householders met along the road? When even their daily bread depends on the generosity of the land's people? When the road stretches endlessly through a magical landscape of serene beauty and ancient grievance? What adventures and pratfalls await the wanderer? Where will the road lead and where will it end? The answers lie within "Last of the Donkey Pilgrims."
Full disclosure: Kevin O'Hara is a friend of mine, but I believe if you read this book, he will begin to feel like a friend of yours as well.

Being married to an Irishman I've been on a quest to read as much up on the country as possible. This was my latest read - wonderful, amusing, I could relate so well to the accents, expressions - laughing out loud on the NYC subway! If you love Ireland, it's people - this is a great book. Loved the ending with Missie talking about the years following the trip. So glad that Kevin finally got it down on paper. Bravo! I wish him much success with it.

Kevin O'Hara writes about his 1979 journey along the entire coast line of Ireland with nothing but a few clothes, coin, a ration or two, a donkey cart and of course his surprisingly unsinkable donkey, Missy. American Irishman O'Hara is a post Vietnam nurse who is looking to escape from past demons and leaves his lovely wife back in America to visit with his relatives in Ireland, particularly his loving grandmother. Virtually as a whim, strengthened by bets, O'Hara makes the improbable wish to travel the entire coast of Ireland with nothing but a donkey and cart. O'Hara does a surprising job as a writer and expert storyteller as he details his travels virtually as a diary from place to place. The book is truly heart warming as strangers along the way accept him into their home (or barn) with Missy in a barn or an overhang. With the aid of local media, many are forewarned of his arrival and look down the road for his arrival. Combined with a network of new friends that often give him an address, he often finds a place waiting for him. O'Hara captures the spirit of the people of Ireland, the history of the land and provides wondrous humor throughout the book. His early struggles with taking care of Missy are aided by many hands as he finds helping hands along the way. O'Hara describes with a heart the tragedy in Northern Ireland as he stays in both Catholic and Protestant homes shortly after the assassination of Lord Mountbatten followed closely by the Pope's visit. This is the tense part of the book as the RUG police as well as a mysterious carload of young men who may or may not be the IRA check on him periodically. However, his travel to any town, large or small, is generally followed by a meet the neighborhood at the local pub for a pint and friendship. His descriptions of the many families is interesting and amusing as he meets many folk who have stayed on with their parents as he describes the life of the Irish who are enthralled in their history referring to events in the 17th century virtually as recent times. Describing beautiful countryside and enduring barren stretches and severe weather, he and Missy walk over mountains and along bogs seeing sites that he describes in such detail you can imagine it yourself. This is a great book that puts faith in humanity and takes you on a mental trip to a wonderful place.

Titles described as "heartwarming" are not the type of book I usually read about Ireland, but the enthusiastic responses here drew me in. The beginning, honestly, was so full of blarney and begorras that I thought I'd never get past the first forty or so pages. It picks up awkwardly as if unsure of itself--I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it should not put you off. Luckily, the writing settles down as the pace of Missie and Kevin adjusts to their daily perambulations. It's a worthwhile travelogue from 1979, 150 nights spent in barns and farmhouses relying upon local kindness, and a thoughtful look at a nearly vanished, if much poorer, Ireland that nobody today--as the preface acknowledges 25 years later--could have believed would have slipped away. With slower traffic, stagnant villages, and loquacious pub chat, O'Hara recorded these now faded scenes in his diaries and recreates on the page over subsequent decades of what evidently was a long labor of love.

Surprisingly few hostile or suspicious or rude people cross his path, testimony to his own savvy and also to the notoriety spread by press and word-of-mouth as he progressed each day for eight months, to arrive back where he started to finish on Christmas Eve. The religious underpinnings are gently compared, as when he fears to enter Belfast, as a Gethsemane, a fool on a donkey, or when Brother Malachy asks if his trip has moved him to grace, or when he finds himself falling into prayer on his long treks allowing introspection. The political contexts are also explored nimbly and intelligently; a game of pool in a pub turns vicious, a visit to a family who has lost a son to an IRA bomb is handled delicately, and his encounters with families for whom he's the first Catholic their children may have met speak more than the few words given. One woman exclaims as she adds his name to her address book: "you're the first one I've written under 'O'."

Having driven often all too quickly along many of the roads O'Hara trudged, it's also intriguing to get a donkey-level and slowly observed view of the Irish landscapes. He takes the circuit against Celtic practice, going inadvertently but symbolically "ass-backwards" against the sun, counterclockwise or widdershins, but manages to survive. Especially intriguing for me were his reports from rarely visited areas like the Belmullet peninsula of Mayo, the interior in Co Roscommon, or the Leitrim coast, all three miles of it. While I wish he would have spent more time in the interior of Ireland, he seems to follow the understandable preference of most travelers to make the coastal circle, and his accounts of the familiar as well as the less frequented corners are worthwhile. Most memorable for me were his night attempted sleeping in a stone circle said to have been the place of human sacrifice millennia ago; a entertainingly told pub-knowledge match that he--almost--wins; his imagined conversations of those following his trek from the pub where he began his trip; and his journeys up the Glengash Pass in Donegal and the hills that rise and dip above Dingle.

For every reader that might be drawn in by the garish cover, another may be repelled (as I was initially), but despite the rather persistent touch of Oirish in the stage-dialogue that seems to be on the lips of every other expansive farmer and eloquent pub denizen he meets, O'Hara does balance these broad stereotypes--and you also read between the lines to learn how the Irish are playing their own clever roles as they meet the eccentric Yank "Mr Donkeyman" who the press faithfully plays up on his perigrinations--with efficient portrayals of landscapes and personalities. (I agree with those who have wished for pictures that should have accompanied these printed accounts; perhaps these will gain their own publication soon?)

What other readers may not have noticed is how O'Hara does quite well in setting himself up as a "character" to survive: to play off not only the locals in hopes of a warm meal and shelter each night, but the visiting Yanks who gawk at him, and also the more aggressive boyos from wherever who try to knock him down a peg. He also plays off his role against the Travellers he sometimes meets or for whom he is mistaken, revealing again another often ignored or romanticized or reviled side of rural Irish tradition. He handles himself well in some sensitive situations, you sense, as his confidence grows and his bond with Missie tightens. Their relationship provides a moving coda to the tale, too.

Since O'Hara's not a professional writer, his effort rings oddly more true and less pat, for you sense how long he labored to bring the right balance of stereotypical clever blather and slowly witnessed beauty to these hundreds of nights and pages assembled.

Kevin's writing draws you into his journey - a remarkable romp around Ireland with a donkey that seems human. I loved it. You could nearly smell the air and see the characters. A magical look at an island that has changed so much in the 25 years since his journey took place. I wanted to be there by his side as he runs into character after character. His book is the next best thing to being there.

I didn't want his journey to end. Alas, time moves on and progress can't be stopped. If only there could be a sequel.

Anyway, it is written in very short, easy to read chapters. Perfect nighttime reading. If you like adventures, humor, self reflection, and interesting characters - read this book. If you have ever been to Ireland and fallen in love with it, this book is a must read. If you live in Ireland now and want a look back at the country as it existed 25 years ago, this book is required reading.

Kevin O'Hara's book, "Last of the Donkey Pilgrims" was a wonderful anthology of all things Irish. Having ridden my bike clockwise around Ireland in 1988, reading Kevin's book was a walk down Memory Lane. For years I've tried to relate the kindness of the people of Ireland, the grand unselfishness and pure hearts of my ancestors. Kevin's descriptions and prose did it for me; he captured in this book what I've tried desperately to portray in my answers to questions about my own round-about. Having just finished the book, I feel a bit despondent though my husband and kids are grateful for my being done; they might actually see a meal on the table now that my nose is out of the book. It's a sign of an extraordinary book when the reader dreads the turning of the last page.