The Mountain of the Women: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour (Hardcover)

by Liam Clancy (Author) "Not far from my hometown in Ireland there is a mountain called Slivenamon..." (more)
Key Phrases: rebel songs, New York, White Horse, William Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"It is difficult to imagine now how innocent a twenty-year-old boy could be in a small town in Ireland in the fifties, but I had one foot in the twentieth century, the other in the Middle Ages," writes Clancy in this entertaining memoir. But times change, and by the end of the book he is living in Greenwich Village, watching gay men kiss on the street and listening to the young Bob Dylan play in coffeehouses until he becomes a cultural phenomenon himself as one of the famous Irish folk music group, the Clancy Brothers. In the first half of this autobiography, Clancy describes his childhood in a small Irish town, the 11th child of a loving family who attended strict Catholic school and rabble-roused with his friends. There are moving scenes the death of his older sister from TB and his mother's crisis of faith but his story really takes off when he gets a small part in Cyril Cusack's celebrated production of The Playboy of the Western World. He met Diane Guggenheim, who was collecting Irish folk songs, and eventually went to New York, where, with Guggenheim money they started Tradition Records to record folk music. Clancy's style is mirthful and funny, and while the chronology is sometimes difficult to follow, it is the storytelling, not the story itself, that impresses. The book's second half is filled with fascinating sketches and portraits of the incredible arts scene in New York and Boston at the time the famed Poet's Theater in Cambridge, Mass.; Jose Quintero's renowned production of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow; and Lenny Bruce that is both lovingly evocative and engrossing. There is so much great material here that the memoir, at times, feels cursory, but what it lacks in detail it makes up in charm.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Clancy relates his sojourn from Ireland to Greenwich Village in the 1950s and his founding of the famed singing group The Clancy Brothers along the way.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (February 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385502044
• ISBN-13: 978-0385502047
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #436,696 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Enjoyable, March 14, 2002

By	Richard McCall (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

Anyone who has ever heard the recording of "Peter Kagen and The Wind" which Mr. Clancy recorded with Tommy Makem, or heard Mr. Clancy present the poem "Pegasus" knows his unusual ability to involve the listener in the story of a song, or in poetry written by others. For many performers that would be enough. With this book Mr. Clancy proves his abilities extend beyond that. His special way of presenting the series of stories incorporated in this book makes reading a different experience - one has only to open one's thinking, and allow the gentle energy of the unfolding stories to keep the course as he leads the reader through Ireland of the 30's, 40's and 50's. The style makes for easy reading - almost as though someone were there reading it to you. He incorporates much Irish history in some of these stories, yet there is nothing dry about history with this style of presentation. A story from his childhood or youth is being told, then, to establish for the reader a larger grasp of understanding, he slightly opens for the reader a door to a more distant past - perhaps a few hundred years. Stories of experiences. Stories of family. Stories of friends.
Then come the adventures in the United States.
At rare times exposed to wealth extreme. At other times exposure to the other extreme of the financial spectrum.
There are stories of the 60's Greenwich Village. The characters who became friends. Friends, many of whom later came to be regarded as icons of the time. We are led through striving of work to provide sustenance; the fun of the singing get-togethers; the evolving of what would become, with his brothers Paddy and Tom, and Tommy Makem, a group well known in many parts of the world.
This is a book written in a style simple enough to include the depth presented. It is the autobiography of the early years of a man. It is the work of a poet.
It is the first book in a long time I have felt I wanted to buy as gifts for friends to assure they have the opportunity to experience what it offers.
It is a book for those curious about the 60's Greenwich Village scene. It is a book for those interested in Irish history. It is a book for those interested in music. It is a book for "Folkies." It is a book for those interested in human nature and interaction. It is a book about a boy developing, finding out who he is on his way to becoming a man. It is a wonderful trip Mr. Clancy has allowed us to share.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There's no raconteur like an Irish raconteur..., March 16, 2002

By	Regina McLaughlin (Greenbelt, MD United States) - See all my reviews

Life experience, not so much reconstructed as double-distilled, is recaptured in the telling of Liam Clancy's thrilling and insightful memoir. Here's his hometown, Carrick-on-Suir, an almost mythically Irish hometown in the backwaters of the Emerald Isle. Where careeneth a procession of townsfolk both dotty and dour: Here's the town publican. There goes a creepy-looking cluster of nuns. Hark the churchbell, tolling out the Angelus, and oh, have a heartbreaking serving of tragedy along with your tea. Most important of all, observe the morally upright Mammy Clancy in action, pinning her hopes on her eleventh child: surely this shy impressionable son is a priest in the making. The author's eye fondly revisits family life in loving but not uncritical retrospect, the idealized Irish family, thrown headlong into life's tough struggles.

An idyllic setting, interrupted one day by the arrival of one world-weary American heiress with a hidden agenda. She's determined to travel the world collecting folk music with the young Liam as her assistant. But can it be, she wants to snag him and possess him as her own--much as Dido, the evil queen of Homeric legend, attempted to do to Ulysses? And if so, could you blame her? This kid's a natural: a real Irish choirboy with an old-world brogue and a penchant for reciting poetry. He obviously needs seducing.

Ah, Liam, me boy, you're in for a bumpy ride... or rather, a picaresque romp from the footlights of backstage Dublin to the hollers of Appalachia, on to Cambridge, Mass., and New York's zany, East Village arts "scene," where you'll meet everybody who's anybody. And, every once in a while, right back home to Carrick again, trailing clouds of cultural alienation. And great green gobs of maternal disapprobation.

There are enough imbedded elements of Tom Jones that one could easily conclude this has just got to be fiction. So it's well the author pinches us awake, as social injustice, poverty, narrow-mind religious judgementalism, moral hypocrisy and intellectual vapidity present themselves. Not that any of that stops our hero.

As he describes becoming a force to be reckoned with-first on the stage, and then in popular music-Liam Clancy is forthright about a few gaffs and stumbles. The hardest to swallow-given the idealization of family that serves as oxygen during his early life-is brief, bitter mention of a daughter, the product of an early relationship, whom he largely declined to be a father to. An included photograph of the author, posed beside this beautiful child, is simply disturbing.

As the memoir ends, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are just about to reach the inexplicable pinnacle of fame as accidental musicians. A bit unsettled by the nutty East Village scene, our boys momentarily return to the village of their roots-where the local townfolk haven't changed a bit-they are, as ever, totally insane. Back they go to New York.

The reader senses the chronicle ahead. . . Fame is fleeting, the singing group will eventually tire of life on the road, and, after all, to many amps can you crank a pennywhistle before someone's sinus linings hit a harmonic? One prays for Volume Two, wherein Liam, classical hero that we know him to be, crowns life's journey with maturity and self-knowledge, and expiates a life of fond transgressions by founding his own rollicking, loving Celtic dynasty. Of course, Volume 2 will need to be as thoughtful, resonant, funny and well-crafted as the present work, so that the reading of Liam's life remains in keeping with the living of it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely Book -- But Is This All?, February 26, 2002

By A Customer

Liam Clancy still has legions of fans around the world, and his fans have been waiting anxiously for this book. It is, in a word, delightful. He takes us through the landscape of his birthplace of Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary to the early days of the sixties in Greenwich Village. Along the way we watch a metamorphosis occur: from the shy baby of a large, loving and musical family, to an experienced stage actor who revels in all the temptations of the body and soul. What struck me about his story is that he does not pull punches nor does he excuse or whitewash his experiences and antics. You are there as he drinks too much, picks up women, and goes from one adventure to another. The story is plainly told, yet Clancy's ear for poetry comes shining through his prose in a most heart-warming and deightful way.

The only complaint I have about the book is that is seems to stop rather abruptly. It almost seemed at the end of the book that Clancy was busily trying to cram in as many names as he could (managers, restaurant owners, fellow entertainers etc.) and neglected to actually wind up the narrative. I'm hoping this is Volume One in a series; we at least would like to know what happened to him from the middle sixties to the present.

If you are a Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem fan, I heartily recommend this book.