Wry Blarney

The Story* of how James O'brien, he that had been Ireland's curly-headed rebel poet before he hushed his tongue and earned the name of Jimmy the Hangman for sitting, iron-jowled, on a high bench of justice as Lord Glenmalure; of how this man married his sweet daughter Connaught to John d'Arcy, a tricky swipe but polished, instead of to fine young Dermot McDermot of Dermotstown, as brave a lad of the old land as was in it, so that she might be a great lady and go about the world instead of stopping always in the quiet country among horses, dogs and simple folk; and of what came of it, including the talk that Jimmy the Hangman's house was haunted after his death until it blazed to the ground--all this is a strange, touching story that might or might not have happened just as it did; and no great matter, either, if likelihood is sometimes owed small debts.

What matters most is the manner of its telling by young Master Byrne, who says that this, more than all his other writing, is a book for men of the old country that is on them all like a spell--men who surely owe him a hearty "God bless the work!"

It was the young gentleman's intention that his countrymen might find in the book much that would take them home from wherever they might be on the earth. So he wrote of the fragrance and spaciousness of an Irish mansion as old as the green sod it stood in. He kept bringing in the sweep of Irish history through the ancient family trees--old kings and warriors and battles from Queen Maeve in the day of giants to tart Timothy Healy, and the Fenian men humming the "Shan Van Voght," the Song of Defeat, which is through the book like a soft threat.

He made Connaught O'brien with dusky hair and slender perfections and a strong but quiet tongue, and Dermot McDermot honorable, sure in his saddle and loved by dogs--of which there are many about--terriers, deerhounds, foxhound packs and puppies, and the red setter Rory. He wrote the love-making of these two as a slow, certain thing of wry humor and restrained ecstasy, and, as the Irish are, a little sad.

There is a stirring meet of ladies and gentlemen on their tall horses to find, chase and kill, with due ceremony, that somewhat mystical reddish mister, Dan Russell the fox, with impudent wisdom seeking sanctuary from a choir of hounds. There is a mighty steeplechase with the bookies hawking odds, the hoofs thundering and two poor jocks killed. There is lambing-time, on the spring hills thinly lit with frost and starlight; and coursing the whippets after Pussy, the dodging hare; and benign old gentlemen in red coats "hacking bitterly at small white balls and saying very evil phrases. . . ."

The brown bees of Ireland are never forgotten, in their clean skips by golden-thatched cottages. And blue turf smoke is there, and all the birds of Ireland. . . .

"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds"

--the gray goose, the barking golden eagle, the fleet azure kingfisher, the white triangles of lonely wild swans. These come in the book's many interludes, as where Neddy Joe, the ancient lodge-keeper, sits in warm sunshine tying salmon flies out of bright feathers and passing crabbed strictures on all the folk he best loves. At an inn with a white sand floor and bacon flitches hanging in the rafters, a poet with the face of a thousand wrinkles relates how a great Irish bard, Dan Hoyser (Tannhaeuser!), met Venus in Germany's mountains and was her darling for 20 years--and then unwraps from his patterned kerchief some songs of his own in the Gaelic that have been "compared very favorably to those of the great Dan Hoyser."

The Significance. There are in the world a few unsensitive people for whom the mellow, wry blarney of Author Donn-Byrne has no meaning at all. These are pitiable folk, for they will not understand the astonishing thing he has now done--written a book of modern times with all the glamour upon it that was on Messer Marco Polo, The Wind Bloweth and his other tales of days long gone. His warmest admirers will be quickest to see that he has not done this rich thing without overdoing it occasionally--slipping over briefly into unredeemed melodrama, laying on a few too-thick bits of the Biblical locution; but in the main they will be delighted and amazed to see in this, his best work yet, the subtle operation of his gentle Irish irony, something of that astringent quality that sharpens the art of his countryman, Painter Willie Orpen, who once painted a swarthy, hawk-faced gypsy basking with his woman and trained bear on the lush, noon-flooded Hill of Howth.

The Author. Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne was born in Manhattan less than 40 years ago, with a long north-of-Ireland genealogy. From three on, he grew up on the family estate in Ireland, getting faery lore and the Gaelic. His college learning was at Dublin, Paris, Leipzig; he served an editorial apprenticeship in the U. S. Until he wrote Messer Marco Polo (1921), few guessed his genius and there were money struggles, hard ones. His wife, Dolly Donn-Byrne, writes too--collaborated with Gilda Varesi on the play Enter Madame. There are four little Donn-Byrnes, including the twins, but not even the best friends of the family attempt to spell their Gaelic names.

* HANGMAN'S HOUSE -- Donn-Byrne -- Century ($2).