ROVING WRITERS: Monaghan reveals its literary heritage to Louise East during a short break in Kavanagh country.
I knew next to nothing about Monaghan, which seemed as good a reason as any to go there. Rummaging through my mental lumber room, all I came up with was a Patrick Kavanagh couplet: "O stony grey soil of Monaghan ... You burgled my bank of youth". Hardly a promising start, but a start nonetheless. This October marks the centenary of Kavanagh's birth, making it a good time to explore the county he described with such steely-eyed passion in his poetry.
My mum agreed to join me, and as we drove north, I read aloud from my ragged copy of Soundings, the Leaving Cert poetry collection. Stony Grey Soil is certainly not the stuff of tourist brochures. As well as burgling Kavanagh's bank of youth, Monaghan perfumed his clothes with weasel itch and fed him on swinish food. Soundings editor, Professor Gus Martin, was obviously determined to be up-beat: "Has Kavanagh's love for his native Monaghan been completely destroyed?" he asked bracingly. Underneath, someone (ahem) had scribbled in pencil: "Yes." This was clearly not the right answer, so I put the book aside and looked for a better one out the car window.
Monaghan is drumlin country, a child's landscape of hills made from egg cartons and lakes of silver foil. It doesn't so much roll, as rollick; up one minute, down the next, around a lake, oops, up another hill. Obviously the best thing to do is ditch the car and either walk or cycle - the lanes are blessedly quiet, and in the past couple of years all sorts of cross-border tracks have been opened up. Kavanagh himself attributed much of his development as a poet to his inheritance of "Ould Quinn", his uncle Jemmy's clapped-out bike, although quite what the poet would make of tourists pedalling the lanes of Monaghan for sport is another matter.
Our first stop was Hilton Park, home of the Maddens since the 18th century, where you can stay for delightfully plush and pricey B&B, or phone ahead and make an appointment to see the gardens. As well as the lake, a herb garden, a wonderfully blowsy herbaceous border and all sorts of unusual trees, there's a box parterre in the shape of a Maltese cross, designed by Ninian Niven in 1865. The current Maddens, Johnny and Lucy, have brought the gardens back to life over the past 10 years, and work is ongoing. "The only thing that makes these gardens possible is power tools," says Johnny Madden, gesturing toward a 200-yard yew hedge. "I remember it used to take four or five men two weeks to cut that. Now it takes one man a week with a hedge-trimmer."
Close by the beautiful calm of Hilton Park is the town of Clones, home to a round tower, a curious, house-shaped stone shrine and a motte-and-bailey. It's also familiar as the location used by Neil Jordan in his film of The Butcher Boy by Pat McCabe, another local son who must have given the tourist board food for thought: "Murder, madness, pigs, just the image we want to project." Clones is a satisfying town, where the central diamond or town square pitches downhill from the church to a newsagent stocking all the essentials from holy water bottles in the shape of the Virgin Mary to copies of Bill Clinton's autobiography.
Between Clones and Monaghan town, there's a tiny right-hand turn leading to the small, undemanding church of Drumsnatt. Grazing sheep meander between grave stones from which the lettering is slowly fading. It takes me a while to find what I'm looking for; a simple stone with the words "To the memory of two loving and beloved sisters. Emily Wilde, 24. Mary Wilde, 22." A friend of a friend's father had passed on the sad story of these young girls, illegitimate sisters of Oscar Wilde. On Hallowe'en night in 1871 in nearby Drumaconnor House, the pair were preparing for a party, when first one ball gown caught fire, and then, as her sister tried to put out the flames, the other. Both girls died within 10 days.
There's a fine rain falling, but the Wilde grave lies beneath a stand of sycamore and ash, so I share their shelter for a few minutes then dodge back through the sheep and rain to the car.
Further north is Castle Leslie, another family pile now surviving as an upmarket hotel. Castle Leslie was briefly the centre of the known universe when Paul McCartney married Heather Mills there in 2002, but when I ask owner Sammy Leslie whether guests ask to sleep in the same bed as Paul, she just smiles and says somewhat cryptically, "the staff know they will lose their toenails if they discuss former guests." Still, the money from the bash must have been useful, because Sammy Leslie is in the middle of bringing a wing of the house back to life. Frescoes are being renovated, the billiard room and the conservatory re-roofed, the library re-stocked, and a cookery school and six extra bedrooms created. Then there's the equestrian centre at the bottom of the drive, which Leslie has recently bought and turned into a hunting lodge for horsey types, or those who can't quite afford the big house. "Four big estates have been sold off in recent years. I think we're the only one to expand," she says happily.
We head south to Carrickmacross and the Nuremore Hotel, a rambling edifice nestled in the centre of an 18-hole golf course. From the bedroom window, the view is of soft rolling hills and small lakes cluttered with ducks, much like the rest of Monaghan, only neater. The hotel itself is only 45 minutes from Dublin Airport, and Janet Halliburton, the sales manager, is keen to lure Dublin folk up to sample the cooking of head chef Ray McArdle. Mum and I volunteer, and are fed pigeon with foie gras, gravadlax with beetroot jelly and scallops with lobster ravioli. Food and service are both very fine indeed. "Well, the Michelin man has been twice - I'm not telling you how we know, we just know - so we've got our fingers crossed," says Halliburton.
Next morning we stop off in Carrickmacross, where market day is in full swing. My skirt and green shirt quickly become a prime attraction. Heads turn, people halt, saloon doors swing and tumbleweeds tumble. One old man, his jumper tucked into his pin-stripe suit, stops, stares, says "Hello" and then bursts out laughing. We slip into the cool dark of St Joseph's church, where a forward-thinking priest, Patrick Keown, commissioned Harry Clarke to make several stunning stained glass windows in 1926. Each saint has big doe eyes and jewel-bright robes and there are wonderfully intricate details in the corners. My favourite shows St Dympna, resplendent in lisle stockings, powder-blue high heels, a flouncy magenta skirt and what looks like a pale yellow hat but may be a halo, pointing a sword at someone who may have made personal comments about her natty outfit.
The land spanning out from Inniskeen to Carrickmacross is designated Kavanagh country. Small brown signposts point to places familiar from the poems, such as Billy Brennan's barn where dances were held, and Shancoduff, the townland where Kavanagh's family owned a few mean fields. Even with all the signposts, we got lost, veering past Kavanagh's birthplace, where the neighbour's "hanging hill" of A Christmas Childhood is now planted with healthy-looking corn, in search of the Kavanagh centre. The lane got smaller and smaller, its mohican of grass bigger and greener.
Somehow, it was easier here, away from the sign-posts, to imagine the young Kavanagh, bowling along on Ould Quinn, wondering how in heaven's name to escape from small town life. And equally easy to imagine how these green fields, their hedgerows starry with wild flowers, redeemed themselves in time. "I would say that as a poet I was born in and around 1955," Kavanagh wrote toward the end of his life. "Thirty years earlier, Shancoduff's watery hills could have done the trick but I was too thick to take the hint." u
Continuing our summer series in which Irish Times and other writers turn tourists in their own land, Louise East travelled toMonaghan as a guest of Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority. For more information on holidays in Ireland, see www.ireland.ie