Rain On The Wind was Walter Macken's third novel. Published in Britain and the US in 1950, it proved to be the breakthrough book that allowed him to fulfil his lifetime ambition and become a full-time writer. Ultan Mackenfirst read the book at the age of 12 or 13 in the 1950s. "Reading it then, and many times since, I always thought it had been written while my father was living in Galway. In fact he wrote it while working as an actor with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin."
The 1940s were a tough time for him. In 1944 he completed his first novel, Quench The Moon, a story set in Cleggan and Galway and published by Macmillans in Britain and the US. It was banned in Ireland within two months of publication and didn't do that well.
In the summer of 1949 he happened to get a three-month break from the Abbey and it was then that he wrote Rain On The Wind in the living-room of our house in Ardpatrick Road in Cabra. When he finished the manuscript, he sent it to Macmillans with the following comment: "I am duly forwarding you Rain On The Wind. It is fiction, a story that has been with me for a long long time and which I here get rid of, in what way only time will tell." He had actually used some of the original story in an Irish-language play called Oighreacht na Mhara (Inheritance of the Sea) which he staged at the Taibhdhearc in the 1940s. Now he had taken this story and made a full-blooded novel out of it. It was published in Britain and the US simultaneously, to extraordinary success.
In Britain it was chosen as a Book of The Month Club choice. Even better, it was selected by the US Literary Guild as its book of the month, guaranteeing a sale of 250,000 copies. Its publication happened to coincide with my father's first visit to the US. He was playing the principal role in M.J. Molloy's King Of Friday's Men. His six-month tour proved successful for him as an actor. He was a hot property and Hollywood came calling.
He was offered a seven-year contract to go to Hollywood at $40,000 dollars a year with a free house. He turned it down. He told the cigar-smoking Hollywood moguls: "No, thank you all the same, I have to go back to Galway and finish my novel The Bogman." They couldn't believe anyone would turn down such an offer, they tried to persuade my mother; but she said that whatever Walter said, she agreed with. Nevertheless, the success of Rain On The Wind meant that for the first time in his life, my father could seriously consider becoming a full-time writer.
King of Friday's Men lasted only three nights on Broadway, so in the Spring of 1951 my parents sailed for home. My father bought a car and I will never forget the sight of him driving a Ford Anglia down the deserted street on an afternoon. My mother and father were home and now the move was on. Within days he had gone to Galway to look for a house; and he found one. It was a large house on six acres within 200 yards of Lough Corrib. It was called Gort Na Ganiv and it was owned by a lady called Countess Metaxa. She was of Anglo-Irish stock and had married a Polish Count. She wanted £;3,000 for the house. My father rang Macmillans, his publishers in London, and they wired him back the money.
So lock, stock and barrel, we moved back to live in this wonderful house, with its extensive gardens, shrubs, flowers, an orchard of apple and plum trees and our own forest.
Walter Macken lived in that house from 1951 to 1966 and it was there that the novels, plays and short stories poured out of him. He rarely went away unless it was for brief sojourns as an actor. Otherwise his routine never varied. He rose at about 7am. He washed himself and we went to daily Mass in Oughterard at 8am. After Mass he bought his daily newspaper - the Irish Press. He didn't approve of me when I began buying The Irish Times each day from the age of 12. We would drive home and have breakfast and then he would go into the living-room and begin the writing process. First of all he would walk around the large table for about a half-an-hour, smoking maybe 10 cigarettes and then finally he would sit down and write for about 30 to 45 minutes. The material came straight from his head and was rarely rewritten or changed. He thought out all the stories in his head all day.
When he had his piece written for the morning, he would call my mother in and read it to her. The rest of his day was spent reading, relaxing, gardening, walking and fishing. His stories came into his head complete. The difficulty, he told me, was getting that original story idea down on paper: it was never as good as it was in his head.
While living in Oughterard, he produced three more contemporary novels, The Bogman, Sullivan, and Sunset On The Windowpanes, two books of short stories and his three historical novels. He wrote two children's books, Island Of The Great Yellow Ox, published in 1964 and Flight of The Doves, published in 1968, and of course his final novel - Brown Lord Of The Mountain - which was published in September 1966. I remember him saying when he read the published book: "You know, I think I can write now." He died in April 1967, just 40 years ago, after a massive coronary attack. He was only 51. He himself read Rain On The Wind as part of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio. Sadly, they didn't keep the tapes.
I'm going to be reading it myself from Monday next as RTá Radio 1's Book of the Week. It's a wonderful story about the young Claddagh fisherman Mico, whose handsome face is marred by a huge birthmark. It tells his story and that of his friends, Twacky and Peter, his brother Tommy, his father Big Micil and his grandfather. Then there is the love of his life, Maeve. Essentially, Rain On The Wind is a love story. I hope the extracts I have chosen give listeners a flavour of this wonderful book. I remember my father saying to me once: "In a hundred years' time, when people read my books, they will say, 'so that's how people lived'."