Madam, - In his review of Memoir by John McGahern, Declan Kiberd writes: "Though primarily an artist, McGahern emerges here as perhaps the profoundest of all sociologists of 20th-century Ireland. His comments on emigration throw the much-vaunted homesickness and sentimentality of the departed into question, as when a Co Clare man, working on a London site, reads of another wet Irish summer in his paper and says, 'May it never stop. May they all have to climb trees. May it rise higher than it did for fukken Noah!' " (Books, September 3rd.)
It seems extraordinary that an Irishman, much less one of Declan Kiberd's age and educational prestige, could come up with such a shallow and dismissive interpretation of the above passage. Surely John McGahern made it abundantly clear in his book that all the small rural localities, each with its own character and individuality, made up the whole of Ireland, and that those who were forced to emigrate (out of dire necessity) continue to live psychologically in their lost localities. Is Mr Kiberd's blindness simply an example of it being easy to sleep on another man's wound? Or has Mr Kiberd somehow lost sight of a vital stem of his own Irish roots? Too many years spent up an ivory academic tree, perhaps?
The agonised rage of the man from Co Clare who took the cattle boat and had to work hard on a site, without the benefit of even second-level education, seems strangely invisible to Mr Kiberd. Equally invisible, of course, is the hardship that so many emigrants had to face. See Michael Parson's Irishman's Diary of September 7th for a painful account of the lot of many emigrants from Ireland, or check out the London-Irish charity's website www.aisling.org.uk
In Memoirs by Pablo Neruda (Penguin Books, London, 1978), the poet says: "I believe a man should live in his own country and I think the deracination of human beings leads to frustration, in one way or another obstructing the light of the soul. I can live only in my own country. I cannot live without having my feet and my hands on it and my ear against it, without feeling movement of its waters and its shadows, without feeling my roots reach down into its soil for maternal nourishment."
The man from Co Clare could not so elegantly express his emotion and pain, but his verbal frustration and rage came from his depths, and scalded him. So much for the remark about "throwing the much-vaunted homesickness of the departed into question".
Sadly, most of the referred-to departed are now very likely among the dearly departed, and many that are left are in difficult circumstances. However, we all might care to remember with some respect that the money they sent home kept this country going in very difficult times, and helped build the Ireland we now have. - Yours, etc,
MARY WARD, Granard, Co Longford.