One thing leads to another. The Giant's Causeway was in the last lines of yesterday's Eye, and that led to wondering if in this year of '98 celebrations some publisher might think of reprinting a popular book of the early days of this century about that period, The Northern Iron by George A. Birmingham. It's not one of his best books - he wrote 60 novels and books of short stories - but it has a quaintness, a romantic quality and a certain topicality. Also, it is set largely around the Giant's Causeway. The author, in real life Canon James Owen Hannay, was born in Belfast, was educated at the Belfast Academy and in England, and had a parish in Mayo. He was an associate of Standish O'Grady, of Horace Plunkett, Arthur Griffith and Douglas Hyde. He was one of five people out of 400 who, in 1912 at the Church of Ireland synod, voted against a resolution which was passed denouncing Home Rule.
R.B.D. French of TCD wrote in the introduction to another of Hannay's novels, The Red Hand of Ulster, published again in 1972 by the Irish University Press, that while so many of his books "celebrate the great bay upon which Westport stands . . . it was North Antrim which he regarded as his real home. He returned to it as often as he could in his life, or in his books." And he wrote that The Northern Iron, like the other mentioned above, is dedicated to "the spirit of northern defiance and rebellion".
There is action in the book, as in the scenes at Antrim, there is bravado and melodrama and sweet romance (he was an admirer of Walter Scott.) It is a good yarn. And the spirit of the times is there indeed. The one real historic character is Jimmy Hope. At the end, young Neal Ward, the hero, who has come back from America, wants Hope to return with him. "Nay, lad, nay. I was born in Ireland . . . I'll die in Ireland when my time comes. Maybe before the end I'll find a chance to strike another blow for her."
And the hero's father, Micah Ward, the Presbyterian Minister who has been harshly treated in a prison hulk in Belfast Lough and held in Fort George where so many were incarcerated, proudly displays a book given to him by fellow prisoners as thanks for his ministrations. It is signed by four Catholics, six presbyterians and 10 from the Established Church.
So neither Hope nor the Reverend Ward will accompany the hero and his bride-to-be to America. Speaking for Jimmy Hope too, the reverend says: "There is no other land except this lost land for me and him." Not Hannay's best, but it has a certain piquancy.