Wexford Quotes

I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.

She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.

I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don’t get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw.

People were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford people just aggressively pretended nothing had happened.

No one hid their interest when I walked into the room. I'm not sure if it was the news about Boo or my general appearance. At home, people would have asked. People would have been crawling all over me for information. At Wexford, they seemed to extract what they wanted to know by covert staring.

Mind the faeries,” Brian said with a grin. “Christ, it’s been years since I stepped into a country wood. Roarke, do you remember when we skinned those Germans in the hotel, then hid out for two days with travelers in the wood down in Wexford till the heat was off?” “Jesus, I’m standing right here,” Eve pointed out. “Cop.” “There was that girl,” Brian continued, unabashed. “Ah, the sultry beauty. And no matter how I tried to charm her, she only had eyes for you.” “Again, right here. Married.” “It was long ago and far away.

Back at home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford, some people just aggressively pretended nothing was happening.

The trouble with psychology," said Wexford epigrammatically, 'is that it doesn't take human nature into account.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one …

You make someone into a object of – not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, inefectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you’ve hurt them, marked them, they’re even more sick and ugly, aren’t they? And they’re afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn’t very pleasant, but you did ask.” “Go on” he said. “So you’ve got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who’s unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that’s what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one love because they’re dirty, sovered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they’re hateful, they’re low, they’re sub-human. That’s all they’re good for, being hit, being reduced even further.

Greed and envy took from a man’s heart everything but—well, greed and envy.

the case of her following his directions and taking the footpath

Burden thought irrelevantly that Wendy Williams must be attracted by bald men, first Rodney with his exaggerated forehead, naked as an apple, then this pebble-head.

He turned on to the track and wondered why no birds were singing. The only sound he could hear was the buzz and rattle of a drill, which he assumed to be the farmer doing something to a fence. It was, in fact, a woodpecker whose presence would have thrilled him had he known what it was.

standing

found

In Wexford non c'è niente di cupo. Il sole sorge molto vicino alla città e a volte sembra che si levi tra le case. Il vento disperde semi contro i muri e lungo i bordi dei tetti, così, se alzi lo sguardo, tra te e il cielo puoi vedere sbocciare le margherite.

What does kaheerakah mean?” “Caťaoireaca. It’s Irish for chairs.” “Chairs? You toast furniture in Ireland?” Bridget laughed. “There’s a story. Probably apocryphal…” I made a rolling motion with my hand. “Okay, but remember, you asked.” She settled herself and poured another glass of paint thinner. “There was this Brit who decided to stop at Hotel Rosslare in County Wexford. He had a few, then a few more, then he decided to be friendly. So he asked the barmaid how you say ‘cheers’ in Irish.” Bridget smiled wickedly. “And you know how the Brits massacre the English language, so she thought he said ‘chairs’, and she told him. Whereupon he bought a round for the house, turned to the other patrons, raised his glass, and said Caťaoireaca.

On the way back to Canefield House we passed through the more hilly district of Scotland, and observed, working in the fields or sitting in the doorways of miserable wooden shacks, not the Negro figures to which the eye is accustomed in such settings in the West Indies, but ragged white men with blue eyes and tow-coloured hair bleached by the sun. This little population of Redlegs, as they are called, are descendants of the followers of the Duke of Monmouth, who, after their defeat at Sedgemoor, were deported to Barbados by order of Judge Jeffreys at the Bloody Assizes. They have remained here ever since, in the same humble plight as when they were first herded ashore. Labat and many other writers talk of the presence in the islands of Irish deportees shipped here by Cromwell after Wexford and Drogheda, and it is perhaps due to them that the closest affinity of the Barbadian way of speaking is with the Irish accent.

He had a reasonable job as an actuary (whatever that was),

newer here? There were no dense brambles,

What

for. One of its headlamps was broken and its chrome rim

The holding of the Feis of Tara was the occasion also for holding a great Aonach or fair. Almost all the great periodic assemblages of ancient Ireland had fairs in their train. After that of Tara the most famous of these periodic assemblies were those held at Tlachtga, Uisnech, Cruachan and Tallite — the three royal residences in those three portions of the royal domain of Meath, which had been annexed from Leinster, Munster, Connaught and Ulster, respectively. Also the Fair of Emain Macha (in the present county of Armagh), the Fair of Colmain on the Curragh of Kildare, and the famous Fair of Carman (Wexford). As

home. Recognizing him, she said this before he

Look, Mike, that lipstick wasn’t by the road. It was right on the edge of the wood. Apart from the fact that they don’t use the lane, Sweeting and Mrs. Creavey don’t wear lipstick and even if they did they wouldn’t be likely to have one in a peculiar shade of pinkish brown like this. You know as well as I do, when a woman only uses lipstick on high days and holidays, for some reason or other, a sense of daring probably, she always picks a bright red. This is a filthy color, the sort of thing a rich woman might buy if she’d already got a dozen lipsticks and wanted the latest shade for a gimmick.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it isn’t utterly absurd. Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

We are original in our happy moments. Sorrow has only one voice, one cry.

The last colonisation of Ireland is then recorded under Anno Mundi 3500 (i.e. ca 504 BC): “The fleet of the sons of Milidh came to Ireland at the end of this year, to take it from the Tuatha de Danann, and they fought the battle of Sliabh Mis with them on the third day after landing.”23 The children of Milidh, known to us as the Milesians, had landed unobserved in the mouth of the river Slaney in what is today the county of Wexford, from where they marched to Tara, the central seat of government.

lady,” a word she had found out came from the Anglo-Saxon “lafdig,” meaning “she who makes the bread.

Only novels! Only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language!

From Introduction to The Demon Princes, by Caril Carphen (Elucidarian Press, New Wexford, Aloysius, Vega): It may well be asked how, from so many thieves, kidnappers, pirates, slavers and assassins within and beyond the Pale, one can isolate five individuals and identify them as ‘Demon Princes’. The author, while conceding to a certain degree of arbitrariness, can nevertheless in good conscience define the criteria which in his mind establish the Five as arch-fiends and overlords of evil. First: the Demon Princes are typified by grandeur. Consider the manner in which Kokor Hekkus gained his cognomen ‘The Killing Machine’, or Attel Malagate’s ‘plantation’ on Grabhorne Planet (a civilization of his own definition), or Lens Larque’s astounding monument to himself, or Viole Falushe’s Palace of Love. Certainly these are not the works of ordinary men, nor the results of ordinary vices (though Viole Falushe is said to be physically vain and in certain exploits of Kokor Hekkus there is the quaintly horrid quality of a small boy’s experiments with an insect). Secondly: these men are constructive geniuses, motivated not by malice, perversity, greed, or misanthropy, but by violent inner purposes, which are for the most part shrouded and obscure. Why does Howard Alan Treesong glory in chaos? What are the goals of the inscrutable Attel Malagate, or that fascinating flamboyant Kokor Hekkus? Thirdly: each of the Demon Princes is a mystery; each insists on anonymity and facelessness. Even to close associates these men are unknown; each is friendless, loveless (we can safely discount the self-indulgences of the sybaritical Viole Falushe). Fourthly: and obverse to the above, is a quality best to be described as absolute pride, absolute self-sufficiency. Each considers the relationship between himself and the balance of humanity as no more than a confrontation of equals. Fifthly: and ample in itself, I cite the historic conclave of 1500 at Smade’s Tavern (to be discussed in Chapter One) where the five acknowledged themselves, grudgingly perhaps, as peers, and defined their various areas of interest. Ipsi dixerunt!

From ‘Kokor Hekkus the Killing Machine’, Chapter IV of The Demon Princes, by Caril Carphen (Elucidarian Press, New Wexford, Aloysius, Vega): If Malagate the Woe can be characterized by the single word ‘grim’ and Howard Alan Treesong by ‘incomprehensible’, then Lens Larque, Viole Falushe and Kokor Hekkus all lay claim to the word ‘fantastic’. Which one exceeds the other two in ‘fantasy’? It is an amusing if profitless speculation. Consider Viole Falushe’s Palace of Love, Lens Larque’s monument, the vast and incredible outrages Kokor Hekkus has visited upon humanity: such extravagances are impossible to comprehend, let alone compare. It is fair to say, however, that Kokor Hekkus has captured the popular imagination with his grotesque and eerie humor. Let us listen to what he has to say in an abstract from the famous telephoned address, The Theory and Practice of Terror, to the students of Cervantes University: “… To produce the maximum effect, one must identify and intensify those basic dreads already existing within the subject. It is a mistake to regard the fear of death as the most extreme fear. I find a dozen other types to be more poignant, such as: The fear of inability to protect a cherished dependent. The fear of disesteem. The fear of noisome contact. The fear of being made afraid. “My goal is to produce a ‘nightmare’ quality of fright, and to maintain it over an appreciable duration. A nightmare is the result of the under-mind exploring its most sensitive areas, and so serves as an index for the operator. Once an apparently sensitive area is located the operator to the best of his ingenuity employs means to emphasize, to dramatize this fear, then augment it by orders of magnitude. If the subject fears heights, the operator takes him to the base of a tall cliff, attaches him to a slender, obviously fragile or frayed cord and slowly raises him up the face of the cliff, not too far and not too close to the face. Scale must be emphasized, together with the tantalizing but infeasible possibility of clinging to the vertical surface. The lifting mechanism should be arranged to falter and jerk. To intensify claustrophobic dread the subject is conveyed into a pit or excavation, inserted head-foremost into a narrow and constricted tunnel which slants downward, and occasionally changes direction by sharp and cramping angles. Whereupon the pit or excavation is filled and subject must proceed ahead, for the most part in a downward direction.

among

As well as some of the colours being inherited from the days of the faction fights, an occasional faction slogan has been carried over too. ‘If any man can, an Alley man can.’ ‘Squeeze ’em up Moycarkey, and hang ’em out to dry.’ Lingering animosities can sometimes surface in surprising ways: it is not unknown for an irate Wexford supporter to hurl abuse at Kilkenny, recalling an incident that occurred in Castlecomer to indignant United Irishmen in 1798: ‘Sure what good are they anyway? Didn’t they piss on the powder in ’98?

And that will be England gone, The shadows, the meadows, the lanes …

As in most cases when the truth becomes clear you wonder how you could ever have seen things differently.

You’re supposed to be a detective. Well, detect.

tell them all this? Wexford had no idea. Because

It’s a mystery how you know what to do, what to say, how to frame a prayer.

In the wake of the Great Famine of 1847, nearly one million immigrants fled Ireland for the United States. Among them was a farmer from Wexford County, Patrick Kehoe. Leaving his wife and seven children behind until he could establish himself in the New World, he first settled in Howard County, Maryland, where he found work as a stonemason. In 1850, he sent for his oldest son, Philip, a strapping seventeen-year-old. The rest of the family followed in 1851. By then, Michigan Fever—as the great surge of settlers during the 1830s came to be known—had subsided. Still, there was plenty of cheap and attractive land to be had for pioneering immigrants from the East. In 1855, Philip Kehoe, then twenty-two, left his family in Maryland and journeyed westward, settling in Lenawee County, roughly one hundred miles southeast of Bath. For two years, he worked as a hired hand, saving enough money to purchase 80 acres of timberland. That land became the basis of what would eventually expand into a flourishing 490-acre farm.1 In late 1858, he wed his first wife, twenty-six-year-old Mary Mellon, an Irish orphan raised by her uncle, a Catholic priest, who brought her to America when she was twenty. She died just two and a half years after her marriage, leaving Philip with their two young daughters, Lydia and a newborn girl named after her mother.2 Philip married again roughly three years later, in 1864. His second wife, twenty-nine at the time of their wedding, was the former Mary McGovern, a native New Yorker who had immigrated to Michigan with her parents when she was five. By the time of her death in 1890, at the age of fifty-five, she had borne Philip nine children: six girls and three boys. From the few extant documents that shed light on Philip Kehoe’s life during the twenty-six years of his second marriage, a picture emerges of a shrewd, industrious, civic-minded family man, an epitome of the immigrant success story.

answer him. He and the sergeant went to the head

Not for the first time but perhaps more positively and tellingly than before, he was realising how insignificant he had become in the great scheme of law and order, of lawmaking and law-implementing, of having nothing to do in a society where doing things was all-important.

benevolent a doctrine

You used to tell us your grandfather walked five miles to school and five back when he was only ten.

She imagined him opening it and wondering what he should do. And at some stage that morning, she thought, he would come to the house in Friary Street and her mother would answer the door and she would stand watching Jim Farrell with her shoulders back bravely and her jaw set hard and a look in her eyes that suggested both an inexpressible sorrow and whatever pride she could muster. “She has gone back to Brooklyn,” her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.