Review
Delightfully silly and likely to appeal to Irish-Americans.
- The Ulster Reciter
- Blackstaff Press
The Ulster Reciter
There’s a strange kind of magic attached to a poem learned by rote. In later years it returns to the mind uninvited just when it knows it’s needed; and if encountered by accident in a text it brings a curious thrill of satisfaction with its familiarity.
The Ulster Reciter is a collection of well-loved poems to learn by rote. It’s a daft and endearing object compiled in the early eighties by the late actor Joe McPartland (Charlie Burke from In The Name of the Father) and reissued this year by Blackstaff Press. It gathers together such old chestnuts as ‘The Man From God Knows Where’ and ‘The Old Woman of the Roads’ –
O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods against the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!
– ostensibly in service of the man at the back of the pub insistent on standing up, pint in hand, and reciting “at the drop of a bowler hat.” For those raring to be initiated into this unsullen art, there is even a diagram illustrating how best to position one’s fingers to express such emotions as “emphatic declaration,” “gentle entreaty,” “earnest entreaty,” “supplication” and “resignation.” Delightfully silly, then, and likely to appeal to Irish-Americans.
