Ewe Cote Cottage

yesterday Fr Bishoy and I visited

Ewe Cote Cottage

Tabor House

house of fellowship

Whitby.

Ewe Cote Cottage is a two story building in the secluded hamlet

Off Ewe Cote near Whitby.

It is managed by the St Damian’s Trust.

Establish by Arthur Cuff a pioneer in

Christian Community life-style.

Ewe Cote cottage is a Tabor house. Where haste and noise is avoided and external distractions are reduced- there is no tv,radio or internet.

It is a special location, the environment is rural Yorkshire and quiet. Individuals and small groups are invited to share in its life and vision.

The cottage has three bedrooms, double, twin and single. Down stairs is the sitting room, kitchen, study/library.

There is a small garden and a garage for one car.

Guests are invited to consider short-term visits, from a few days to two weeks.Contribution to cover house expenses will be agreed beforehand.

Of particular importance is our welcome to those who themselves contribute and respond to the ethos of the house.

We invite you to make contact to share the beauty, peace and simplicity of a

Tabor house.

The area is rich in history and the Chapel of the Holy Paraclete is within walking distance.

Enquires:

Directors .

St Damian’s trust

Ewe Cote Cottage

Whitby

Yo213qw

Email: mearnsrick7@yahoo.com

St Damian’s Charity number 266710

Company No. 1139397

(visit Carrselltrust.org.uk for brother mearns work in Ireland)

Church of Ireland

Church of Ireland
Modern logo of the Church of Ireland
Primate	Alan Harper
Headquarters	See House, Cathedral Close, Armagh, BT61 7EE, Northern Ireland
Territory	Ireland
Members	365,000
Website	www.ireland.anglican.org
Anglicanism Portal

The Church of Ireland (Irish: Eaglais na hÉireann) is a Protestant church, an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, operating across the island of Ireland, and the largest non-Roman Catholic religious body on the island. Like other Episcopal churches, it considers itself to be both Catholic, in that its beliefs and practices are based on a continuous tradition dating back to the early Church, and Reformed, in that it does not accept the universal jurisdiction of the Pope.

When the church in England broke communion from the Roman Catholic Church, all but two of the bishops of the Church in Ireland followed the Church of England, although almost no clergy or laity did so. The new body became the State Church, assuming possession of most Church property (and so retaining a great repository of religious architecture and other items, though some were later destroyed). The substantial majority of the population remained strongly Roman Catholic, despite the political and economic advantages of membership in the state church. Despite its numerical minority, however, the Church of Ireland remained the official state church until it was disestablished on 1 January 1871 by the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone.

Today the Church of Ireland is, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest denomination in the island of Ireland and the largest Protestant tradition (the second-largest in Northern Ireland after Presbyterianism).

Coptic monks in Ireland

On the Trail of the Seven Coptic Monks in Ireland – His Grace Metropolitan Seraphim

The Coptic Orthodox Church has long known of the historic links between the British Isles and Christian Egypt, but documentation and solid evidence is thin on the ground for these early centuries of church history. There are learned articles by Monique Blanc-Ortolan of the Musee des Arts dE9coratifs, Paris, and Pierre du Bourguet of the Louvre on ‘Coptic and Irish Art’ and by Joseph F.T. Kelly of John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio, on ‘Coptic Influences in the British Isles’ in the Coptic Encyclopedia which are worth consulting. Other works, like Shirley Toulson’s The Celtic Year, which asserts that “rather than adhere to the ruling of the Council [of Chalcedon], some of the most dedicated adherents of Monophysitism fled from Egypt, and some of them most surely travelled west and north to Ireland”, in their enthusiasm to establish a link, make up what is lacking in hard evidence with sheer conjecture and fantasy.

The late Archdale King noted the links between Celtic Ireland and Coptic Egypt. He suggests that much of the contact took place before the Muslim Conquest of 640. There exists evidence of a Mediterranean trade in a single passage in the life of St. John the Almsgiver (Ioannes III Eleemon), Greek Patriarch of Alexandria between 610-621, in which reference is made to a vessel sailing to Alexandria from Britain with a cargo of tin, doubtless come from Cornwall or Somerset.

King observes that the kind of asceticism associated with the Desert Fathers was especially congenial to the Irish but refers to Dom Henri Leclercq’s suggestion that Celtic monasticism was directly derived from Egypt, as an “unsubstantiated hypothesis”. No serious historian, however, would deny that first-hand knowledge of the Desert Fathers was brought directly to the South of Gaul by St. John Cassian and that the links between the British and Gallican churches were especially strong at this period. King nevertheless admits that the grouping together of several small churches within a cashel or fortified enclosure seems to support Leclercq’s view.

King mentions an Ogham inscription on a stone near St. Olan’s Well in the parish of Aghabulloge, County Cork, which scholars interpret as reading: ‘Pray for Olan the Egyptian.’ Professor Stokes tells us5 about the Irish monk Dicuil, who around 825 wrote his Liber de Mensure orbis terre describing the pyramids as well as an ancient precursor of the Suez Canal. It would seem that Egypt was often visited by pilgrims to the Holy Land. Stokes instances the Saltair Na Rann, an anthology of biblical poems attributed to Oengus the Culdee, but containing the sixth or seventh century Book of Adam and Eve, composed in Egypt and known in no other European country except Ireland.

King also notes that one of the commonest names for townlands or parishes is Disert or ‘Desert’: a solitary place in which anchorites were established. Presumably the same etymology gives us the Scottish Dysart, just north of Kirkcaldy, and the Welsh Dyserth, to the south of Prestatyn ? This would then present a consistent picture common to Celtic Christianity. The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, an early ninth century monastic bishop of Clonenagh (Co. Offaly) and later of Tallaght, has a litany invoking ‘Seven monks of Egypt in Disert Uilaig, I invoke unto my aid, through Jesus Christ.’ [Morfesseor do manchaib Egipr(e) in disiurt Uilaig]. The Antiphonary of Bangor (dating from between 680-691) also contains the text:

” … Domus deliciis plena Super petram constructa Necnon vinea vera Ex Aegypto transducta …”

which is translated as:

” … House full of delight Built on the rock And indeed true vine Translanted from Egypt …”

Providence undoubtedly put me in touch with Fr. Feargal Patrick McGrady, priest of Ballymena, County Antrim in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor. As well as being a native of Downpatrick (the burial place of St. Patrick), Father Feargal is enthusiastic about the Eastern churches and holds His Holiness Pope Shenouda in high esteem. He was delighted to assist with my enquiries and very soon made contacts with local historians, who are the real source of the information we need.

Dr. Cahal Dallat, Genealogist and Historical Consultant, of Ballycastle, County Antrim, identified Disert Ilidh or Uilaigh with Dundesert, near Crumlin, county Antrim, which is to the north-west of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, between Belfast International Airport and Templepatrick.

Mr. Bobbie Burns, a local historian living in Crumlin, was another link in the chain. He produced a report in the Belfast Telegraph of 13th July 1936 under the headline “Unique Once Famous Ulster Church: Neglected Crumlin Ruins”, which showed the ruins of the medieval church built on the site of an earlier shrine. The local historical group is taking a renewed interest in the site and the local Protestant landowner has given permission for them to come and go freely to the site. It is hoped that they might obtain a grant to restore the dilapidated ruins but they are excited by its more ancient and possible Coptic connections. The site is approached by a path along the side of a grazing field 200-300 metres from Poplar Road. It is on the steep bank of the Crumlin River, which is a large free-flowing river, but is more than 100 metres from the water. Access is easy in dry weather, but not pleasant after heavy rain. The terrain inside the enclosure is very rough. The ground is strewn with boulders which have either fallen or been removed from the medieval walls. Parts of the medieval walls, in places three feet thick and covered in ivy, survive on the east (or gable) and south sides. The east wall contains two arched recesses or sedilia, now only about four feet in height but probably much higher if their foundations were cleared of the extensive in-fill of stones and earth. The gable rises to around thirty feet in height but a number of stones have already been removed and were any more to go it would be undermined and likely to collapse. What remains of the wall at the other end is much lower. It is likely that the whole structure would have been removed long ago but for the difficulties of dislodging stone from the walls and the problem of transportation to the road.

We are grateful for the efforts of these local enthusiasts for having preserved these ancient ruins and look forward to making further discoveries about the last resting place of the seven monks of Egypt.

Patrick Patrick and Coptic Christianity

The Egyptian "Coptic" Orthodox Church was one of the first established Christian Churches, together with the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. In the first centuries of Christianity, the Egyptian Church was very active and was working to spread Christianity, beyond Egypt. Egyptian monks and laymen, were everywhere. This was well documented by historians and the history of the church.

The Connection to France

A community of Coptic monks went to Gaul where they founded a community on an island called "Lerins" in the Mediterranean Sea . The island was nearGaul.

David Marshall, Ph.D. of the University of Hull, England, has written a book which discusses the strong connection between the St. Patrick and the Coptic Monks in Lerins.

In "Liturgics" Fr. Dmitri Ross, OSJ . SSBM. MA. Th. L. EM; discussed the Celtic Church. Fr. Dmiti Ross, of St. Dunstan of Canterbury Orthodox Parish, Cromwell, New Zealand, also has written of how monasticism strongly influenced the Celtic Church and was a reason for its quick success. Ross tells how monastisicism came to the Celtic Church from the Egyptian Church, "Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria". The connection came through Gaul,( France), where a good number of Egyptian monks were living including those in the Monastery at Lerins. Coptic Christianity

The Egyptian "Coptic" Orthodox Church was one of the first established Christian Churches, together with the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. In the first centuries of Christianity, the Egyptian Church was very active and was working to spread Christianity, beyond Egypt. Egyptian monks and laymen, were everywhere. This was well documented by historians and the history of the church.

The Connection to France

A community of Coptic monks went to Gaul where they founded a community on an island called "Lerins" in the Mediterranean Sea . The island was nearGaul.

David Marshall, Ph.D. of the University of Hull, England, has written a book which discusses the strong connection between the St. Patrick and the Coptic Monks in Lerins.

In "Liturgics" Fr. Dmitri Ross, OSJ . SSBM. MA. Th. L. EM; discussed the Celtic Church. Fr. Dmiti Ross, of St. Dunstan of Canterbury Orthodox Parish, Cromwell, New Zealand, also has written of how monasticism strongly influenced the Celtic Church and was a reason for its quick success. Ross tells how monastisicism came to the Celtic Church from the Egyptian Church, "Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria". The connection came through Gaul,( France), where a good number of Egyptian monks were living including those in the Monastery at Lerins.

Patrick and Coptic Christianity

The Egyptian "Coptic" Orthodox Church was one of the first established Christian Churches, together with the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. In the first centuries of Christianity, the Egyptian Church was very active and was working to spread Christianity, beyond Egypt. Egyptian monks and laymen, were everywhere. This was well documented by historians and the history of the church.

The Connection to France

A community of Coptic monks went to Gaul where they founded a community on an island called "Lerins" in the Mediterranean Sea . The island was nearGaul.

David Marshall, Ph.D. of the University of Hull, England, has written a book which discusses the strong connection between the St. Patrick and the Coptic Monks in Lerins.

In "Liturgics" Fr. Dmitri Ross, OSJ . SSBM. MA. Th. L. EM; discussed the Celtic Church. Fr. Dmiti Ross, of St. Dunstan of Canterbury Orthodox Parish, Cromwell, New Zealand, also has written of how monasticism strongly influenced the Celtic Church and was a reason for its quick success. Ross tells how monastisicism came to the Celtic Church from the Egyptian Church, "Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria". The connection came through Gaul,( France), where a good number of Egyptian monks were living including those in the Monastery at Lerins.

St Patrick's Day

St Patrick's Day puts Ireland in the limelight

This year's celebrations are a welcome chance for recession-hit Ireland to put itself in the tourism spotlight, as pubs and hotels pack with revellers

Several of the world's landmarks are turning green for St Patrick's Day today, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness.

The Sydney Opera House, London Eye, Toronto's CN Tower and New York's Empire State building will be lit by green floodlights as part of a marketing push by Tourism Ireland.

Back in Ireland, Dublin's flagship parade started at 12pm in Parnell Square, led by soccer legend Packie Bonner. Around 650,000 people are expected to line the 3km (2-mile) route. This year it takes the theme The Extraordinary World - a nod to Ireland's increasing multiculturalism as well as the past two centuries' global spread of the Irish.

New York's St Patrick's Day parade is the world's largest, and attracts 150,000 official marchers along 5th Ave, 44th-45th St. The parades originally started in the US but have since become part of Paddy's Day celebrations everywhere.

This year Ireland is pushing itself especially hard as a tourist destination as the country faces its worst recession since the Great Depression, with double-digit unemployment and net emigration for the first time in 15 years.

St Patrick's Day is Ireland's first major tourist event of the year, packing hotels and pubs with visitors seeking an all-night party. Ireland's weeklong festival gets bigger each year, with more than 100 parades today in cities, towns and villages across the country.

Virtually the entire Irish government left the country this week to greet foreign leaders and corporate kingpins in 23 countries in hopes of rekindling the investment wave that fuelled Ireland's Celtic Tiger boom of 1994-2007.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen was meeting US President Barack Obama at the White House, continuing Ireland's tradition of annual access to perhaps the most powerful man on earth.

President Mary McAleese, Ireland's ceremonial head of state who stayed at home to preside over the Dublin parade and her own St Patrick's garden party, said the Irish had powerful allies in politics and business backed by 70 million people of Irish descent, half of them Americans.

"We are lucky to have such a large global family. It has proved itself to be a very precious and important resource in every generation," she said.

St Patrick's Day is held on 17 March each year, believed to be the anniversary of the saint's death. Originally a Briton he was enslaved in his youth in Ireland but despite escaping he later returned to Ireland to spread Christianity in the 5th century. According to legend, he banished snakes from the island and used a shamrock to teach the concept of the Holy Trinity. (Guardian Report)

Patrick

St Patrick  •  Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

A happy St Patrick’s Day to you all! St Patrick is one of Ireland’s greatest sons and one of Europe’s greatest evangelists, although, ironically, born in Wales around 385 AD (scholars point to Fishguard as his place of birth). The young saint had a deeply traumatic childhood, having been kidnapped by marauding pirates and sold into a life of slavery in Ireland. He worked as a slave shepherd boy in County Antrim but managed to escape to Gaul (France) and later made his way to England. It was during this time that he heard the call to return to work among the Irish. 
Speaking about his conversion to Christ, St Patrick once said: ‘I was like a young stone lying in deep mud but he that is mighty lifted me up and placed me on top of the wall.’ He revealed that the secret to his ministry and life was prayer. In prayer he learnt of God’s goodness, mercy and love and in prayer he found the strength to serve God and his people. He explained: ‘I used to pray often during the day, and the love of God and the fear of him increased in me more and more. My faith began to grow and my spirit was stirred, so that one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers. I used to rise at dawn for prayer, in snow, frost or rain, because of the glow of the Spirit in me.’
What an amazing and wonderful example of the heart of the evangelist we have in St Patrick! You see the key to evangelism isn’t others, it’s ourselves. We need to be evangelized ourselves first: we need to overflow with the love of God, we need to be able to witness to knowing God’s grace and mercy in our own lives, before we can pass that love and grace on to others. The harvest is plentiful: people are open, interested and responsive to those who have an authentic witness and a clear grasp of the gospel message. By the grace of our baptism we are all called to evangelize and win others for Christ. Christ came to set us free and the gospel is the only message that truly sets men and women free.
‘The gospel is liberation from everything that oppresses [us] but is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One.’ (Evangelii nuntiandi 9) 

Iona

It is more than 25 years now since Cynthia and I made a one day pilgrimage to Iona from our silver wedding base in Oban.

Today is the feast day of St Columba who founded the monastic missionary community there and who is buried in the abbey church.

Columba did not come to these shores out of choice. As a matter of fact he ended up here due to one of the first copyright disputes ever.

Columba was a monk at the monastery of Moville in Ireland. The Abbot there was named Finnian and he had been to Rome and returned with a copy of the four Gospels. At that time religious manuscripts were very rare because they were all written by hand.

Columba asked Finnian if he could make a copy of the manuscript but Finnian refused. Columba, however, was a prince of the O’Neills and thus was a proud and independent minded man so, undeterred by Finnian’s warning, he got up in the middle of the night and copied a small piece of the manuscript. He repeated this act every night, copying a small piece of the manuscript each time. On the last night Finnian walked in on Columba and flew into a rage. He demanded the copy from Columba who refused and retreated to the country of his tribe.

Finnian appealed to the High King of Ireland who summoned both to appear before him on a set date for the judgement. When they appeared the King’s judgement was "To the cow her calf." Finnian had won but Columba was not to be deterred.

Once again he ran home to his tribe and raised an army and marched south. The High King, angry that his judgement had been defied, raised his army and marched north. There was a huge battle. Columba won but 2000 men were killed and he was seized with remorse. He went to see his Father Confessor who told him that he must leave Ireland and win as many souls for Christ as had been lost at the battle. This was a terrible sentence known as white martyrdom.
Columba took some men with him and sailed for Scotland. He reached the island now off Southend on the Mull of Kintyre but he found that when he climbed to the top of the hill he could still see Ireland. As a result he sailed on to Iona and formed the monastery that is now so famous.

This was the year 563 and Columba, blessed with powerful oratory skill, succeeded in reviving Christianity in the Scots and even managed to penetrate into Pictland. It is thought that this was more of a diplomatic visit than a missionary one.

Columba made return visits to Ireland. At one such visit he attended a summit of all the kings of Ireland and managed to persuade them to exempt women from military duties.

By his death in 597 Columba had succeeded in making Iona the centre of a church that was increasing in size very quickly. It is interesting to note that this church was not episcopal in organisation even though it recognised the Pope as head of the church on earth. He had also managed to strengthen the position of Dal Riata in relation to her neighbour Pictland because of the now cordial relations between Dal Riata and Ireland.

The Iona Community was founded in Glasgow and Iona in 1938 by George MacLeod, minister, visionary and prophetic witness for peace, in the context of the poverty and despair of the Depression. From a dockland parish in Govan, Glasgow, he took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to Iona to rebuild both the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey and the common life by working and living together, sharing skills and effort as well as joys and achievement. That original task became a sign of hopeful rebuilding of community in Scotland and beyond. The experience shaped – and continues to shape – the practice and principles of the Iona Community.

Iona is a tiny and beautiful Hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland, cradle of Christianity in Scotland, where in 563AD the Irish monk Columba (Columkille) established a monastic settlement that evangelised large parts of Scotland and the north of England and became an important centre of European Christianity. In the Middle Ages it became the site of a Benedictine abbey, and over the centuries it has attracted many thousands of people on their own pilgrim journeys.

Iona remains a centre for pilgrimage and tourism; the daily services of the Iona Community in the Abbey church and worship elsewhere on the island are open to all; many visitors come again and again. There is a year-round population of over 100; long-established island families as well as more recent arrivals, including those who work for the Iona Community in its centres as staff or volunteers. The abbey is now managed by Historic Scotland; the Iona Community remains in residence as a living, worshipping presence. The islanders, the Iona Community and Historic Scotland work together to maintain Iona as a place of welcome.

St Patrick

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. St Patrick's Day usually falls on March 17 but for 2008 the Vatican has decreed that St Patrick's Feast Day will be celebrated on 15th March as the 17th is the Monday before Easter. Church rules state that saint's feast days cannot be celebrated during Holy Week.

St Patrick is traditionally associated with the Shamrock plant, which he used to explain the concept of the Trinity.

St Patrick's value doesn't really come from the historical details, but from the inspiration of a man who returned to the country where he had been a child slave, in order to bring the message of Christ.

How did a fifth-century preacher become the toast of Dublin, Manhattan and even Lagos?
Facts in brief

St Patrick really existed
Born in Britain (probably in Wales) in 5th century AD
His father, Calpurnius, was a Roman official
St Patrick was originally a pagan, not a Christian
Taken to Ireland as a slave at age 16
Escaped after 6 years
Became a Christian priest, and later a Bishop
Returned to Ireland as a missionary
Played a major part in converting the Irish to Christianity
Some of his writings survive, the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus

Doubtful extra facts in brief
Born in 387 AD at Banwen in Wales
His original name was Maewyn Succat; he became Patrick when he became a bishop
Studied in France at the monastery of St Martin's in Tours
Went to Ireland in 432 AD
Died either in 461 AD, or 493 AD (unlikely)
Taught by Saint Germaine

David and Patrick

(from this month's parish magazine)

The patron saints of Wales and Ireland are both commemorated this month. We celebrate David on the 1st and Ptrick on the 15th (usually the 17th but brought forward this year to avoid Holy Week).

The first record of Christians in Britain is in a writing of Tertullian dated 208 and confirmed by Origen 30 years later. The exact date that the Christian gospel came to these islands is unknown. It was definitely more than 400 years before Pope Gregory sent Augustine and his monks to Kent in 597. If the legends of Joseph of Arimathea and Glastonbury are not historical it was probably via those who came to absorb us into the Roman Empire.

Patrick pre-dates David. He was born around 390 and baptised. As a teenager he was taken to Ireland as a slave but later escaped and went to the continent. There he became a priest and eventually returned to Ireland as a missionary bishop. For more than 30 years he preached the gospel and established churches. He baptised thousands, ordained clergy everywhere, and founded a network of monasteries. By his death in 460 he had firmly established Christianity as the faith of the Irish and founded a church strong enough to re-evangelise the mainland following a period of decline and retreat there. This followed invasions by the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons.

David is the only patron saint of these islands who was a native of the country he represents. He was a Welsh bishop of the 6th century. He was a typical Celtic abbot bishop, an evangelist and founder or monasteries. He built many churches and taught the faith diligently from his episcopal seat at Menevia, the modern St David's. He probably chose this location because it gave easy access to Ireland, with whose bishops he kept up a close connection. He died in about 601.

I think that it is important for us to remember and to celebrate these early saints of the British Isles because they remind us that God plants and preserves the gospel and the church through consecrated people.When the church is under pressure from persecution or unbelief He never leaves himself without witnesses. Despite decline and divisions in our own day there is no need for despopndency as long as there are those who resolutely practise and propogate the faith once delivered to the saints.

My bretheren, persevere in what you have learnt from me and seen with me. On the third day of the week on the first of March I shall go the way of my fathers. Farewell in the Lord. I shall depart . Never shall we be seen on the earth again. (St David)

I was like a stone lying in deep mud but he that is mighty lifted me up and placed me on top of the wall. (St Patrick)

A Depressing Read

Anne Enright was tonight (Tuesday 16 October) named the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her novel The Gathering, published by Jonathan Cape.


Enright, 45, is the second Irish woman to win the prize, joining compatriots Iris Murdoch, Roddy Doyle and John Banville who won the prize in 1978, 1993 and 2005 respectively.


Chair of the judges, Howard Davies, made the announcement, which was broadcast live on the BBC Ten O’ Clock News, at the awards dinner at the Guildhall, London.


Howard Davies said:
’The Gathering is an unflinching look at a grieving family. It’s the bleakness of one woman’s vision, a bleakness rooted in her family, her marriage and the death of her brother.’


Davies said that the winning title was ‘bleak’ and ‘depressing’ but went on to explain that the family epic was a ‘very readable and satisfying novel’.


Speaking this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, Anne Enright admitted that ‘when people pick up a book they may want something that will cheer them up, in that case they shouldn’t really pick up my book… my book is the equivalent of a Hollywood weepie.’


Howard Davies confirmed that the judges’ decision had been unanimous. He divulged that when they had put The Gathering on the longlist they ‘didn’t expect it to emerge as a winner.’ He went on to say, ‘It is a very intense piece of writing which does repay re-reading.’


Anne Enright was born in Dublin where she continues to live and work. She is the author of three previous novels: The Wig My Father Wore (1995), What Are You Like? (2000) and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002). Reviewers have called her winning book ‘distinctive’ in its ‘exhilarating bleakness’.


Over and above her prize of £50,000, Anne Enright is guaranteed a huge increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer-bound edition of their book.




The Gatheringby Anne Enright

Jonathan Cape £12.99, pp263


Big families don't feature much in novels - I mean really big ones. It's hard to think of a larger fictional brood (Letters Editor, perhaps you'd better brace yourself) than HE Bates's seven Larkins. The Hegartys in Anne Enright's stunning new book The Gathering are 12 - Midge, Bea, Ernest, Stevie, Ita, Mossie, Liam, Veronica, Kitty, Alice and the twins, Ivor and Jem. Enright's narrator is Veronica, seventh from the top, fifth from the bottom, 39 at the time of telling. Veronica dislikes her name, even after a nun explained to her that she was named for a saint who wiped the face of Christ on the road to Calvary and took the very first photograph. To Veronica, her name sounds either like the ointment or the disease.

A Larkin-sized family can seem to represent an abundance of vitality, but a Hegarty-sized one, which could empanel a jury without outside help, is almost the opposite of a family. Catholicism has something to do with large families and the Hegartys are nominally Catholic, but no more than that. Veronica has spent a lot of time over the years watching her father in church: 'I never heard him pray aloud, or saw him bend his head, or do anything that might be considered remarkable were he sitting on the top deck of a bus.' Which leads her to conclude that she was right all along in thinking that her parents' reproductive zeal was only a sort of incontinence - they 'were helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit'.


So large a family is more like a tribe, with its own rites of passage: 'We had a sister Ita who was, even then, the most disliked among us, as perhaps each of the girls were, at the moment their breasts began to grow.' There are compensations, but they seem modest: 'The thing is, there was great privacy in a big family. No one got into your stuff except to steal it or slag you off.' Punishment was delivered on a random or statistical basis. 'Although my father used to hit his children all the time, more or less, it was never personal. He might slap three at a time and let the fourth go or he might stomp among us with his hand raised as we ran, shrieking, around him.' Even good sibling relationships are similarly impersonal: 'Ernest was always nice to me, growing up. We were just the right distance apart.'


Veronica finds, when she communes with others similarly afflicted, that all big families are the same. 'There is always a drunk. There is always someone who has been interfered with, as a child. There is always a colossal success, with several houses in various countries to which no one is ever invited. There is a mysterious sister ...'


In fact, there's more than one drunk in the Hegarty family. They all drink, it's just that they don't drink together, and there is one official, certified excessive drinker, Liam, and that is mainly because 'a drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking'. It is Liam's suicide which sets the plot in motion. He has drowned himself in Brighton, considerately wearing a high-visibility jacket so that his body would be easy to find. He was only 11 months older than Veronica, which made him in her mind a sort of premature twin.


She registers her bereavement as a physical event: 'It is a confusing feeling - somewhere between diarrhoea and sex - this grief that is almost genital.' Veronica has a lot of grief work to do, while the body is bureaucratically delayed in England, and even after the wake and funeral. Enright's title obviously refers to these family get-togethers, but also perhaps to the process of Veronica's grieving, as she pulls strands from the past, trying to disentangle what is standard to 'the wound of family' and what is particular to the Hegarty history. Which are the first and which the final causes? Suspicions gather like the matter in an abscess.


She senses that the seeds of Liam's death were sown early, during a summer when their mother was giving birth or having a miscarriage (there's a whole Larkin family's worth of non-arrivers as well as the dozen delivered) and the children stayed in their grandmother Ada's house in Broadstone. Why is Germolene the smell of things going wrong?


Veronica tries to reconstruct Ada's life from the time she met her eventual husband, in 1925. These passages are almost too good - they're obviously the work of a professional imaginer, which Veronica, despite her background in journalism, can hardly be. Talent like Enright's can't easily be delegated to one of her creatures. There might have been a case for telling Ada's story impersonally, though the impossibility of Veronica's ever knowing what sort of relationship Ada had with her husband's friend Lambert Nugent, however vivid her guesses, is the whole point.


This is a story of family dysfunction, made distinctive by an exhilarating bleakness of tone. There is no sentimentality here, and no quirkiness. Enright may use local words like 'bocketty' and 'gobdaw', but her writing is guaranteed to be blarney-free. The humour in it is very close to pain. Veronica is clever, but she knows that cleverness isn't a solution to anything in itself. Aren't all the Hegartys clever? 'Clever, which is to say unredeemed; earning more or less money than the next person and liable to smart remarks.' Yet she's strangely good company even at her most negative.



Anne Enright has all she needs in terms of imagination and technique and she's a tremendous phrase-maker. All that I would timidly offer her is a bouquet of 'as ifs' with which to vary her 'likes'. The two constructions are usefully different. They point up different structures. In fact they're like the points on a railway line, sending the sense along one route or the other. When she writes that Veronica's husband is asleep with 'a straining smile at the edge of his eyes, like what he sees in the centre of his blind forehead is so convincing, and fleeting, and lovely ...', 'as if' instead of 'like' would announce in advance that the sentence won't end with 'forehead', which (grammatically) it might as things stand. But then I like to play Fantasy Creative Writing Class, in the way more red-blooded people play Fantasy Football. I'm always thinking of a class where all the students have genius and I get the credit.