Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (Irish Literature) Read Online Free PDF

meaning “reproach” or “shame”; however, the word used is “áthas,” meaning joy.
    7 Originally, the story was printed in the Irish uncial alphabet, except for certain phrases spoken by the giant, which were printed in Roman type. Note the absence of an accent over the ‘a’ in Seán’s name as the giant pronounces it.
    8 The titles on this list are all real. In order: Indé agus Indiu by Seán Mac Meanman; Trom agus Eadtrom by Mícheál Breathnach; Ciot is Dealán by Séamus Ó Grianna; Sean Agus Nua by Gearóid Ó Nualláin; Lá agus Oidhche by Micheál Mac Liammóir; and A n Grádh agus an Ghruaim , by Seosamh Mac Grianna.
    9 The word used throughout the text is “deontach,” meaning “voluntary, in agreement, content or willing.”
    10 “The Covenant of English.” This is a parody of Conradh na Gaeilge , Douglas Hyde’s initiative to restore the Irish language.

 
    The Tale of the Drunkard: MUSIC! (1932)
    by Brian Ó Nualláin
    He was a small, inoffensive, level-headed man, and I would not make note of that latter characteristic except that he was speaking angrily to a street-lamp. He was drunk, it seemed to me, and the right thing to do would be to direct him homewards. I glanced at him.
    “What is the meaning of this? What’s wrong with you!” I said. “It’d be more in your line to be in bed, instead of staggering around drunk all over the city like this. You’d be better off if you turned your back on the drink, and your face to the fireplace—an intelligent, mild-mannered man such as yourself—and took up another hobby, like fretwork, or listening to the gramophone. . . .”
    “GRAMOPHONE!” He regarded me with two eyes containing the savagery of Hell—two venomous, red embers.
    T HE D RUNKARD ’ S S TORY
    “Stay for a moment,” he said, “until I tell you my story. It’ll depress you, if you’re a normal man at all. . . . One airy Spring morning ten years ago, I heard the woman’s voice for the first time, and if my memory is not deranged, I reckoned at the time that she had a good voice, a voice that would become first-rate with care and practice.
    “It seems that there was an ambition of the same kind in that girl’s heart, for the practice was started the very next day and it continued, without restraint or pause, without respite or delay, for the next ten years. I’m still here, but alas, I’m not the same man I was back then. . . . I had an almighty craving for music at that time, and I’m not saying I never lifted a fiddle the odd time in the loneliness of night—God forgive me.”
    T HE W OMAN WITH O NE T UNE
    “But yer wan over. She lived in the house opposite my own, across the street. ‘Annie Laurie’ was the first sound I heard as I woke up, and ‘Annie Laurie’ was the last note that broke my heart and I drifting off to sleep; and the clock chimed Annie-Laurie-Annie-Laurie until morning. ‘Gloom follows after glee.’ Well, the glee was across the way from dawn to dusk, and it was myself who got the gloom, the mood swings, the nervous frenzies, the fits of anger, the malice. The thought of slashing my own throat was sweeter to me than those merry words, ‘Annie Laurie.’
    “If the situation went on any longer in the same way, I knew that nostalgia and loneliness would creep into my soul, that I would become heartsick and short of wits. What happened then? I was in the middle of shaving one morning when I realised that there was another tune being played. I said to myself, that nice decent girl has a new song—fair play to her, she’s improving.”
    T HE M AN ’ S V OICE
    “Then, I realised that it was a man’s voice. Down the stairs with me. The music was coming from the house right next to mine, on the right-hand side. The song ended, and a voice then said that we were ‘going over to the Royal Hotel, Blackpool, for dance music.’ And we went. . . . And stately and low, but growing more powerful with every passing moment, a high female voice