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Well, I suppose I was always interested in Gearóid.
You know, outside Limerick there are the ruins of a castle, Carraig na Fighle Castle,
and the story was that if the most beautiful young woman in Ireland slept a night in that castle ...
that Gearóid Iarla would come up from the lake and that he would take her away.
And we were very interested in that when we were small ...
and we asked our uncle Pádraig did that ever happen.
And he said to us that many young women had tried it,
but they mustn't have been as lovely as they thought because Gearóid hadn't come for any of them.
And from then on I had a liking for Gearóid and I was curious about him ...
because he's a character in Corca Dhuibhne folklore.
When there was a tough decision against the Corca Dhuibhne hurling team, against the Corkmen, I think, I can't remember which [team], it is said that three heroes came to their aid:
Gearóid Iarla, Donn Daibhche and Gadaí Mór Ghleanna Fleisce.
And in that way, Gearóid was always a character in folklore for me.
And gradually, when I found out ...
that poems which Gearóid himself had written were available ...
and that they were full of humour and of personality -
something which, as you know, is often the rarest thing in the poetry of An dán díreach -
that they were full of the writer's personality ...
I understood that I had to get to know the Gearóid of history instead of the Gearóid of folklore ...
and it was from there that the idea came that I would write from my imagination about the Gearóid of history,
that I would write that imagination in the form of a novella ...
and that he would be revealed again to our generation,
that Gearóid Iarla's lovable personality would once again be revealed.
Piaras [Feirtéar] was another storytelling hero to me and, of course,
Corca Dhuibhne is full of stories about Piaras.
He was always a bit of a rogue and that's true about Gearóid Iarla too;
there's always a bit of roguery associated with the hero in Irish folklore.
I was always writing the two things. Remember that I was in the Civil Service...
and that I was paid for years for writing prose.
Poetry was always a type of pastime, an escape, perhaps, an escape hole ...
and then prose was my livelihood.
Often, a small musical phrase, or a small Irish sentence comes ...
and I recognise that it's a poem, that a poem will grow there, that it's the seed of a poem,
and that a poem will grow around it.
And it's mainly in my head ... I rarely write anything down ...
until I have it in the final form.
I don't do any rewriting or editing.
The whole poem has come together in my head before I put it down on paper, usually.
Do you understand, I write for the ear, I don't write for the eye.
I write for the ear ... and listen, listen to the subconscious sound in your head ...
especially when it comes to poetry.
Listen to it in your head before you put it down on paper.
That's not how a lot of poets write but ...
rural poets in particular, poets of folklore ...
I'd say that's how they all write - they hear first,
they hear the poetry first of all and ...
then they write it down.
I couldn't write a line that wasn't according to the rhythms of Irish speech.
The new novel which she is currently working on
When I was growing up, I used to hear talk of an old Protestant woman ...
Miss Mary Goodman and I knew ... She was the daughter of a minister and ...
her two brothers were ministers and one of them, Séamus Goodman, was Professor of Irish in Trinity College ...
and he was a great collector of traditional music.
And that family were very hostile to ... although they were a family of ministers, they were very hostile to the soup.
They thought that the system was an insult to the Church of Ireland and to the country people in Ireland ...
that is, soup and religion; giving out soup with one hand and religion with the other.
They were very opposed to that and therefore the country people, the people of the Gaeltacht greatly respected them.
And when the old woman was left on her on, Miss Mary ...
she was really poor and she was living on her own on what was left of the family farm ...
and when she used to get up in the morning, often there'd be a small bit of butter ...
or a fresh cake, or a drop of milk, or a couple of eggs in front of her on the doorstep.
People didn't want her to recognise them,
because they didn't want her to be embarrassed, so they would leave them unbeknownst to her ...
small goodies for her.
And then, I knew an old person ...
who was working on that farm when she was a young girl.
And in the long winter nights Miss Mary Goodman taught French to Seán.
And in the end, when she died, she died in the nuns' convent in ***.
When she couldn't look after herself anymore, she was brought into the nuns' convent in *** and that's where she died.
But the place was full of stories about her and I thought I'd put herself and Seán into a novel ...
I've written small bits of it but I don't know ... I don't have the same approach now as I used to have ...
but with the help of God, it will write itself.
I don't know yet how long it will be; I'll see how the characters manage themselves.