But
Brian O’Doherty’s book is set in Ireland, not some distant, fanciful galaxy.
It’s the west of Ireland, County Kerry to be precise, where there is a remote
community on a mountain side. A harsh winter has brought sickness and, in this
small place, all the women have died. It’s a momentous calamity, rendered all
the more devastating by the community’s inability to bury the corpses, because
the earth is too frozen to break. The local priest, Father McGreevy, takes up
his pen to describe the plight of his parishioners, as they struggle to come to
terms with the fate that has befallen them.
Father
McGreevy’s view of the world, of course, comes from a particular standpoint. He
deals with sin, guilt and all the other trappings of Roman Catholicism. But he
is also a man of the world, and understands much, though not all, of what makes
men tick, even though women do seem to remain a tad beyond the pale. He is also
aware of how the demon drink can enter a man’s soul and transform him into
something he might never have wanted to be.
None
of this would have come to light, however, if William McGinn, a journalist in
the 1950s, had not come into the possession of Father McGreevy’s jottings. The
old fellow was gone to earth himself by the time an envelope with his testimony
passed into the hands of McGinn who, out of curiosity and a need to unearth a
good story, tells us the priest’s tale. Footnoted to explain the more obscure
allusions and references to Irish history, literature and folklore, Father
McGreevy’s notes begin with the winter tragedy. What begins to unfold, however,
is a decline to death of an entire community, itself a metaphor for a whole way
of life.
Pestered
by progress, battered by the elements and deserted by its masters, the peasant
existence, that for so long had been life’s only option, was now being squeezed
into the shape of an in-bred deformity. This village on a mountainside is
frozen as much by time as by its winter frost. Perhaps McGreevy’s reliance on
religion to seek an explanation for illness and misfortune, an approach that in
the past might have united a community struck by adversity, was already itself
part of the problem, part of the frostiness that hardened everything into an
unyielding, unforgiving, inflexible and hostile environment.
But
what we are not prepared for in this tale of degeneration and decline is how
McGreevy’s tale develops. The priest bears witness to some deep sins, acts that
he previously had never even imagined possible. The lad might have been a
half-wit, but he had a complete body, that’s for sure. And, again for sure, the
acts in question are not what you think they are. The Father’s deposition has
it all, and it’s there for you and William McGinn to read. Let it be said that
the local doctor, himself a metaphor for a more pragmatic and modern way of
life, takes a remarkably casual, even ungodly line, when McGreevy bares his
soul to describe these shocking practices.
But,
as ever, as sin leads to more sin, grievous acts lead to more eve grievous
consequences. And it’s only via locating some of the participants, still alive
but incarcerated in mental hospitals in their decrepit old age, that McGinn
forms his own version of what happened up there in the frost on that Kerry
mountainside.
The
Deposition of Father McGreevy is an extended poem. But it is also a deeply
surprising, ever shocking tale of the desperation that almost inevitably rules
a way of life. Strangely, we never really did establish what happened to all
those women, the ones who died that winter. And we never really established why
the ailment was so gender-specific. We do know, however, why the men might just
have been the cause of the plague. Because, when left to their own devices, it
may be sin and depravity that beckons, and this just might be their true
nature. The Deposition of Father McGreevy is often funny, is always graphic and
is continually evocative of a potentially endearing culture. But it’s not a
reassuring vision of humanity.
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