Sláinte: A Winter's Tale

A Los Angeles resident pines for winters and the warm comfort of a good book.

Just because I live in Los Angeles doesn’t mean I’m an Angeleno. Natives here love that it’s sunny and quasi-summer all year long. Not me. Locals think I’m crazy.  

Crazy like a fox, I say. When it’s cold, you can put on a sweater. When it’s hot, you’re out of luck. 

I pine for seasons. Some of my dearest memories carry me back to the winters of my Philadelphia youth. Sure, it was cold, but all that frigid air was outside. Inside our row house it was warm, except in the upstairs back bedroom that faced north and had only brick, plaster and uninsulated storm windows separating it from the cold. When the thermometer dropped below 20°F, which was often, a thin sheet of ice would form on the inside of the glass even though two radiators were located just inches below.

Until I lobbied for larger quarters more suitable for a teenager than my cozy little girl inner sanctum, the back room was our junk room. Everything that outlived its function ended up there, including a big Art Deco bed that had been replaced by my parents’ more fashionable Hollywood twin set. And there I spent many a dark winter day, propped against pillows, snuggled up in blankets, and transported to the marvelous worlds found inside books.

I now know that it was an Irish thing. Both my parents were readers, but Dad was the real bookworm, and a fine seanachie to boot. On Tuesday evenings, when Mom met with her Sodality Group to recite the rosary, he told me stories and recited poetry, and every Friday night we hiked to the spot on the Avenue where the bookmobile parked, and we loaded up on reading material. He would pick out one hefty tome, and I would select a dozen or more children’s books.

Once I had read every compilation of fairy tales in the Philadelphia Library system, Dad decided I was ready for some Irish mythology. For Christmas 1956, he gave me a copy of The King of Ireland’s Son, which he had read when he was just a wee fellow shortly after the book was first published in 1916.

Immediately on opening the green and richly gold embossed cover I was swept away by narratives from the vast wealth of Irish oral tradition: The Story of the Young Cuckoo; When the King of Cats Came to King Conal’s Dominion; The Sword of Light; The Adventures of Gilly of the Goatskin; The Town of the Red Castle; The King of the Land of Mist. Best of all were the adventures experienced by the King of Ireland’s eldest son as he journeyed far and wide, “his hound at his heel, his hawk on his wrist, a brave steed to carry him wither he list, and the blue sky over him” in his search to find and win Fedelma, the Enchanter’s Daughter.

The author of The King of Ireland’s Son, Padraic Colum, was also a poet, novelist, dramatist, and avid collector of Irish folklore and folk songs. Every fan of Irish music is surely familiar with She Moved Through the Fair, which Colum collected in Donegal and published in 1909, and which was made famous by Van Morrison and The Chieftains in the 1988 recording Irish Heartbeat

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Nster.com