Sláinte: A Winter's Tale

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

Born in 1881, Colum was an avid reader and a regular visitor to the National Library of Ireland in Dublin where he met and became good friends with prominent Irish thinkers and writers, among them Lady Gregory, W.B.Yeats, and James Joyce. One of his earliest writings, an anti-enlistment play titled The Saxon Shillin’ (1902), was awarded a prize by Cumann na nGaedhael, forerunner of the Sinn Féin political party. He was among the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where his plays Broken Sail (1903) and The Land (1905) were two of the theatre’s first public successes.

Fiercely Irish, Colum was a member of Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League), an organization founded in 1893 for the purpose of keeping the Irish language spoken in Ireland. It was his interest in Gaelic that led to the writing of The King of Ireland’s Son. After a folktale he had translated from Gaelic was published by the New York Tribune, Colum met a Hungarian illustrator named Willy Pogany who suggested they collaborate on a children’s book incorporating several Irish folktales into a long epic story.

The King of Ireland’s Son has been reprinted numerous times, but it is the original version with Pogany’s illustrations that is most coveted. The book was so popular that it launched Colum’s long contract with Macmillan Publishers, covering folklore subject matter that ranged from Ireland to the Hawaiian Islands.

Little did I know at the tender age of ten that Padraic Colum was also a leading figure of the Celtic Revival. Encompassing all forms of artistic expression and bridging the 19th and 20th centuries, the Irish Celtic Revival movement encouraged the creation of work based on traditional Irish art and cultural expression, especially myth, legend and folklore. Interest in and adherence to its mission spread internationally wherever Irish emigrants driven by the famines of the 19th century had settled.

One thing I knew full well, however, even at such a young age. The King of Ireland’s Son was one of the best books I had ever buried my nose in. The first time, I read it by myself, snuggled up in the ‘back’ bedroom with a plate of Christmas Ginger Cookies and Irish Almond Tea Cakes balanced precariously on the mattress beside me. Oblivious to the winter winds blowing outside the window, I ranged in imagination up, over and across the hills of the Emerald Isle in the company of a colorful host of frolicking fairies and fearsome feys.

​
Nster.com