View from the Big Hills

Over the past few months I’ve been carrying out some further research about the great artist and Theosophist, Art O'Murnaghan. As readers will know from my earlier post on him, the trip has taken me down some odd paths that at times appear strange bedfellows – WB Yeats, The Society of the Inner Light, Ella Young, Irish Nationalism, Sara Allgood, Theosophy, Irish Drama, Dion Fortune and Philadelphian whiskey maker, Joseph McGarrity . In these searches I was delighted to come across a 1946 book, All for Hecuba, by Anglo-Irish dramatist and actor, Micheál Mac Liammóir .  A photograph of the book's cover is shown below. In his autobiography Mac Liammóir provides a captivating description of Art acting in Denis Johnston’s play The Old Lady Says No . Art O’Murnaghan wielded the drumsticks with untiring devotion  and a rapt expression like a druid at some sacred rite. He was an elderly saint who worshipped Angus and Lu and the ancient  gods of  Ireland...

Over the years I’ve often struggled to find or indeed give myself a compelling and brief description of what being Celtic is really all about. However, this afternoon while reading Mike Scott’s autobiography, Adventures of a Waterboy , I found a nice little summary: What did it mean to be Celtic? Being Celtic was a way of seeing and feeling, of interpreting and inhabiting the world. The Celtic domain wasn’t simply a physical landscape spanning Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other regions on the Atlantic rim – it was a dream-space, a kingdom of the imagination with a coherency, a taste all of its own, ‘Room to Roam’, as the George Macdonald poem said. And this dream-space was inside me too. Nail on the head stuff! Scott’s autobiography is hugely readable and it is not surprising to find that Dion Fortune, another person touched by the Celtic Ray, has been one of his most enduringly favourite and inspiring writers. Scott describes the influence on some of his earlier works in ...