Two-storey with a twist

I’m not sure whether to be amused or outraged at reports that Billy Brennan’s Barn, made famous by Patrick Kavanagh, could be exported to Canada.

As noted here some weeks ago, the barn is currently for sale, 80 years after its starring role as an improvised dancehall in the poem Inniskeen Road: July Evening. Then, it was a metaphor for the poet's loneliness.

He felt shut out from the dance by his solitary nature (lack of the fourpence admission fee may also have been a factor). And in his misery, he likened himself to Alexander Selkirk – the real-life Robinson Crusoe, who was marooned for years on an island off Chile.

But now, according to the Northern Standard, it's the former dancehall that faces the possibility of transatlantic exile. Under a plan dreamed up by a group of Irish expatriates, the barn would be dismantled and shipped to Winnipeg, to be re-erected as the centrepiece of a themed bar.

The irony is that the poet himself has long since been brought in from the cold. He was well on the way to national fame during his lifetime and has since benefited greatly, as poets do, from being dead. Now he’s a fixed institution in Irish cultural life. It’s the barn that threatens to prove ephemeral.

It wouldn’t be the first time this sort of thing happened. Readers may recall the case of the Ballyporeen pub wherein Ronald Reagan had a pint of Smithwicks in 1984. It – or at least its interior fittings – later emigrated to California, and a Reagan museum.

Then there’s the Famine cottage, formerly from Mayo, that was lovingly reassembled amid the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Whether Billy Brennan’s Barn will be following either of those examples out west remains to be seen. Either way, I’m sure the poet would be enjoying the joke.

Speaking of jokes, I was half tempted to make a bid on another piece of literary property recently. In that case, it was a mere chair – the one formerly occupied by Flann O'Brien, aka Myles na gCopaleen, while writing such masterpieces as At Swim-Two-Birds and his epic newspaper column "Cruiskeen Lawn".

The chair was said to be “distressed”, as well it might be. According to Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers, it was where the real-life Brian O’Nolan sat while “mediating” on his work. And of any other writer you might suspect that to be a misprint. But O’Nolan/O’Brien/Na gCopaleen was a man of multiple identities. Intensive mediation may well have been among the abuses inflicted on the chair.

The lot also included O’Brien’s hat, an item of clothing I would be tempted to call ic*n*c if that hideously overused word were not banned here. All told, the auctioneers’ estimate of €800-1,200 looked like good value.

I was already formulating a plan whereby I would first “endow the chair”, as educational philanthropists say, and then appoint myself professor of something – Mylesian Studies perhaps. After that, I could start selling diplomas over the internet to impressionable people from Winnipeg and such places.

Alas, the lot sold for €3,200, which was too rich for me. But it’s probably just as well. I have enough distressed furniture as it is.

Getting back to bricks and mortar, meanwhile, it's that time of the year when the James Joyce "House of the Dead" in Dublin is preparing for its big annual setpiece. And I'm told that this being the centenary of Dubliners, the latest instalment will be much more elaborate than usual.

Since saving No 15 Usher's Island from doom some years ago, its owner Brendan Kilty has taken to reenacting the Feast of the Epiphany dinner, as described in Joyce's The Dead, in its original setting. Unfortunately the "most important dining room in world literature", as Kilty is justified in calling it, has very limited seating capacity.

So this coming January 6th, No 15 will throw open its doors, via video conferencing, to other “Dead Dinners” around the world. The guests will not just be eating. The “noble call” for songs will also be shared globally. I’m sure Winnipeg will not be found wanting.

Joyce's story turns on a song, The Lass of Aughrim, which unleashes a flood of memories in Gretta Conroy. Visitors climbing the stairs of No 15 today are greeted by a picture of the pivotal moment, with Anjelica Huston playing Gretta in the 1987 film, and shown frozen on the same part of the stairway.

Except that it wasn’t the actual stairs. The film’s interior scenes were all shot in California, where a replica house was built. In that case, at least, the actual bricks stayed put.

@FrankmcnallyIT