Parnell's baton passes to poet

A whitethorn stick used by Charles Stewart Parnell, which has become something of a literary baton, was formally passed on to the poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in Dublin yesterday.

Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, who has had the stick for several years, made the presentation at a reception at the RDS. It had been passed on to him by Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, who received it in 1962 from the poet W.R. Rodgers, who in turn had received it from novelist Brinsley MacNamara.

The recipient, during his or her lifetime, has to pass the stick on to a younger literary figure after an unspecified period of time.

MacNamara, whose works include The Valley of the Squinting Windows, left a historical note saying the stick had been cut in Avondale wood by Parnell some time between 1889 and 1890.

"This stick has something about it which authenticates it as a stick which Parnell owned, because it is shod with a very heavy iron ferrule, and Parnell had a taste for working with iron," he wrote. ail seven years later, that the "stage of politics" would not prevent "the stage of writing." Seven years later Dr O'Brien was elected to the Dail. Ms Ni Dhomhnaill remarked that her grandmother had often advised her to "take everything but stick".

A poem, specially written by Seamus Heaney to mark the occasion, has been published by Peter Fallon at the Gallery Press.

Entitled The Stick, it reads in part:

Whitethorn, not blackthorn,

More a staff than a switch,

So not like the one

The District Inspector

Tucked under the arm

Of his dress uniform

When he fronted processions,

As black as his boot

And neater than ninepence . . .

I'm amazed Conor parted

With it at all:

It was intellectual

Property nearly,

His who had written

Parnell and His Party.