An Irishman's Diary

Speaking at a memorial service to Richard Harris recently, his fellow actor Gabriel Byrne declared, "We never once talked about…

Speaking at a memorial service to Richard Harris recently, his fellow actor Gabriel Byrne declared, "We never once talked about filming, or acting or theatre. We talked about Ireland," writes Kevin Myers

Begod, they must have been interesting conversations. "Hmm, Richard. A penny for them."

Richard Harris stared mournfully up from the brown study in which he had been engulfed. "I was thinking," he intoned, "of Ireland."

"Ireland," replied Gabriel Byrne, sitting down suddenly. "Ah now. There's a thought indeed. Ireland."

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"Ireland," agreed Richard Harris. "Ireland. Do you know what it is, Gabriel? I do seldom be thinking of anything else these days. And I do be longing for Ireland, and I do be yearning for Ireland and I do be dreaming of Ireland. And when I do fall to thinking and dreaming and yearning, and with Ireland in my heart and in my soul and on my lips, I do hear myself talking strangely. And I do find myself beginning sentences with 'and'. And I do be employing more auxiliary verbs and present participles than does be strictly necessary."

Gabriel Byrne bit his lip, and stifled a manly sob. "I do be knowing the feeling. Sorry, I mean, I know the feeling. We've got to stop talking like this."

"You're right, Gabriel, you're so right, but whenever I think about Ireland, something inside me gives, and I come over all weak and soft, and I see the sun go down over Bloody Foreland, and I hear the laughter of children at Mizzen Head, and on the cobbled stones of the ancient Liberties, I hear the cry of the fishwives a-selling gleaming mackerel, fourpence each, a shilling for four. And from the Plains of Royal Meath, strong men came hurrying through, And Britannia's sons with their long-range guns sailed in through the Foggy Dew."

Gabriel Byrne wept the tears of the exile; they were strong tears, and manly tears, the tears of a man far from his native shore, far from the hearth where once he had heard the cricket's song, while his mother stirred the bog-wood fire. "Do you ever think," he asked softly, as he gazed reflectively into the distance, "of your childhood days, the days of innocence, of a goodness unsullied by so-called 'success' and by the meaninglessness of that meaningless bauble 'acclaim'? Do you, Richard? Do you?"

"I think," said Richard Harris, gazing at that self-same remote if invisible object, "of little else. Success? Pah! Acclaim? Fiddlesticks! No, Gabriel, all I think of is the Ireland of my youth: the hurlers of a summer's evening a-pucking the sliotar over a Limerick meadow; the hooker's red sail in Clew Bay; curlews calling across the peaty waters of the Corrib; and I think of that glenside where I met an old woman. A-plucking young nettles, she ne'er heard me coming. I listened a while, to the song she was humming. Glori-oh, glori-oh, to the bould Fenian men."

"STOP IT! YOU ARE TORTURING ME! TORTURING ME! TORTURING, DO YOU HEAR?"

"Forgive me, Gabriel, it is only the unquenchable love that I feel for my native land which has me talking this way. In Kinsale, the fishermen are mending their nets. In Crookhaven, a laughing boatman is hauling in his kreel of lobster, and in a wayside tavern in Westmeath, a piper is lamenting the lost civilisation of Gaelic Ireland, the ancient keen of our forefathers drifting over Lough Ennel, as flights of lapwing head home towards the setting sun. A bittern calls, a sad desolate note; from the reedbanks comes the croak of the corncrake; and amid the stand of beech beside the old Protestant church, an owl hoots. All is still. Night falls on Ireland."

"Aye, and I know that night too well. See, the shooting stars streak silently through that eerily clear dark sky. Hear the rustle of the wind through the trees. A will-o'-the-wisp darts across the bogland, as the labourer wends his weary way homeward to his cottage, where his barefoot children await him, the parlour alive with the sound of laughter and innocent games."

And now Richard Harris sobbed. "Too much. Too much. You are breaking my heart. But stay! Hark! Do you hear it? The spinning wheel - do you hear it?"

"Yes, yes, I hear it!" Gabriel Byrne cried, rising from his seat. "I hear it!"

Richard Harris's eyes misted over. He began to speak as if in a trance. "Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning, close by the window young Eileen is spinning, bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother, sitting, is crooning and moaning and drowsily knitting."

"Ireland! Ireland!" cried Gabriel Byrne. "Shall you never leave my thoughts? Is every waking hour to be spent thinking about you, longing for you? Am I to be plagued with my love of you, down all the years of my life?"

"We could, I suppose, always go and live there," mused Richard Harris, as a knock came at the door. "Come in!"

It was merely room service at the Savoy Hotel in London, where Richard Harris lived for the last 10 years of his life, arriving with their dinner.

"Live there?" riposted Gabriel Byrne. "Jesus Christ, man. You're bloody joking, surely."

"I am of course. But my heart never leaves it. Never. Do you hear me? Never, EVER. Waiter, if you please, we ordered the Château de Cantin St Emilion Grand Cru '83, not the '85."