On a trip to Ireland last month, I began every morning with a dose of whiskey before enjoying some great crack during the day. Don’t be alarmed, though: The whiskey was mixed in my porridge, along with some cream–a legitimate Irish delicacy–and “crack” (actually spelled craic) is Irish for good company and conversation. I needed the whiskey boost just to keep up with the craic of my great-great-uncle Dan O’Shea, the last of my relatives living on the Beara Peninsula in County Kerry.
A mystique surrounds my seventy-something great-great-uncle, thanks in part to the moniker given him by local tradition, Dan the Durd. It’s a title of disputed origin that distinguishes Dan’s clan from others like the Shoemaker O’Sheas. I’ve visited Ireland a few times now, and whenever I go, the Durd–known for miles as a “bringer of craic,” or simply a craic–leads a tour of the ten pubs found on the two streets of Kenmare-town. As he goes, the people we pass shout, “Up the Durd!” and when Irish women are among them, Dan, like a true craic, smiles and says, “Ah, now, aren’t there lovely young girls here?”
With a glass of Bushmills Blackbush in his right hand, his cane in his left, the Durd holds court, first at the “least classy” bar and finally at the modern Coachman pub, a picture of the newly prosperous Ireland. The Durd introduces me everywhere as an “American cousin.” Soon a curious, talkative crowd surrounds me, and the storytelling and trading of jabs begins.
The Durd is fond of telling the ubiquitous American tourists about his oldest brother, my great grandfather, who left for America at age 22 and didn’t see his mother again for 40 years, by which time his father and some siblings he’d never met were already dead.
Once, when a Boston couple heard Dan tell this story, his rhythmic brogue laid on thick for drama, the wife was moved to tears. But the Durd always finishes with humor. As he tells it, Dan let his long-absent brother and his sister-in-law stay in his bedroom, while he occupied a sleeping bag under the stairs. Now, his brother was fond of an occasional whiskey but wary of publicity, and one night he tiptoed through the house looking for a bottle, with no luck. Finally, he peeked under the stairs. Seeing only Dan’s wide open eyes, he jumped, and dashed back to his room in fear. “Oh, Lord,” says Dan. “He thought he had seen the Banshee!”
One night during my recent trip, at Crowley’s pub, Dan met a couple from Wisconsin. “Susie,” the man exclaimed to his wife, “this man is Ireland! I am going to buy a whiskey for a real Irishman. A Blackbush for the Durd!” His wife, fearing that Dan’s craic would keep her husband at the bar until the closing bell, soon hustled him out. But it was too bad they left, for they missed one of the trademarks of craic–a seisiún, or spontaneous singing and music.
“Quiet!” shouted the woman behind the bar, “Someone has a song.” Then, from the silence came the deep, doleful voice of an old-timer hunched over the bar, the Guinness foam still fresh around his mouth. Well, I woke up Sunday morning / With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. / And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad / So I had one more for dessert. Some well-lubricated throats tried to sing along, but protests quickly sent them into silent reflection, as the man continued his stirring, adagio rendition of the tune made famous by Johnny Cash. And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing / And it echoed through the canyon like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
The man’s singing made me think of the ruined 12th-century church I’d seen that day, its roofless remains overlooking a graveyard long lost to overgrowth and peat. It was an eerie meeting of old and new, of struggle and hope. There we sat in prosperous Ireland, foreigner and local alike enjoying cool pints of stout and good company, listening to the voice of a proud but severe past.
As the Durd would say, “Irish fairies are not your American fairies”–far from it: Those cruel, unpredictable cousins of the Banshee were the reason I was always given a flashlight before walking the hills at night–“and Irish craic is not your American crack.” If you doubt it, take it up with the man himself when you find yourself in Kenmare. While you’re at it, be a good craic: Buy a round of Blackbush for Dan the Durd.
JOSEPH LINDSLEY
