| Literary Longford Longford
is not the most famous of counties but more than likely you’ve visited
it probably en route to somewhere else.
But it’s quite often these quiet backwaters where the true spirit
of Ireland lives on. And any county which can nurture someone like Oliver
Goldsmith in many people’s opinion the author of the finest novel,
poem and play in the English language must be given huge consideration.
In any other country in the world a whole tourist industry would have
been founded on the fact that Oliver was a son of the parish witness Stratford-upon-Avon.
But here in the sleepy old Midlands a few signs saying Goldsmith country
is about all you get. And the better for it.
The writer’s presumed birthplace, Pallas, boasts a shrine in his
memory again a relatively understated affair with a statue behind the
bars of a stone grotto.
Nearby is Ballymahon where the author lived with his widowed mother before
upping sticks and, like so many others, heading for England.
A little to the north of Ballymahon lies another landmark site in the
career of Oliver Goldsmith. The village of Ardagh not the one of Chalice
fame is nonetheless an ancient place the seat of a bishopric founded in
the fifth century.
Surrounded by gentle woodland it is home to Ardagh House now a convent
school but with a strong literary link.
The story goes that the young Goldsmith was returning home from school
in Edeworthstown when the place was pointed out to him as an inn where
he might spend the night.
The incident apparently furnished young Oliver with the idea for the
plot its hero is a bashful young man who mistakes a country mansion for
an inn and accordingly treats the master of the house as an innkeeper
and the master’s beautiful daughter as a servant.
The play was of course She Stoops To Conquer one of the finest comedies
ever written in the English language.
The literary tour continues across the border in Westmeath and the quandary
of which of the two villages of Glassan or Lissoy is the Sweet Auburn
mentioned in the anti-enclosure poem The Deserted Village.
Despite seeing “the decent church that topped the neighbouring
hill” in Glassan and probably “the never failing brook”
in Lissoy this rare day out will leave you undecided.
Longford is a place which doesn’t readily spring to mind when holidays
to Ireland are discussed. However as Kerry and West Cork become ever-more
crowded and Temple Bar looks even drearier than a wet Saturday in Oxford
Street these “hidden” counties in the middle of the country
become progressively more attractive.
The Deserted Village written by Goldsmith circa 1770 is a long poem
about the English countryside. It shows the evil that results when people
place too much importance on money and luxury. It also paints a tender
picture of a happy farm village before commercial considerations destroy
it.
As an allegory for the Celtic Tiger it couldn’t be more apt. And
it seems entirely appropriate that the area which spawned the writer should
today find itself free of the worst excesses of the current “economic
miracle”.
In more ways than one Longford is the very heart of Ireland. |
