INTRODUCTION

My last two books, The Wind that Round the Fastnet Sweeps and The Magic of the Kerry Coast were about the sea and my yacht Dualla. Alas I have become too old to face any more the pounding waves and the restless winds. I sold Dualla and parting with her after so many happy and adventurous years together was like as if some corner of my life left me for all time. But then I suppose all life is a series of goodbyes, each as painful in its own way as the one that went before it.

From the letters I received it seems as if quite a lot of people enjoyed my books about the sea, but a few complained that, despite the laughter and fun, they thought them too sad. They were, of course, thinking of those parts dealing with our tragic and painful history, but I have found it impossible to ignore these incidents. You cannot visit a place, say like Auschwitz, and write only about the goods in the souvenir shop, and every little village in Ireland was at one time or another almost a miniature Auschwitz. These things happened and we cannot change the past which is part and parcel of our race memories. The ordinary decent English tourists who come in thousands to this country every year have been kept in complete ignorance of what really happened and my experience is that they are all most anxious to search out the truth. A travel book which ignores this is, to say the least, incomplete. The majority of those English tourists, far from being offended, experience a deep sorrow that any of their rulers could have been so heartless and cruel and they have made a common bond with the Irish people who have responded by welcoming them, most sincerely. The best homage we ourselves can pay our brave ancestors is to try to make the Ireland they handed over to us at such gigantic sacrifice, a better place for everyone to live in, and to do this without rancour or bitterness.

A few have accused me of diverting at times into what they described as ‘obscene’. That charge I must deny. What I have written is no more than the conversations anyone can hear in any pub or fireside in rural Ireland, earthy but not vulgar; erotic, perhaps, but not pornographic. Here I am reminded of the respectable lady who was complimenting Dr Samuel Johnson on the publication of his mammoth dictionary:

‘I am delighted, Dr Johnson,’ she said, ‘that there are no dirty words in your dictionary.’

‘Did you look for them, madam?’ was Johnson’s quick reply.

Some others have asked me if the stories I told were really true. I recorded them as I heard them and I never insulted any teller by questioning the accuracy of what he had to say. If I have misled my readers then I have been misled myself, but that does not worry me too much. To those who are ardently searching for truth perhaps a travel book is not the best source. I would recommend the Summa Theologica by St Thomas Aquinas in twenty volumes. I believe it can be bought on the hire purchase – and if that doesn’t suit there is always the Penny Catechism.

This book is about the Shannon and it hasn’t been an easy one to write for the simple reason that trying to describe the beauty of the Shannon is like trying to paint a soul. On and off over the years, I have cruised there on week-ends and short periods so there was nothing very new in taking a longer cruise. The boat I used was a thirty foot seamaster cruiser with two sleeping cabins, a main cabin, a refrigerator and, believe it or not, a shower. These luxuries I was not used to on Dualla. I hired her from Brendan Smith of Silver Line Cruisers, Banagher. Brendan is not only a man who hires boats but he is also a friend and I have dedicated this book to himself and his wife Mary as a little token of gratitude for all their kindness. At first I thought of buying a boat but when I went into the facts carefully I concluded that, unless you live close enough to the river or can travel there every weekend at least from April to October, it is cheaper and easier in the long run to hire. And there are several excellent hire companies with first class boats.

I found cruising the Shannon more reflective than cruising on the sea. I was less tense and less apprehensive about possible calamities and, therefore, much more relaxed. I filled several notebooks with the strangest reveries that sometimes peep out from the hidden retreats of the mind and maybe some day in the far distant future I might gather them together in another book. But I did notice that on the Shannon I was less concerned with the mystery of death than is my norm. I think that can be explained by an impish idea planted in my mind by an old grave-digger who spent his entire life delivering people to the other side. ‘When the Last Day comes,’he explained, ‘and when Gabriel blows the bugle for everyone to get up, nobody will be allowed into the Great Hall of Judgement until he first rubs out the lies on his headstone and writes in the truth instead. Supposing it said on an ould farmer’s headstone that he was a good family man, when he wasn’t, then on the Last Day he’d have to blot that out and write instead that he fathered three children in different parts of the parish and that no servant girl was safe in the house with him. Everyone will have to do the same.’

I must frankly admit that this idea has caused me some apprehension, but on the other hand it has taken a lot of the gloom out of death. It is consoling to know that most of one’s friends will be quite busy on the Last Day. As a precaution however, I have begged my family not to compose too flattering an epitaph when I die, in case I might be unduly delayed in getting into the Great Hall. It would be safer, I have told them, to stick to the facts.

Well I hope you will enjoy this little book on the Shannon and that it may inspire you to spend a cruising holiday there. Believe me, there are very few holidays in any part of the world as good.