Peter CostelloHere, in some 90,000 words, is the life story of popular broadcaster Donncha Ó Dúlaing from his first steps in life though some 50 years of entertaining people largely with tales and characters from the parishes of Ireland.
But Donncha’s words are only part of it, for his book includes hundreds of photographs running over the many decades of his life which in, themselves, will be of great interest to his many fans. He has been well served indeed by his photo researchers and editorial caption writers.
He quotes de Valera’s sentiment that to love one’s parish is to love one’s country. There was never anything staid about Donncha. He was always warm, funny and appealing, a man ever ready to play up to the situation by dressing up as Napoleon or driving a vintage car to celebrate Charles Kickham.
Older generation
He found time as well listen to the older generation relating tales of the famine days, or to celebrate the generosity of the Choctaw tribes, deep in their own hardship, to help the starving Irish.
It is a rich mix. He recounts for instance his experiences on the Papal visit, and in travelling around the country with the relics of St Thérèse, which was one of the most popular pilgrimages of recent years.
A photograph of him carrying the banner at the head of a Corpus Christi procession in Charleville in 1945 is redolent of a now-vanished Ireland. Indeed, one can almost follow, stage-by-stage, the changing aspects of religious attitudes in these pages.
But it was not only Irish ways he walked. He includes accounts of his visit to the Holy Land. This was a very emotional experience for him.
Of course, some of what he says has to be taken now and then with a pinch of salt. He claims that though he was a devotee of the men of 1916, when he was growing up he never heard of the women of the revolution. This is unbelievable. Everyone knew of the Countess, of Maud Gonne, of the redoubtable Maire MacSwiney, and their colleagues in Cumann na mBan.
But no-one listened to Highways and Byways for the academic view of history; what listeners loved in that programme, and in all his other radio and television work, were the encounters with storytellers, singers, musicians and local people with the gift of the craic.
He was a popular broadcaster because he gave a voice to popular ideas about Ireland, Ireland’s past, and Ireland’s people.
Charm
He sometimes felt that RTÉ was too heavily influenced by the Government to give true expression to the people’s feelings at times of trouble. That too might be debatable, but there was always a wide rebel streak in Donncha. It was part of his charm.
The Irish language, too, has been a lifelong love of Donncha’s, even if in his life as a broadcaster he has seen it become ever more detached from the realities of Irish life.
For everyone who ever tuned in to the radio – or rather the wireless, as he rightly calls it – his book provides a feast of nostalgia and glimpses of the old days, both good and bad.
If it is not still a little early in the season, one might say that this is a book that will solve many people’s Christmas present problem.