2007B FRQ #2

         The novel was called The Shan Van Vocht, a 

     phonetic rendering of an Irish phrase meaning The 

     Poor Old Woman, a traditional name for Ireland. It 

     was about the great rebellion of 1798, the source of 

5   almost half the songs we sang around the August 

     bonfires on the Feast of the Assumption. In the 

     opening pages, people were talking in whispers about 

     the dangers of the rebellion as they sat around a great 

     open-hearth fire on a wild night of winter rain and 

10 squall. I read and re-read the opening many times. 

     Outside was the bad weather; inside was the fire, 

     implied danger, a love relationship. There was 

     something exquisite in this blend, as I lay in bed 

     reading while my brothers slept and shifted under 

15 the light that shone on their eyelids and made their 

     dreams different. The heroine was called Ann, and the 

     hero was Robert. She was too good for him. When 

     they whispered, she did all the interesting talking. He 

     just kept on about dying and remembering her always, 

20 even when she was there in front of him with her dark 

     hair and her deep golden-brown eyes and her olive 

     skin. So I talked to her instead and told her how 

     beautiful she was and how I wouldn’t go out on the 

     rebellion at all but just sit there and whisper in her ear 

25 and let her know that now was forever and not some 

     time in the future when the shooting and the hacking 

     would be over, when what was left of life would be 

     spent listening to the night wind wailing on grave-

     evening meal and then waiting with him until his 

     father came in from the fields. She put out a blue-and-

     white jug full of milk and a covered dish of potatoes 

     in their jackets and a red-rimmed butter dish with a 

45 slab of butter, the shape of a swan dipping its head 

     imprinted on its surface. That was the meal. Every-

     thing was so simple, especially the way they waited. 

     She sat with her hands in her lap and talked to him 

     about someone up the road who had had an airmail 

50 letter from America. She told him that his father 

     would be tired, but, tired as he was, he wouldn’t be 

     without a smile before he washed himself and he 

     wouldn’t be so without his manners to forget to say 

     grace before they ate and that he, the boy, should 

55 watch the way the father would smile when the 

     books were produced for homework, for learning 

     was a wonder to him, especially the Latin. Then 

     there would be no talking, just the ticking of the clock 

     and the kettle humming and the china dogs on the 

60 mantelpiece looking, as ever, across at one another. 

         “Now that,” said the master, “that’s writing. That’s 

     just telling the truth.” 

         I felt embarrassed because my own essay had 

     been full of long or strange words I had found in the 

65 dictionary—“cerulean,” “azure,” “phantasm” and 

     “implacable”—all of them describing skies and seas 

     I had seen only with the Ann of the novel. I’d never 

     thought such stuff was worth writing about. It was 

     ordinary life—no rebellions or love affairs or 

70 dangerous flights across the hills at night. And yet I 

     kept remembering that mother and son waiting in the 

     Dutch interior of that essay, with the jug of milk and 

     the butter on the table, while behind and above them 

     were those wispy, shawly figures from the rebellion, 

75 sibilant above the great fire and below the aching, 

     high wind. 

     yards and empty hillsides. 

30     “For Christ’s sake, put off that light. You’re not 

     even reading, you blank gom.” 

         And Liam would turn over, driving his knees up 

     into my back and muttering curses under his breath. 

     I’d switch off the light, get back in bed, and lie there, 

35 the book still open, re-imagining all I had read, the 

     various ways the plot might unravel, the novel 

     opening into endless possibilities in the dark. 

         The English teacher read out a model essay which 

     had been, to our surprise, written by a country boy. It 

40 was an account of his mother setting the table for the

    (1996)