Item 8 - Son of a Tinker

Maurice Walsh was born in the townland of Ballydonoghue, near Lisselton, in the north of county Kerry on 21 April 1879, the eldest son and one of the ten children of John Walsh and Elizabeth Buckley. It is notable that his home area is near Listowel, which has produced two other important writers – Bryan McMahon and John B. Keane. John Walsh (Maurice’s father) was a farmer and a devoted reader, and both he and Michael Dillon, a teacher at the local national school, cultivated Maurice’s interest in books from an early age. After primary school, Walsh attended St. Michael’s College in Listowel, and in 1901 he joined the civil service, becoming a customs and excise officer. After brief postings in Ireland (beginning in Limerick), he was sent to Scotland, followed by Derby, and in 1906, back to Scotland again. That country had a profound influence on him. He was inspired both by the landscape of the Highlands and the people, as some of his literary works testify. Among the lifelong friends he made there was the novelist Neil Gunn (1891-1973). It was in the town of Dufftown in the Highlands that Walsh met Caroline Isabel Thomson Begg – his beloved ‘Toshon’ – whom he married on 8 August 1908. At that point, he was serving at Kirbymoorside in Yorkshire, but soon was transferred back to Ireland where he remained until 1913. The next nine years were spent at Forres in the Highlands, from where, after independence, Walsh secured a transfer to the customs service of the new Irish Free State. He was prominent in the newly established customs officers’ association, Comhaltas Cana, and contributed to its journal, Irisleabhar. He retired in 1933 and writing became his career.

Walsh’s literary output was impressive and spanned about sixty years. His first published work was a story in the Weekly Freeman in the early 1890s entitled Robbery Under Arms for which he won two guineas. His last publication was the collection of short stories The Smart Fellow, which appeared in 1964, the year of his death. His early works were short stories that were published in periodicals – three in Irish Emerald (1908) and three in The Dublin Magazine (1923-1925). His first novel – of fourteen – The Key Above the Door was published by W. and R. Chambers of Edinburgh in 1926 and attracted an unsolicited tribute from the famous Scottish author J. M. Barrie. Walsh continued to write short stories and they appeared mainly in Chambers’s Journal and the Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia). The first collection of them was published as Green Rushes in 1935.

One of Walsh’s most successful creations was the character Thomasheen James O’Doran, based, like so many of his characters on a real person, in that case Tom O’Gorman, a veteran of World War I who worked for Walsh. Eleven of the stories concerning Thomasheen James were published in Thomasheen James, Man-of No-Work in March 1941 and reprinted in May of that year, which indicates their great popularity. Thomasheen James also featured in two other collections: Son of a Tinker and Other Tales (1951) and The Smart Fellow (1964). Many of Walsh’s works were translated into European languages and all were sold in English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia.

One of Walsh’s better-known novels now is Blackcock’s Feather, published in 1932. Set at the time of the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603), it has been noted for the quality of its prose. In 1933, the Department of Education published an abridged version of it, which would become familiar to generations of post-primary school students. It was later translated into Irish as Cleite Clarcollig.

Some of Walsh’s work was broadcast on radio beginning with Blackcock’s Feather, which was serialised both on Radio Éireann (1937) and on BBC radio in Northern Ireland (1938). Such productions were not confined to Ireland. The Man in Brown was broadcast under its American title Nine Strings to Your Bow on an American station, WTZ, in 1945, and in 1950, Scottish radio broadcast The Key Above the Door. Naturally, there were many schemes envisaged for the adaptation of work of his for film, but most failed. It was, however, a film which was to guarantee the fame of one of his short stories – The Quiet Man.

Published in The Saturday Evening Post in February 1933, The Quiet Man had as its central character Shawn Kelvin, but when it appeared in Green Rushes two years later, he had been renamed Paddy Bawn Enright. The real person of that name was a man who had worked for John Walsh, Maurice’s father. Walsh’s inspiration for the story came from two incidents: the first one, ‘where a bully refused to pay his sister’s fortune at Listowel fair’ and the other, a fight between John McElligott (known as ‘Quiet Jack’) and a cattle dealer who had tried to cheat him, at a fair also in Listowel, in 1914. On reading the story, John Ford purchased the film rights of it, but it would be almost twenty years before it made its way onto celluloid. By two agreements of 25 February 1936 (both between Walsh and Ford) and another of 25 May 1951 (between Ford and Republic Pictures), Walsh received a total of $6260 for the story, which for many, now occupies iconic status in cinematic history. The only novel of Walsh’s to be successfully adapted for film was Trouble in the Glen (which had been published in 1950), made in 1954 by Republic Pictures and starring Margaret Lockwood and John Laurie.

In addition to short stories and novels, Walsh also wrote plays (one of which, The Golden Pheasant, was performed), some poetry (mainly unpublished), and articles on subjects including whiskey (of which he was a connoisseur). He was involved in two literary organisations – P.E.N. (of which he served as president in 1938) and the Friends of the Irish Academy of Letters. His circle of friends included many writers, among them Seán O’Faoláin and Francis McManus. Maurice Walsh lived in Dublin from the beginning of his service as a customs officer in the Irish Free State. He died at his home in Stillorgan on 18 February 1964.