Article No.
10
Travelers,
Saints, and Fighting Men:
Masculinity Goes Into the West
Michelle Lee
University of Texas
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
an Irish literary movement called the Celtic Renaissance revived
ancient Irish folklore, legends, and traditions, infusing the
explosive political revolution for Irish independence with a
cultural dynamic born from forgotten oral history. To a people
colonized and oppressed by the British since the 12th
century, this resurrection of Irish heritage became a symbol of
national pride. Wrote Irish patriot General Michael Collins in
his notes dated 1922:
We can all be faithful to what is our national ideal – the
Ireland of poetic tradition, the future Ireland which will one
day be – the best of what our country was and can be again …[i]
By this time, Anglo-Irish literature (written by Irish-born
writers of English descent) had nearly smothered the
rudimentary, yet magical folktales of gods, ancient kings, and
heroes passed down through generations of oral tradition. By
harvesting and preserving the old stories – the ‘old ways’ –
scholars like Eleanor Hull, Lady Augusta Gregory, and W.B. Yeats
gave the common Irishman not only a non-violent means to reclaim
his past identity, but also a means to root it in his future.
Like the Celtic revivalists, the filmmakers behind Into the
West (Miramax, 1993) used myth to examine the issues that
form the Irish social, cultural, and personal identity. By
weaving the legend of Oisin in The Land of Eternal Youth and
other Irish mythological references into a plot exploring the
gritty struggles of an Irish traveller family, the filmmakers
transformed a simplistic children’s movie based on an obscure
legend into a cultural commentary that celebrates the
philosophies behind the Irish literary revival.
Into the West
director Mike Newell said, “There are certain things that happen
in the film that cannot happen unless the world is a very odd,
mysterious, and unreal sort of place,”[ii]
summing up ideas penned by Irish historian, journalist, and
scholar Eleanor Hull nearly a century ago:
The ancient literature of the Celt leads us into a world of pure
romance. To study it, we must be content to loosen our hold
upon external fact …it is not merely as pretty tales, smoothly
or pleasantly told, elopements or fairy tales or descriptions of
raids as such, that we prize the old romance as our best
heritage from the Gael of an older age; it is because these
stories open up to us not only a picture of his life and social
habits, but of his thoughts and ideals … One of the difficulties
with which the Irish historian will always have to deal is to
discriminate where the imaginary ends and the actual begins.
It, in fact, ends and begins nowhere; the two move on through
all the centuries in a friendly union which can only be
partially and uncertainly disentangled.”[iii]
To appreciate Into the West, filmgoers must “loosen
[their] hold upon external fact,” purposefully ignoring where
“the imaginary ends and the actual begins.” Much like the
resurrected literature of old, the film urges its audience to
recall a time of oral tradition – a time of unwavering belief in
storyteller truth – in order to understand the complexities and
subtleties of the plot. Said Greg Banks, writer and director
for a stage adaptation of Into the West, “We have lost
touch with the humanity of the storytellers, who have also
disappeared with other, more traditional ways of life,”[iv]
one of the main reasons he brought Into the West to the
theatre.
Lady Augusta Gregory, often called “the mother of [Irish]
folklore”[v]
and one of Hull’s scholarly contemporaries, devoted her life to
researching and translating stories, ballads, and poems composed
by what she referred to as “the imaginative class, the holders
of the traditions of Ireland, country people in thatched houses,
workers in fields and bogs.”[vi]
Suggests modern literary scholar Hazard Adams, “Lady Gregory’s
mythological history looks into the plight of a people … so that
the tragedy and comedy, the image and reality, the loyalty and
the self-serving, may be confronted under the pressure of
history.”[vii]
Though the travellers do not live in “thatched houses” and are,
by society’s standards, a class below the “workers in the
fields,” Into the West pays homage to the history of this
particular “imaginative class.” According to many historians,
travellers descend from an ancient clan of wandering bards; thus
a film plot marrying the grim reality of the traveller daily
life with the fantastic possibility of myth does not stray from
the factual/fictional truth of their very existence.
In Into the West, the myth of Oisin, a tale about a man
who returns to his homeland after living 300 years in an eternal
fairy paradise, provides generous insight into the history,
experiences, and mindset of settled traveller John ‘Papa’ Reilly
and his family. In fact, examining the internal struggle of
Oisin in Gregory’s 1918 translation of Oisin After the
Fenians provides a new understanding of Reilly:
I am a shaking tree, my leaves are gone from me; an empty nut, a
horse without a bridle; a people without a dwelling place, I,
Oisin, son of Finn … It is long the clouds are over me to-night!
It is long last night was; although this day is long, yesterday
was longer again to me; everyday that comes is long to me. That
is not the way I used to be.[viii]
Alcoholism, poverty, and grief not only make Reilly a “shaking
tree,” but also strip him of his “leaves”: direction, purpose,
identity and power. Like Oisin, Reilly once was a heroic figure
– the King of the Travellers. But by blaming his traveller
heritage for the death of his wife, he dooms himself to live in
a land of eternal desperation, rather than the blissful Country
of the Young.
In a way, Reilly’s hardened attitude reflects an ancient
traveller myth as translated by Lady Gregory:
It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time ...he found a
lump of gold or silver in a field one day, where he was minding
sheep; and he brought it to a tinker and asked the value of it.
“It’s nothing at all but a bit of solder,” says the tinker.
“Give it here to me.” But St. Patrick brought it to a smith
then, and he told him the value of it. Then St. Patrick put a
curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with every
man’s face against them, and their face against every man; and
that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.[ix]
Mirroring the traits of his accursed ancestor, Reilly first
appears onscreen instructing his boys to scam money from the
government housing department. Reilly no longer wanders the
world, but instead wanders through a hell of his own making.
In 1889, prolific poet and playwright W.B. Yeats wrote The
Wanderings of Oisin based upon Michael Comyn’s The Lay of
Oisin in the Land of Youth (1750) and various other versions
of the Oisin story originating from oral tradition. Wrote
Thomas L. Byrd, Jr. in The Early Poetry of W.B. Yeats: The
Poetic Quest:
In Yeats’ poetry, the natural surroundings do more than
surround; they become an integral part of existence … his views
of man and environment appear primitivistic only to the modern
town- or city-dweller who has lost his intimate relationship
with the natural world.[x]
Like Yeats in The Wanderings of Oisin, the filmmakers of
Into the West used vivid imagery, as well as a strong
sense of place, to lend more reality to their tale. Nothing
natural or magical exists in Reilly’s urban environment,
especially none of Yeats’ “laughing woodland rhyme” or “stars
night’s purple cup.”[xi]
Instead, Reilly’s surroundings imprison, smother, and suffocate,
as shown by tight, skewed camera angles and a squalid
mise-en-scene.
A Dream of Tir-Nan-Oge,
a poem written by Ella Young, poet and novelist contemporary of
Yeats, Hull, and Gregory, captures Reilly’s depressed world
perfectly, particularly in the first three stanzas:
Without, a grayness floods the skies;
Within, a deeper grayness spares
All the pale twilight world that lies
Beyond my glimmering window squares.
I watch the gathering shadows creep
About the tree-tops, as of yore
We used to watch them, brooding deep
On some strange tale of faery lore.
The darkening branches move and sway,
The stars look through the tangled dusk,
Thine eyes are there; I throw away
The years without thee, like a husk.[xii]
Oddly-canted camera angles emphasize the manmade “grayness” towering
over Reilly’s life “Without,” while close-ups of his bloodshot eyes
and a bitter expression symbolize the grayness mourning “Within.”
He denies his longing for “Tir-Nan-Oge,” a place in time where both
his wife and his cultural beliefs in “faery lore” were alive.
“The old ways is dead,” Reilly tells the grandfather – ironically, a
man who, by travelling in a horse-drawn carriage and recounting
myths around a campfire, epitomizes the very customs and heritage
Reilly tries to deny. Only after he rubs his face with ash from
this magical campfire does Reilly begin to reconnect with his
surroundings and his identity as King of the Travellers. By the end
of the film, wide shots of the wild expansive ocean provide a sharp,
telling contrast to the claustrophobic cinematography of Dublin,
alluding to Reilly’s personal and cultural rebirth.
Unlike Reilly, his sons Ossie and Tito outwardly long to discover
the traveller old ways, as represented by their idealization of ‘The
West.’ Wrote Yeats in a Forward to Lady Gregory’s Gods and
Fighting Men:
When [children] imagine a country for themselves; it is always a
country where one can wander without aim, and where one can never
know from one place what another will be like or know from the one
day’s adventure what may meet one with tomorrow’s sun.[xiii]
At first, Ossie and Tito try to incorporate the idea of the West
into their urban life, bringing Tir-na-nÓg into the apartment and
discussing traveller life as they tinker with pots in the decrepit
area behind the Towers. But the old ways do not fit in the modern
world, depicted by the filmmakers’ choice to focus awkwardly on
Tir-na-nÓg ’s legs, eyes, and flanks. The horse is fragmented –
almost as if parts of his soul belong elsewhere.
In a sense, the ragged holes Tir-na-nÓg kicks through the apartment
walls are the boys’ first escape to the West. When Tito peeks
through the holes to watch the landscape of Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid on his neighbor’s television, he sees a place where
they wouldn’t “know from the one day’s adventure what may meet one
with tomorrow’s sun.” In the West, they can ride, dream, and, in
asthmatic Ossie’s case, breathe forever.
The scholars of the Celtic Renaissance discovered strength,
inspiration, and adventure at the heart of Irish myth, all linked by
the promise of hope. Noted Lady Gregory during her research into
the legends of Finn:
I think it has always been to such poor people, with little wealth
or comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them,
that dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow
well the stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare
rocky island who saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that
lead to the Tree of Life.[xiv]
As impoverished travellers, Ossie and Tito cling to the
happily-ever-after possibility of riding off into the sunset on a
white horse. To them, the world of legend is as real as the world
of Butch and Sundance. In their reality, horses possess the power
to carry a man to magical places, just as they possess the power to
transform into long-lost mothers, a theory supported with regard to
an ancient Irish belief described by Eleanor Hull:
… the belief in transmigration from form to form as being part of
the early mythology both of ancient Britain and Ireland; gods and
goddesses being re-born as mortal men or women endowed with
supernatural powers or taking the forms of birds, animals, or
insects, but always capable of reassuming at will their own form and
powers. These beliefs belong to the very earliest stratum of Irish
mythology.[xv]
Beyond the myth of Oisin and The Land of Eternal Youth, the horse
Tir-na-nÓg represents not only a trinity of mother figures (the
late Mary Reilly, the Virgin Mary, and Mother Ireland), but also the
Celtic goddess Epona, who, according to ancient belief, takes horse
form and signifies fertility connected to the cycle of death and
rebirth. As late as the 12th century, Ulster kings were
‘wedded’ to a white mare, hoping this incarnation of Epona would
bless their reign. Echoing this custom, Reilly must accept his
heritage as well as the powerful significance of the white mare
Tir-na-nÓg (the incarnation of his late wife) by the end of the
film to reclaim his title of King of the Travellers.
Though many filmgoers criticize the hunting and ‘police pursuit’
scenes in Into the West as misplaced and awkward, the scenes
give yet another nod to Celtic Renaissance. Wrote Lars Nooden in a
University of Michigan thesis on animal symbolism in ancient Celtic
culture:
The theme of the hunt uses animals to pass to and from the realm of
magic and the gods in Celtic and Welsh mythology. For example,
during the excitement of the hunt, the chosen party pursues an
unusually fleet of foot, magical prey out of the world of the
mortals and into a place of magic. Wells, springs, rivers, and
earthen mounds are some of the magical places that border with or
co-exist in the other world. In these places, magic is much more
prevalent and sometimes even time passes differently there … The
magical animals are noteworthy in appearance and get the attention
of the hunter by their supernatural shape, color, speed, and power.
There are many other examples of the pursuit of supernatural beasts
throughout Celtic and Welsh mythology with the common characteristic
being their unnatural, white color.[xvi]
When Ossie and Tito flee from a pink-coated Anglo-Irish hunting
party on a horse named Tir-na-nÓg, perhaps the filmmakers are
offering both a political statement and a subtle commentary on the
re-emergence of rural Irish beliefs. As the soundtrack becomes 18th
century British classical, the boys adopt the role of Irish-Catholic
‘foxes’ being hunted by the civilized upper-class Protestants. Per
Eleanor Hull’s transcribed theory, the sly fox role denotes the
traveller in his magical animal form, running from predators,
scavenging, and living off the land, or in a more literary sense,
the mythical Irish culture, running from certain extinction. During
the police chases, Tir-na-nÓg splashes through a river bed to throw
the pursuers off the scent; however, the foray into the river
seemingly represents the boys’ rebirth into West, a protective
“magical place that borders with or co-exists in the other world.”
After all, “in these places, magic is much more prevalent and
sometimes even time passes differently there.”
Into the West
is not a mere children’s fantasy or even a family adventure with
strong Irish overtones. By layering mythical allusions atop an
already-complex story of a modern-day traveller family in Irish
society, the filmmakers contribute to the efforts of the Celtic
revivalists by tracing the fine line between Irish history and Irish
fact. Every detail in the film honors a return to the old ways,
including Ossie’s pathetic warbling of ‘Danny Boy’ on the streets of
Dublin:
Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying …[xvii]
The lyrics, written by Fred Weatherley in the latter years of the
Celtic Renaissance, strike the contrast between the idyllic Irish
West and the barren, hopeless streets of Dublin, the traveller life
and the settled life. As W.B. Yeats said (quoted by Lady Gregory):
“the [Irish] countryman’s dream has never been entangled by
reality.”[xviii]
Maybe that is the precise reason Into the West captures the
heart of Ireland and takes it for a ride.
[iii]
Hull, Eleanor. Textbook of Irish Literature,
Part 1. Dublin: M.H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1910. p. ii
[v]
Contemporary Authors Online, The Gale Group, 2000.
Database: Contemporary Authors
[vi]
Gregory, Lady Augusta. Poets and Dreamers: Studies and
Translations from the Irish by Lady Gregory, Including Nine
Plays by Douglas Hyde. Oxford University Press, 1974.
p. 98
[vii]
Adams, Hazard. Lady Gregory. Bucknell University
Press, 1973. pp. 69-70.
[viii]
Gregory, Lady Augusta. The Kiltartan Books Comprising
the Kiltartan Poetry History and Wonder Books, Lady Gregory.
Gerrards Cross,1971. p.60
[ix]
Gregory. Poets and Dreamers. p. 96
[x]
Byrd, Thomas L., Jr. “The Environment of the Quest: The
Poetic Dream,” in The Early Poetry of W.B. Yeats: The
Poetic Quest. Kennikat Press,1978. pp. 11-38.
Reprinted in Poetry Criticism, vol. 20. Reproduced
in Literature Resource Center.
[xi]
Yeats, W.B. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats.
Macmillan Company, 1940. pp.330 and 333
[xii]
The Golden Treasury of Irish Songs and Lyrics.
Edited by Charles Welsh. Dodge Publishing Company, 1907
[xiii]
Gregory, Lady Augusta. Gods and Fighting Men. The
Edinburgh Press, 1926. p. xiv
[xiv]
Gregory. Poets and Dreamers. p.99
[xv]
Hull, A Textbook of Irish Literature, Part 1.
p.119
[xviii]
Gregory. Poets and Dreamers. p. 51
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