TOM MALONE

TOM MALONE

The American and French Revolutions at the end of the 18th century ushered in a new era, the beginning of modern history. The Old Order, where political and economic power was confined to a small elite, was swept aside by the huge upheavals in France and America.

These seismic changes in the power structures, in what we now call Western countries, can also be seen in the art and literature of the post-revolutionary period. In England, the Romantic poets – Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron – were breaking new ground in content and style.

Their credo was encapsulated by Wordsworth and Coleridge in their introduction to Lyrical Ballads in 1798. They said that they were committed to writing in simple words about the beauties of nature, stressing the pre-eminent importance of imagination in the human quest for wisdom and truth. There were also strong democratic tendencies in their writing; they espoused the cause of the common man.

The Romantic Hero was different from the person who distinguished himself in war, business or politics. Instead, he tended to be an eccentric figure, guided by different values than those shared by the general populace. I wrote about one such example, the Scholar Gypsy, in a recent blog. Arnold’s gypsy rejected the comfortable university life in Oxford, and, instead, devoted himself to a lifelong search for wisdom in the lore of a group of outsiders, of wanderers, whose lifestyle was denigrated by most people.

All of this was going through my mind when a friend, who lives in Venezuela, John Sweeney, sent me a poem that he wrote about Tom Malone, a beggar man that he knew when he was young in Ireland, more than fifty years ago. John was a missionary priest in Venezuela in the 70’s when he decided to leave that line of work after falling in love with a local woman. They are now proud grandparents, and John is a retired teacher in that country.

He was born in Kilgarvan, less than ten miles away from where I grew up, and I remember seeing Tom Malone in my town, Kenmare, when I was in my early teens. He was a tall imposing man, with a rather long beard, dressed in black. He was different from other beggars insofar as he spoke with authority on various topics, did not frequent the pubs and expected the local men to give him a few shillings, not the usual pennies that a beggar would be glad to pocket.

He had certain houses where he would stay as he moved around within a radius of about forty miles in the mountainy region that stretches from the Kenmare area of South Kerry into Bantry in West Cork. He never stayed in my family’s house; however, my younger brother, Michael, has a clear memory of him coming by for a cup of tea or a bowl of soup, on a few occasions. Tom was born in Coolea, near Macroom, in County Cork to a settled family, but he was so broken-hearted, so deeply hurt, by his mother’s death, when he was sixteen, that he never again returned to his home.

Instead, he chose the life of a rover. He would surely qualify, using Wordsworth’s definition, as a Romantic figure, an eccentric seeker, a restless soul who lived his life tramping from place to place, looking for some meaning to life.

The following is John Sweeney’s fine poem about Tom Malone.

I am Tom Malone, I walk alone, along my lonely way,
I got no house, no chick nor child, no garden, oats nor hay,
I know the clouds, the wind, the rain, as I walk my lonely road,
For fifty years I have traveled it, with ne’er a fixed abode.


In a little house beyond Coolea, my mother gave me birth,
She cradled me and she cuddled me in the crib beside the hearth,
But the Good Lord took her from me when I was just sixteen,
I left her in the churchyard and I left behind my dream.


I never more went near that house. It was no longer home,
Both love and joy had left it, and my fate it was to roam,
The pain was deep within me, I had to go away,
I faced the West, I walked all night and all the following day.


The road is long, it stretches on, beyond the heather bog,
The rain comes down, the wind is sharp, I stumble through the fog.
Of why I go, I’ll never know as I pass by rock and tree,
I hear a voice from other lands, and the road keeps calling me.


I slept last night in Lounahan, where I’ve been often fed,
And now I’m off to Gornaskea where I’ll find a feather bed,
I’ll sup my tay and puff my pipe and I’ll watch the coals grow red,
While I talk to Tomas Laidir of the living and the dead.


We’ll talk of those who have gone ahead to the land beyond the sky,
And of those who’ve left their native home in a foreign land to lie,
And of drunken Mike who slept all night at the mouth of a badger’s den,
And how Doctor Tadgh cured the old bay mare with the blood of a hatching hen.


We’ll think and talk the night away, and then we’ll wonder why,
The snail is made to crawl the earth and the bird is made to fly.
Of why there’s some who dress in rags while others wear a crown,
Of why the smoke goes up the hill and why the fog comes down.


The night moves on, I’ll tell old Tom what I heard from Con Cabog
‘Tis how the rainbow’s black and white to the West of Tir na Nog,
Of the leprechaun with whooping cough that he heard in Tory’s Lis,
And Big Jack Hyde who was crucified by the Borlin banshee’s kiss.


The night is done, we’ve had our fun; it’s time to hit the hay,
We’ll rake the fire and quench the lamp, there comes another day,
The road it calls, I’ll cross the top, go round another bend,
Until I meet the Lord above and reach my journey’s end.