A Goat's Song

Dermot Healy

CONTENTS

Cover

About the Author

Also by Dermot Healy

Praise

Title Page

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE

1 Waiting for Catherine

2 Walking the Triangle

3 A Taxi Through New York at Midnight

4 Shangrila

5 The Nomads

6 Christmas Morning

7 The Love Object

8 The Cockatiel

THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

9 The Death of Matti Bonner

10 The Fenian Ledger

11 The News at Six

12 The Summer Home

13 The Outsiders

14 As Gaelige

15 O’Muichin and the Cléirseach

16 The Salmon of Knowledge

III

THE HARES

17 The Mourners

18 The Greatest Man in Ballyconeely

19 Oh No, Don’t Stop the Carnival

20 The Illustrated Sons of Ireland

21 The Sea

22 Through the Downhill Tunnel

23 The Irishman

24 Madame George

25 What Did Shamey Coyle Do When He Left Prison?

THE MUSICAL BRIDGE

26 Flying in Belfast

27 Crossing the Musical Bridge

28 Searching for Jack in Yeats’ County

29 Guilt–tripping

30 Corrloch

31 The Cuckoo Mocks the Corncrake

32 A Time of Big Seas

33 Popular Songs

34 Happiness

About the Author

DERMOT HEALY was born in Finea, Co. Westmeath, in 1947. He is the author of the story collection Banished Misfortune (1982), which won two Hennessy Awards and the Tom Gallon Award, a novel, Fighting with Shadows (1984), and a poetry collection, The Ballyconnell Colours (1992). He wrote the screenplay for Cathal Black’s film about the Christian Brothers, Our Boys, and his plays include The Long Swim, On Broken Wings and Last Night’s Fun. He has edited two journals, The Drumlin and Force 10, which was singled out for praise as one of Ireland’s best community arts journals. A Goat’s Song won the 1994 Encore Award for the best second novel. His most recent book, The Bend for Home was published by Harvill in 1996. He is a member of Aosdána and lives near Sligo.

Also by Dermot Healy

Fiction

BANISHED MISFORTUNE

FIGHTING WITH SHADOWS

Non-Fiction

THE BEND FOR HOME

Poetry

THE BALLYCONNELL COLOURS

Praise for A Goat’s Song

“A Goat’s Song, the story of two savage break-ups, is a rare and powerful book . . . At the end, intellectually aroused, emotionally wrenched, stunned with the imagery of place and drink and crumpled hopes, I was literally shaking”

E. ANNIE PROULX

“It is in its scope that A Goat’s Song is most impressive. Healy interweaves a not quite documentary verisimilitude of landscape with the taut strands of the novel’s strident, yet cloistered romance. His portrayal of the myths of Belfast and the West coast pierces through the stereotypes, while helping us to see clearly the justification for their existence . . . This wonderful celebration and lament creates its own hunger, its own momentum”

TOM ADAIR, Independent

“Psychological acuteness and social immediacy, fresh responsiveness to the natural world and seasoned revulsion from a nightmarish political one all make A Goat’s Song well worth attending to”

PETER KEMP, Times Literary Supplement