The Crying of the Wind: Ireland by Ithell Colquhoun – An exquisitely strange British-Celtic artist's travels in Ireland
Author
:
Ithell Colquhoun
ISBN-13
:
978-1805331568
Publisher
:
Pushkin Press Classics
Guideline Price
:
£12.99
Exquisitely strange, British Celtic surrealist artist, literary writer and occultist Ithell Colquhoun's memoir of her travels in Ireland in the first half of the 1950s is now republished as a Pushkin Press Classic.
Colquhoun's trove of art, writing and the fruit of a lifetime's passionate research into a vast range of esoteric subjects were nearly lost after she died in Cornwall in 1988, aged 81. Fortunately her work was salvaged by a small group of devotees. The Crying of the Wind, The Living Stones: Cornwall, and the alchemical novel, The Goose of Hermogenes, have been republished by Pushkin to coincide with the UK Tate Gallery's 2025 retrospective of Colquhoun's visual work, which runs until October.
Colquhoun's trained eye scans the Irish landscape. She visits prehistoric stone monuments, about whose ritualistic purposes – reflected in the still-living folk traditions of rural people she meets – she speculates evocatively.
Colquhoun's erudition comes alive through her extrasensory perception. She was a druid, witch and magician. As with the work of WB Yeats, who she met and admired greatly, Colquhoun's writing is lit from within by an incandescent glow that derives, I feel, from her deep sensing of the numinous everywhere.
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The linguistic beauty Colquhoun generates with her visionary artist's eye, and her ability to describe what are generally unseen worlds, can carry the reader, for example, from the crumbling grandeur of Protestant Ascendancy culture to panoramic vistas of giant spirit beings who live alongside humans in the Irish landscape.
Colquhoun describes all-night partying with Dublin's bohemians; hanging out in the studio of painter Jack B Yeats; and being brought to meditate inside Newgrange by the now almost forgotten Irish occult artist, Art O'Murnaghan, at a time when you could let yourself into the ancient mound by borrowing the caretaker's key.
The joie-de-vivre of Colquhoun's Cornwall travels is noticeably absent here. Perhaps it was the author's recent divorce, alongside the menace of Catholic theocratic mind control – then reaching fever-pitch – that made the bleak Irish summers and ever-present poverty harder to bear. Nevertheless, the still-existing pagan spirituality of Ireland – the beauty of our skies, our precious extant Gaelic culture and its animistic worldview – seen through the eyes of a genius mystic polymath over 70 years ago, makes this book an enchanting read.
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Irish Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Praising David Clifford's two-pointers simply highlighted Donegal's lack of same
hi Mom,I won't be phoning home tonight as I normally do after the All Ireland final but my love to Spot and, as always, I'm wondering about craic and of the pint in I've lost my voice screaming at the television here trying to find out what on earth was going on all through the second-half from had RTE here for the locals, yer man from Laois, your wan' from Liverpool and the guy with the baseball cap from Hong of us were left wondering are Kerry and Donegal playing different rules?Kerry were kicking two pointers through the first-half, indeed RTE's Darragh Maloney was in thrall as David Clifford pulled successive triggers."This is the first two-pointer in an All-Ireland final," he noted just before the 10th minute. And then as the next score was the same: "This is for two again, that's great from David Clifford, it is just what you'd expect." READ MORE: Shane MacGowan's love for Tipperary GAA, the Shannon Rovers funeral jersey - Siobhan MacGowan reflects on a brother less ordinary... A little later he was even more complex about it: "Who said 'Hammer the Hammer'?" before Clifford, taking his time, executed a perfect two-pointer on half-time, the poise, the timing, the it was Tomas O'Se who, talking in 2021 of the 'hammer' explained "In Kerry, it is how we describe going after the opponent's strongest point."O'Se is also a man who said "One man's grief is another man's punchline."And he called it at the half-time break speaking with Joanne Cantwell: "I would say Jim McGuinness is livid," and "unless Donegal can come up with a couple of two-pointers and a goal I'd still be favouring Donegal."The former Nemo Ranger with five All-Irelands and five All Stars was bringing up a reasonable point; why was he the only one?The second half began, mom, and it was as if Donegal had never heard the new rules, did they not get the memo from Jim Galvin's people?It seems inconceivable that Maloney with Eamonn Fitzmaurice on co-comms didn't want to discuss this, just why were Donegal not trying to score two-pointers - Kerry had 11 two-point attempts in the have come from a time when even RTE tired of a succession of Statler and Waldorf argumentative begrudgers engaging in a series of never-ending pre-game, half-time, full-time spats with the emphasis on the they at least asked questions about games, just as somebody needed to ask just why Donegal were not pursuing two-pointers/goals.I'm willing to bet 50 percent of the estimated viewing audience were experiencing the same sense of what on earth are we watching."This day last year we were talking about a seagull," offered Maloney at one point in the first-half, "well I know I've mentioned it now...".The commentary nearly got to analysis when offering "Eight points (behind) is a long way off from Kerry even with two-pointers and that sort of thing." And just as the 66th minute of the 70 was about to tick in: "They may as well start throwing the kitchen sink at Kerry, it's 26-19! Turned out David Clifford's punchline was Donegal's has been three winners of this year's All Ireland series, the 2025 Dairygold and Kerrygold double. That's Tipperary, Kerry and the RTE hurling commentary team who were excellent analytically, technically. See you soon, love to all at home and to Sally at Peadair's and the way she'd look at you PS: My best moment?: RTE's Damien Lawlor getting the last word in at half-time, wondering if we had already seen the 2025 'memory'. "We had a situation in the noughties, do you remember Joanne, Henry Shefflin was only on the ball for 16 seconds and scored 1-7, 1-8 - it is looking like this for David Clifford already." Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts.
Irish Times
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