The Melancholy Vale
by Basil Brooke
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The Melancholy Vale Summary
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In the Oxford dictionary of Celtic mythology it states that Ernst Renan found the Celts “reserved, inward-looking,
deficient in political aptitude or initiative, fatalistic and hopelessly wedded to lost causes.” These privations could
easily be lifted out of their air of negative critique and instead be used to describe Celtic melancholy as a justifiably
reliable and cleansing search for spiritual truth. Perhaps an inner melancholy offers its true genius by deep introspection
through the gates of the mind; thereby accessing resources that can be guarded from external influence or unwanted change.
This is a collection of short stories carrying the theme of Celtic melancholy. Each story is written in a distinctive style and explores the emotive cosmologies and perceptions that are usually associated with old world Irish and Scottish societies. In the first story a pint with Malley and his friend Seamus leads to an exploration of status in a fisher’s community of the western isles: “Last week was our Mary’s birthday,” says Malley. “She come round wi’ that husband. So I says to him – why you flappin’ about ‘tween the fells and the heather man? I says that every man needs to do somethin’ big. Maybe once, just the once in a life, you know? But ah the lad he’s just…well he’s just not for a twinkle in the eye. You know Seamus?” In the second story Caffrey, a dreamer with a quiet longing for peace and recognition, is also an academic of many minds: “But now imagine me as a man of leisure, an educated man with money. I’d sit with my cuppa and ponder and say things like, “well you know I think in perspective and am unambiguous in my decisiveness about the spectrum of endeavour and how it fails to consider the complexities of a vast lexicon of meticulous measurements and treatments that may illuminate the critical features of hitherto unencumbered nuances of the psychological profile.” Yeah that’s me in there. I am renowned for my wit and heaven pardons me piety – as an intelligent man of wit and means and words.” The third story sees a debate take an angelic theme and dash it against the rock of intelligentsia, or maybe not: “The professor offers the next salvo, drawing on his experience in science and some in the arts, “How is one to draw any reasonable distinction between a truth, say the existence of a phenomenon, and the plethora of imaginings and wishful thinking that may produce, literally, anything out of nothing? Surely there is only one mechanism, and that is the gathering of objective, clear evidence that is not beholding to the machinations of any mind, bit that stands as an independent marker of the phenomenon in question. I own I have never encountered, nor been offered, anything approaching such evidence, as would suggest to me that we ought to accept the existence of angels as we do the presence of the sun on a clear summers day.” During the fourth story the reader embarks on a ramble through the vale of an Irish farmers mind, peppered with perceptions of traditional music and the great Irish love of the land. We glimpse the mind of the farmer Colm McRae, whose perceptions and world view are intimately tied to the land he inhabits: “that whilst adrift this turf I will try to envision a place that has a heavenly nature, and I may have any abstraction to colour and form. Perhaps all have a heaven from which they came and to which they are unworthy. This is belief, hence the incarnation of souls.” About the Author: Basil Brooke is a medical scientist based in South Africa. His British/Irish heritage has always invoked a deep interest in the history and folklore of Western Europe and the isles, the inspiration behind this collection of stories. |
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