Flaherty 1

Katherine Flaherty

Professor J. Jeffers

ENG 395

6 May 2019

An Examination of Traditional Folklore in the Short Fiction of Anne Devlin

Anne Devlin was born on September 13, 1951 in Belfast. She is a short story writer,

playwright and screenwriter. Her father, Paddy Devlin, was a former member of the IRA but

dissociated after WWII and went on to become a founding member of the Social Democratic and

Labour Party alongside John Hume. The SDLP, is an Irish nationalist political party; Anne was

raised Catholic. Just like Ann McGlone in ​No Mate for the Magpie​, in 1969 Anne joined a civil

rights march from Belfast to Derry. While on the march, at Burntollet Bridge a few miles from

Derry, the group was attacked by loyalists. Devlin was struck on the head and knocked

unconscious. She fell into the river and, suffering from a concussion, was brought to the hospital.

She understandably left the country for a number of years following that incident. Since then, she

has won the Hennessy Literary Award for “Passages” and has written two award-winning plays.

In 1984, she received the Samuel Beckett Award, and, in 1986, she won the Susan Smith

Blackburn Prize for her short fiction (The Irish News). The two stories I am going to look at for

my research are from her collection of short stories, ​The Way-Paver​, and are titled “Naming the

Names” and “Passages”. In each of these stories, a female main character living in Ireland during

the Troubles is the embodiment of or bears witness to a traditional Irish folkloric entity. Through

repeated references to Irish folklore and literary traditions in ​The Way-Paver​, Anne Devlin

magnifies the historical significance of storytelling in Irish culture; this is important because it
 Flaherty 2

brings to light some major themes and feelings which resonate in Ireland during times of conflict

and war.

The idea of incorporating folklore into Irish literature is not a new one. Perhaps most

famously, William Butler Yeats did it within his works throughout his prolific career. According

to Nicolas Serra in his article, ​When ‘She’ Is Not Maud: An Esoteric Foundation and Subtext for

Irish Folklore in the Works of W.B. Yeats​, ​“emphasizing Irish folklore allowed Yeats to establish

his own “Irishness” in a divided society where he struggled to find a place for himself.” (140).

Throughout history, Ireland and its people have been subjugated by invading populaces,

particularly Christian ones, and as a result native folklore and natural religions which have

existed in the country since the country’s civilization have been largely cast aside in favor of

Catholicism, and later on in favor of Protestant Christianity. For Yeats, folklore was a device

which allowed him, “as a Nationalist and member of the Irish Literary Revival, [to elevate] Irish

mythology at one end of the spectrum and peasant fairy-lore at the other served as a political

counter-discourse set against English hegemony of the period” (Serra 141). Contemporary

writers of the Catholic and or Nationalist leaning character, naturally would invoke these

traditional methods in their own writing to speak out against both religious and social

oppression, but also oppression on a domestic level based on gender or marital status. Further,

the short story in an Irish literary context is derived from the Irish storytelling tradition, and

according to A. W. L. Chang’s​ ​A Life of Their Own: Women’s Mid-Life Quest in Contemporary

Irish Women’s Short Stories, ​“Irish female writers in the 1980s tend towards a retrospective

focus, in terms of narrative context, on the earlier days of struggle for female emancipation in

Ireland, suggesting a glimmer of hope against an oppressively dark social background.”(36).

 Flaherty 3

Anne Devlin’s “Naming the Names” was published in 1986 and is set in West Belfast

during the early years of the Troubles in the 1960s. The story follows a young woman who

befriends, or perhaps seduces, the son of an English judge, she lures him to a park at night where

he is assassinated by the IRA, she then recounts what lead up to the incident in a confession to

the police. She is asked to name names, but she will only recite the names of the city streets in

Belfast, refusing to give the names of her co-conspirators, while simultaneously suggesting that

the city itself—its streets and the atmosphere and politics which come along with them—are

responsible for the death of the young man. In the story, the main character, Finnula, has a

recurring nightmare of an old woman who reaches out for her. The dream is discussed in

Shamara Ransirini’s article ​Body, Violence and Space: Anne Devlin’s ‘Naming the Names a​ s

representing the way in which female political activists—especially Irish nationalists of the

time—are generally portrayed and widely regarded; unfavorably. As Ransirini puts it, Devlin’s

Finnula is representative of “the new generation of Irish women who perceive the allegorisation

of ‘Mother Ireland’ as both inadequate and damaging.” This choice of an old creepy woman

appearing in recurring dreams to Finnula strikes an interesting similarity with the traditional Irish

aisling, or vision poem. In Irish, ​aisling​ means “dream”. The aisling genre is one comprised of

vision or dream poems; they were developed in Gaelic poetry during the late seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. The poems personify Ireland in the form of a woman, who can be young,

old, haggard, beautiful, but is always lamenting the woes of Ireland. In the 18th century, the

poems were used to convey political messages and served as a medium which prepared the Irish

for participation in politics. In using this similar dream for Finnula, Devlin nods to her heritage,

but also challenges the usefulness of the image of a “Mother Ireland”. Finnula’s visions do not
 Flaherty 4

help her to reach a positive outcome, but lead her down a rabbit hole of deception and

desperation which ultimately results in the death of the man she loves and her arrest and assumed

incarceration.

Anne Devlin’s short story ​Passages​ is probably the one she is most recognized for. It was

adapted for television as ​A Woman Calling​ which aired on BBC2 in the 1980s. There is a very

distinct scene within the narrative where two little girls are telling ghost stories in the basement

of one of the girls’ family estates. At just the right moment in the scary story, a car pulls into the

driveway and frightens the girls. One runs and one stays. The little girl who stays is really frozen

with fright. She sits alone in the dark for a few moments. As she is sitting she hears a “voice” in

the fire. She shrieks, waking the nanny and others in the house, and flees up the stairs.

Recounting the incident, she describes herself as not being in control of her actions: “I felt

myself propelled from the room and ran screaming upstairs. I take no responsibility for that

action; a voice simply broke from my throat . . .” (Passages). She finds out later in life that the

sound she heard was one of the maids being strangled to death by a secret lover; again for

political purposes. The story is set in the mid-1960’s outside of Dublin.

In traditional Irish folklore, a banshee is usually described as an old woman, but

sometimes a “wailing virgin”. This frightening moment in the story is important because, while a

banshee is not directly mentioned, this image of a screaming woman—in this case, the woman is

a little girl—as an indicator of death or impending death is subtle but deliberate in my opinion.

Not only is the child the embodiment of a folkloric creature in the story, but the death the child is

heralding is one of another woman being strangled by her lover (Wood). I think there is a

serious, if not shrouded, parallel being drawn here by the author; While the maid may be meant
 Flaherty 5

to represent Ireland itself, the secret murderous lover who chokes the life out of her could play at

the citizens who do not preserve the history and culture of their ancestors. The child is an

innocent, or the next generation of Irish, who must live with the scarring effects of the conflicts

for the rest of their lives.

So why the veiled references to all of these magical creatures? Why does the author deal

in innuendo instead of directly or indirectly referencing these important Irish traditions? Well, it

would seem that there is a history of treating these mythical encounters with a certain sub rosa.

According to Nicholas Serra, “There are those who patently believe. . . in the reality of the

invisible hosts of the air, the banshee (Bean Sidh, Badhbh, etc.), water horses, and the Fool of the

Forth (Amadan-na-Briona). However, many of these individuals. . . do not like to hear the

subject discussed too openly, for it raises the hackles on their necks and reputedly brings bad

luck.” (141). Whether or not this is true, the parallels and interest remain. During any times of

trouble, human beings look to the past for comfort, guidance and to gain a better sense of self.

By incorporating Irish folklore into her storytelling, Anne Devlin makes a stand for her Irish

heritage and also for her identity as a woman. In weaving these magical female beings into the

narratives of her female characters, she associates the feminine with the ancient and the sacred.
 Flaherty 6

Works cited

Bell, Gail. “Belfast Playwright Anne Devlin on Shakespeare and Civil Rights.” ​The Irish News,​
The Irish News, 12 Dec. 2016,
www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/2016/12/12/news/anne-devlin-s-mia-award-brings-recogniti
on-for-cornucopia-and-other-stories-828060/.

Chang, A. W. L. “A Life of Their Own: Women’s Mid-Life Quest in Contemporary Irish

Women’s Short Stories.” Estudios Irlandeses, vol. 11, pp. 33–44. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselc&AN=edselc.2-52.0-849612399
44&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 5 May 2019.

Hirsch, Edward. “Aisling: From A Poet's Glossary.” ​Poets.org,​ Academy of American Poets, 15
June 2016, www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/aisling-poets-glossary.

Ransirini, Shamara. “Body, Violence and Space: Anne Devlin’s ‘Naming the Names.’” Hecate,
no. 1–2, 2015, p. 39. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.467672122&site=
eds-live&scope=site.

Serra, C.Nicholas. “When ‘She’ Is Not Maud: An Esoteric Foundation and Subtext for Irish
Folklore in the Works of W.B. Yeats.” Estudios Irlandeses, vol. 12, no. 2, Jan. 2017, pp.
139–153. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=132233576&site=eds-live&
scope=site. Accessed 5 May 2019.

Wood, Chris. “‘My Own Story’: Woman's Place, Divided Loyalty, and Patriarchal Hegemony in
the Plays of Anne Devlin.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 25, no. 1/2, 1999,
pp. 291–308. JSTOR, ​www.jstor.org/stable/25515276​. Accessed 5 May 2019.