On this Saturday, had he lived, Walter Macken would be 110 years old. He was born on May 3, 1915 in St Joseph’s Avenue. His father was originally from Knock, Spiddal and came to Galway aged 14 and worked as a carpenter during the day. At night, he became an actor who performed numerous roles in the Racquet Court Theatre in Middle Street. He became unemployed in 1915 and, as he had a wife and three children to support, he joined the British Army, the Royal Fusiliers to be precise. He was sent to France and was killed on March 28, 1916 in St Eloi. He is in our first photograph in his army uniform.
Walter’s mother came from farming stock in the Ballinasloe area. She also worked in the Racquet Court Theatre (where Charlie Byrne’s bookshop is today ) and that is probably where she met her husband. She became a widow at age 28, with three young children, Birdie, Eileen and Walter. She had a small pension which was not enough to keep the family, so she took in lodgers. She was also very fortunate in her neighbours and always talked of the wonderful community spirit there was in ‘The West’.
Walter went to the Presentation National School, a source of embarrassment as it was primarily a girls' school. He attended St Mary’s briefly but he fell out with one of the teachers there and left to go to the Bish, which he loved. While he was still in school, he was making a name for himself acting in An Taidhbhearc.
He married Peggy Kenny and they lived in London for a few years where he sold insurance. They returned to Galway in 1939 where he became manager of An Taidhbhearc. He produced and directed some eighty shows there, acted in them, built and painted the sets, was the front of house man, did all the publicity and even wrote some of the plays. He was writing part-time in Irish and English but he really wanted to write full time. His first novel Quench the Moon had been a big success and people were beginning to realise his potential. He needed to get away from Galway for a while so he went to Dublin, acted in the Abbey Theatre and continued writing.
He was not a city man so when the chance came for him to buy a house in Glann near Oughterard, he grabbed it. He loved this part of Conamara and it showed in the way he wrote. He was very disciplined though he did not like the act of writing. He would walk around the table finally making himself sit down in front of the typewriter, but once he touched the keys, he was back in the plot of his latest creation and would work for a couple of hours.
That was the writing, but what he really loved was the plotting and planning in his head, the mental exercise of working out characters, what they would do, whether they would live or emigrate or whatever. So when he sat down, it just poured out. And his output was prodigious, he wrote 22 plays, some in Irish, some in English, some of which were produced and published, others not; 17 novels, a number of books of short stories, countless articles for journals, two wonderful books for children which were made into films and when he died in 1967, he was working on a musical.
Most of his books were about ordinary men and women, often based in Conamara. The exception was an historical trilogy that took him eight or nine years to write. It involved a vast amount of research. He wanted to tell the story of Ireland from the plain man’s perspective, how the people survived some of the terrible events in our history, The Cromwellian campaign, the Famine and the 1916 Rising. Nothing like this had ever been written before in a simple direct style.
These books came out one after the other and became enormously popular, both here and abroad. Seek the Fair Land was the first title and it won many awards. The second part of the trilogy was The Silent People which related to the Famine, and the third one was The Scorching Wind. These books were a kind of introduction to Irish history for many and brought him a huge audience. Our photograph of him dates from about 1960.
These books, like all of Macken’s works, have been out of print for a very long time, but now, happily, his publishers MacMillan have reprinted the trilogy in paperback and they are all available in good bookshops. Very highly recommended.
