The real-life inspiration for one of the most significant musical performances in Irish literature... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Mine Was Of Beaten Gold.... by Conall Hamill above.
The annual New Year gathering in his aunts' house on Usher’s Island hasn’t really been going too well for Gabriel Conroy, the main protagonist of James Joyce’s short story, The Dead.
The evening has largely been a series of gaffes and upsets: he has managed to offend Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, with a throwaway remark about her love life; he realises too late he has miscalculated the tone of his after-dinner speech, 'a mistake from first to last, an utter failure,’ he thinks; one of the guests, Molly Ivors, accuses him of being a West Brit because he has no interest in the Irish language. Worse still, he has been unmasked as a regular contributor to, of all things, the Daily Express.
Then, just as he is preparing to leave at the end of the party, he sees his wife, Gretta, pause at the top of the stairs and lean on the banisters to listen attentively to one of the guests singing in a nearby room...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
