And As I Rode by Granard Moat by Benedict Kiely

Rescued from memory by Ireland’s leading short-story writer and raconteur, this anthology weaves a rich tapestry of songs, ballads and poetry reaching across three centuries and drawn from the lanes and highways of thirty-two counties.

Contents include poetry by W.B. Yeats, A.E., F.R.Higgins, Louis MacNeice, Patrick Kavanagh, Francis Ledwidge and Oliver St John Gogarty; and songs of love, rebellion and in praise of nature including ‘The Yellow Bittern’, ‘The Bold Fenian Men’, ‘Ringletted Youth of my Love’, ‘Galway Races’ and ‘My Love is Like the Sun’.

“Kiely is a great storyteller, a very gifted novelist, an extraordinary writer of short stories, and a very good broadcaster. He is a writer whose work has been consistent and abundant; … the best writer about places around Ireland that I have read.” – Brendan Kennelly

“There could not possibly be a better companion on a walk around Ireland than Ben Kiely.” —In Time’s Eye, The Irish Times

‘Age hardly dimmed him, though. He had much still with which to enrich the reader, including two volumes of memoirs and, in And as I Rode by Granard Moat (1996), an anthology of verse and song that profiles as clearly as any autobiography his travels and taste, his encyclopedic knowledge and his ear for an air, from wherever or whomever it might hail. That book’s variety, ecumenism, historical range and local attachments make a fitting chord to end on. Being reminded of those qualities of his is to remember why his was one of the necessary voices and why that voice sounds as vividly and as vitally at 100 as it ever did.’ – George O’Brien, The Irish Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benedict Kiely (1919-2007) a native of Omagh, Co. Tyrone, was educated at University College Dublin. He worked as a journalist, broadcaster and university lecturer in Dublin and in the USA, and wrote several novels and works of non-fiction.