The Whole Huroosh

ST. MALACHY'S COURT (170 pp)--Olivia Robertson--Odyssey Press ($2).

Olivia Robertson is a well-bred young Irishwoman who has done social work in an improved Dublin slum. Like many other social workers who make copy of their experiences, Author Robertson sometimes commits to print anecdotes and adventures that probably sounded fine at the time but, in type, only seem strained and amateurish, like a genteel effort to make a smutty-faced child blow its nose. The savor of the subject, however, often rises above her polite intentions.

The caretaker of St. Malachy's Court wasn't sure how to explain the fact that his flats teemed with children. Said he: "Some say it's the sea air or the Liffey or potatoes, and more that it's just contrariness."

Miss Robertson, in charge of the playground, found, like others before her, that the children got far more affection than those of small upper-class families. But it was casual affection; at the end of hot summer days--so Miss Robertson was told--the police could always pick up a score or so of babies left behind on Dublin Bay strand.

One of the prolific mothers, a Mrs. Fitzgerald, paid impartial homage to statesmanship by calling her eighth Eamon, her ninth Winston; Mrs. Noonan named her 13th and 14th Pius and Pascal. A connoisseur of hospitals, Mrs. Noonan scorned the nurses who had attended her on the occasion of Padraic. "Nosey. They was that nosey that they turned out me locker for to clean it. Quare sort of cleaning they gev it. Examinin' me belongin's. Jest because I had put away a couple of biscuits and crunchies and some fish and chips me cousin got me and pickled pigs' trotters, they told me I was encouragin' the mice with me larder. Larder. Impedence. I said there wouldn't be anny mice in that hospital with all the CATS in APERRONS. That shook 'em."

Some of the slum families were consumptive, some "harmless" (a euphemism for touched in the head) and some were looked down upon for reasons of caste: tinkers, or beggars, or those who live on charity, in the tenements (once fine 18th Century houses) of Napper Tandy Street. Twisty Nellie, a professional beggar who always promised a prayer to her benefactors, explained with spirit: "Sure how could I say a prayer for each one of them separate! I'd be at it all the day. I says a little prayer for the whole huroosh." Twisty Nellie's story, like the story of how the tinker's daughter quelled "blowing" (a nasty kind of shivaree) after her wedding, cries aloud for more narrative art than Miss Robertson has.

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