Cloca Mora Man

Playing upon the hill three centaurs were!

They lifted each a hoof! They stared at me

And stamped the dust!

Not only centaurs but ordinary human beings often stopped in their tracks at the sight of Irish Poet James Stephens. The doe-eyed little (5 ft.) man with the high, fringed dome and the long, lugubrious stage Irishman's face had moved Critic Burton Rascoe to exclaim: "Never have I seen a man ... so easy, free and natural, so untamed by society, so untouched by conventions, so spontaneous, pagan, joyous." Stephens reminded Rascoe of the leprechauns, the gnomelike creatures the poet had written about in The Crock of Gold, along with the god Pan, philosophers, children, wives, cops, fairies and other inhabitants of the bizarre half-world of Cloca Mora.*

James Stephens was born in a Dublin slum, worked his way through night school, finally got to be a solicitor's typist at $5 a week. Of those times he once said: "I thought in those days I'd be a poet. All day I used to sit and think about big words. By big I mean fine high-sounding words like 'honor' and 'noble' and 'courage,' and I spent most of my time scribbling them down." Later, as a recognized poet on a lecture tour in California, he was more explicit: "I know when I have a poem the same way a hen knows she has an egg." When he visited a friend in Kentucky, a startled observer reported: "In the first twenty-four hours the poet was seen to rescue several toads from wells into which they had stumbled; to feed from a bottle the runt pig of a large litter; to rub noses with a calf in a field; to whisper something into the wagging ear of a burro from Texas--imported for his express companionship; to feed countless chickens and ducks; and to ignore only men . . ." Summing up his American experience, Stephens said: "If anyone gets fresh with you in America, particularly taxi drivers, you must say--holding up two fingers--'On your way, horseface.' "

The poet was a master of vituperation. E.g., his verses to a barmaid who used him roughly:

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there

Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer;

May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,

And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year . . .

May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may

The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange,

George Russell (AE) discovered Stephens, considered him one of the lights of Ireland's literary renaissance. His first novel, The Charwoman's Daughter* was published in a little magazine edited by Joseph Plunkett three years before Plunkett was executed by a British firing squad.

Stephens was an ardent Sinn Feiner and helped in the struggle against the British, but in later years became estranged from Ireland. At the outbreak of World War II he wrote to the London Times: "One Irishman wishes to elect himself an Englishman for the duration; and, in our vernacular, he wishes to God he could be of some use. Other Irish people will, of course, do as they can as long as they can, and will then do as they must." Later he broadcast for the BBC and his soft brogue charmed millions of listeners. Of his conversational powers, his countryman, Sean O'Faolain, wrote: "As a person he gave exuberantly and lavishly. If encouraged and in the mood he could be a non-stop talker, and would often weave in words, for the sheer delight in imparting them, long, quaint, singular tales which he would promise to write and never did." And never would, for in London last week, at the age of 68, James Stephens, the poet who had uniquely merged fantasy and reality in both life and literature, died. Recently he told friends his "dearest wish": to be reincarnated as a wasp.

* The inspiration for the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow (1947) and its hit song', How Are Things in Glocca Morra?

* Published in the U.S. under the title Mary, Mary.

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