A Hymn of the Dawn

A Hymn of the Dawn tells of the life of the poet Padraic Fallon (1905-1974), his wife Don and their six sons during an idyllic summer in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s. At Prospect, a Georgian house with a small farm, the poet writes his poems, newspaper columns, and radio plays, ‘a cigarette smouldering in the ashtray at his elbow, pounding the keys of his typewriter as his eyes stare beyond the words’. His sons, when not working on house or farm, exploit the solitude and open spaces: fishing, soldiering, sailing, poaching, and finally embarking on an expedition in an old herring cot to discover the secrets of the inland waterways.

The poet has his own adventures. He collects ballads and sea shanties for his radio programme, meeting sailors and fishermen, jaunting along the coast in his old car. He takes to the open harbour in a tiny punt. His sons go with him on a fishing-boat to visit a lighthouse.

Other figures emerge in rich colour: the ploughman, the well-digger, the wildfowler, the handyman, the water diviner, the mischievous uncle from Dublin, poachers and fishermen, the aspiring Caruso who sings to a full moon, and the local man who runs naked through their fields.

To Prospect come visitors from the outside world – the artist Tony O’Malley, piper and traditional singer Seamus Ennis, the poet Austin Clarke, the art critic and former gunman Ernie O’Malley, and a succession of writers, critics and poets.

Brilliantly fusing fact with fiction, A Hymn of the Dawn is an exquisitely realized evocation of childhood, as the author – the poet’s youngest son – lovingly recreates the mysteries and magic of the countryside and its people.