Confessions of an Alien

By James Mannes Bourke

Confessions of an Alien is a story about alienation. The narrator, Josh Carew, is an alien in his homeland, Ireland. He is exiled by choice to various parts of the former British Empire, seeking to come to terms with the dilemmas in his life. On his return to Ireland, he describes his moral distress with a frankness and honesty that may shock his readers. He is disenchanted with politics and the galloping secularisation, which he views as the ruination of the country.

Being of old Puritan stock, he asserts that only righteousness can uplift the nation. He cannot lie, nor can he accommodate to the mindset of the ungodly and materialistic people who rule the world. He is a pilgrim in an alien land and his confessions describe the dark night of his soul. His musings are a frontal assault on the Modern World and on the ghastly state that he refers to as the 'New Ireland'.

Confessions of an Alien is partly a tale of adventure and partly a series of confessions. The story and the confessions are interwoven in a seamless narrative. The frank confessions focus on social, religious, and political issues. Josh sees himself as a moral man who knows the difference between right and wrong. He is shocked to find that the line between right and wrong has disappeared in the New Ireland. He sees a nation that has lost its values and he blames it on rampant greed, corruption, galloping secularism and neo-liberalism. Some readers may not like his rants and internal monologues. His views will probably offend secularists, politicians, churchmen, feminists, and media people. Josh could not care less. He speaks his mind with the forthrightness of an Old Testament prophet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514465387

James Mannes Bourke

James Mannes Bourke comes from Dublin. He is a retired university lecturer who specialised in language education (TESL). He has published many academic papers and monographs on various aspects of language education. Since taking retirement in 2008, he has turned to creative writing and published a novel, Under the Alien Sky, and a collection of short stories, Footprints in the Mind. More recently, he has written a second novel, Confessions of an Alien, and two plays for television called Two Plays for Tuppence. He has a special interest in historical fiction, and he is currently working on a collection of stories from Irish history. He hopes to publish more short stories in the coming years based on his many years of working and living in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Few writers have surpassed the author in depicting the colorful and exotic life of the native people in the so-called Third World. He has a special eye for the eccentric and the rare ability to express it in delightful prose. He is a natural storyteller, and his short stories in particular are a joy to read. Dr. Bourke has more than a passing interest in language and language education. He spent over thirty years training future teachers of English as a second language. He is working on an English grammar textbook for ESL students and a primer for teachers of English called Language Awareness for Language Teachers. He still does some consultancy work as an English language (ESL) specialist. Academic qualifications: Diploma in Education, 1960; BA, University College Cork, 1968; MA Applied Linguistics, University of Essex, 1978; PhD, Linguistic Problem-Solving, Trinity College, Dublin, 1992. More information about the author can be found on his, website www.jamesmannesbourke.com.

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Confessions

of an Alien

James Mannes Bourke

Copyright © 2016 by James Mannes Bourke.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-5144-6539-4

eBook 978-1-5144-6538-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All incidents, characters and names are either fictional or used fictitiously. The names of places and institutions may be real and some historical events may be authentic but are described through the lens of the writer’s imagination.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/15/2016

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Return to Lisronan

Chapter 2 The birth of a nation

Chapter 3 Odi et amo

Chapter 4 Feeding the mind

Chapter 5 A long way to Tippilaly

Chapter 6 The jewel in the crown

Chapter 7 A tender desert rose

Chapter 8 Sojourn in Bahrain

Chapter 9 To the Abode of Peace

Chapter 10 The exile returns

Chapter 11 No country for old men

Chapter 12 Descent into delirium

Chapter 13 Life’s a cheat, what!

Chapter 14 The Retreat

Chapter 15 Closure

Confessions of an Alien

Acknowledgements

Preface

I realize very well that the reader has no great need to know all this, but I need to tell him.

Rousseau, Les Confessions.

Confessions of an Alien is a story about alienation. The narrator, Josh Carew, is an alien in his homeland, Ireland. He is exiled by choice to various parts of the former British Empire, seeking to come to terms with the dilemmas in his life. On his return to Ireland in 2010, he finds that the country that he left 44 years earlier, has changed utterly. It has become a secular state and has lost all moral compass. It is not a country for old men like him, a man of staunch Puritan principle and Christian values. He is now an outsider in his own country.

Confessions of an Alien explores a new approach to narrative fiction. It is a memoir punctuated by long confessions. The story and the confessions are interwoven in a seamless narrative. The frank confessions focus on social, religious and political issues. Josh sees himself as a moral Crusader. Some readers may not like his rants and internal monologues. His views will probably offend secularists, politicians, churchmen, feminists and media people. Josh could not care less. He speaks his mind with the forthrightness of an Old Testament prophet. However, Irish people are no longer interested in the Bible or the prophets or truth or honesty. Josh knows that he will be reviled for speaking the truth, as George Orwell said: The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. However, he will not be silent. He will eschew political correctness and call a spade a spade. He is not a happy man. His challenge is to find peace and fulfilment in a country that offers neither.

James M Bourke, March 2016.

1

Return to Lisronan

The name’s Carew, Joshua Arnold Carew. Everyone calls me Josh. My ancestors were Cromwellian settlers who were granted estates in Ireland in the *‘Settlement of Leix’. I am not especially proud of my ancestors because they aided and abetted Cromwell in his bloody Irish campaign in 1649-50. Charles Carew was one of the most fearsome of Cromwell’s commanders in Ireland. He gladly obeyed his master’s injunction to drive all Irish Catholic landowners ‘to hell or to Connacht’. He did not take prisoners but dealt ‘woe and desolation’ on the Irish Papists. Those were terrible times when zealous Puritans, having defeated the Royalists in England and killed the king, set about sorting out the Confederates and Royalists in Ireland, who still supported the monarchy. They believed they were doing God’s work in cleansing the country of Roman Catholics, confiscating their lands and planting it with British merchants and adventurers who had subsidised Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland. Cromwell was God’s avenger and his mission was to rid Ireland of all Popish influence. In Britain, he is remembered as a great general, the Lord Protector, an upright man, a staunch Puritan and the first Republican. He saw himself as a Puritan Moses and he fervently believed that God was on his side. He would crush the Confederate-Royalist alliance, proscribe the Catholic faith and grant the land to his devoted disciples and the London merchants who financed his campaign. In Ireland, however, he is remembered as an unmitigated scoundrel, a mass murderer and in modern idiom, a real stinker. Of course, revisionist historians try to make out that Cromwell was no monster. He was a just man, a man of his word and his vision of a Puritan Commonwealth would have brought about a just society. I do not subscribe to such nonsense. I think it is fair to say that in Ireland Cromwell was a most unwelcome visitor, as were his zealous generals – Ireton, Coote, Carew, Reynolds, Hewson and Jones.

The Carews got their fair share of the booty - extensive grants of land in County Leix (Queen’s County, as it was known then). In 1660, General Charles Carew was granted 800 acres of land in the fertile valley that runs southwest from Mountrath to the village of Lisronan. There, in this scenic countryside, on the River Nore, in the lee of the majestic Slieve Bloom Mountains, Charles Carew built his ancestral home on a wooded estate. It was a modest manor house, on a steep rise, facing south. It was an austere edifice, built of cold local limestone, with narrow windows, a slated roof and tall chimneys. It was known as Glenview Manor and Major Charles Carew, its owner, was known as Sir Charles Carew even though he had not been raised to the peerage. Knowing that the dispossessed Irish clans - especially the O’Mores and the O’Connors - were likely to attack his estate, Major Carew had it enclosed with a six foot high stone wall, which took the best part of ten years to complete. The workers who built it were paid a penny a day. He also had an observation tower erected on a ridge to the rear of the house so that in the event of a surprise attack, the family could flee to safety. Some 160 years later, in 1820, Sir Charles’ grandson, Sir Rupert Carew, employed the noted Irish architect Richard Morrison to redesign, extend and renovate the manor house. In this way, the modest manor house became a fine neo-classical mansion, matching in size and grandeur the many ‘big houses’ that appeared in the midlands in the wake of the Cromwellian settlement. It was similar in certain respects to Ballyfin House, which was the ancestral home of the Cootes, another noted Cromwellian family in County Leix.

The Carews were aliens in an alien land. They were part of the Ascendancy - the ruling class, loyal subjects of the Crown, devout Puritans, a race apart. After the Act of Union in 1800, Sir Rupert Carew was elected MP for Maryborough. He was not an out-and-out Puritan like his bellicose and land-grabbing ancestors. With the passage of time, the Crews of Lisronan became decent folk, devout Anglicans and models of Christian tolerance. There, in peace and tranquility, they lived a life of refined leisure, enjoying the pursuits of the landed gentry - hunting, fishing, socialising, relaxing in antique gardens, taking tea on the terrace, collecting objects d’art and doing their fair share for rural development in the that part of the county. Lady Carew, the wife of Sir Rupert, was much admired for her generous social work, especially during the Great Famine years.

The male Carews were educated at Harrow School and Cambridge University. Naturally, they spoke the Queen’s English, which is quite different from the dialect of Queen’s County, and like all regional dialects, has its own peculiar syntax, lexis and pronunciation. They were noted book lovers and the library of Glenview Manor contained several volumes by illustrious Carews, ranging from travel journals, horticultural texts, local history, sermons and Irish folklore. They were the landed gentry, who grew rich through the sale of beef, corn and timber. They also kept horses for hunting and show jumping. The Carews, however, knew that the good life might not last forever. During the War of Independence 1919-22, over 200 ‘big houses’ were burned. The Republican Volunteers adopted a ‘Brits Out’ policy because they claimed that the Protestant landed gentry offered billets to the forces of the crown. That was not true of the Carews, who regarded themselves as Irish citizens. Sir Patrick Carew was the last of the Carews to occupy Glenview Manor. As news of the systematic burning of the ‘big houses’ in County Cork spread, Sir Patrick decided it was time to make a speedy exit. He and his family left Lisronan in 1921 and made their way to Cornwall. They left the estate in charge of their steward, Martin Crosby, who agreed to manage it on their behalf. However, his stewardship did not last long. Glenview Manor was set on fire and razed to the ground in the spring of 1922. Subsequently, the estate was acquired by the Irish Land Commission and distributed among those who still claimed it as ‘ancestral land’. That was before my time. I was born eighteen years later in Dublin in 1940. My parents had returned to Ireland and my father worked in the Planning Department of Dublin Corporation. I am the last remaining male member of the Lisronan Carews, who occupied Glenview Manor for over 200 years.

The Carews have all gone from Lisronan and Glenview Manor is no more. The charred walls and outbuildings had to be demolished so that today not a stone rests upon a stone. When I was growing up, my father used to drive down to Maryborough (now re-named Portlaoise) to visit what he called ‘the lost land’. He was not bitter, just sad. As we sat under a tall oak tree gazing over the ground that was once Glenview Manor, he recited Psalm 137.

By the waters of Babylon we sat down;

there we wept when we remembered Zion.

I could see the sadness in his eyes. The stately manor house was gone - the panelled halls, the great library, the spacious ballroom and the ornate banqueting hall all reduced to a pile of rubble. The ornamental gardens were no more, just a tangle of briars and nettles and a single magnolia tree in full bloom beyond the desolation. Soon, even the oak and pine trees would be cut down and sold. There would be no more boating on the lake, no more fishing in the Pot Holes, no more grouse shooting on the Sleeve Blooms, no more foxhunting, no more cricket on the green, no more Protestants on horses. The great national cleansing had begun.

I knew that we were different, a different social class, known as the Anglo-Irish. We were always on the wrong side of history - on the British side and we were therefore aliens. We are now an endangered species. The ‘big houses’ that remained found it hard to survive during the early years of Independence. Many of them changed hands. The pattern of changing ownership of the ‘big houses’ was repeated across Ireland. The old Irish had been dispossessed by shameless confiscations and plantations by foreigners and adventurers who became the landed gentry, retaining a strong affinity to Britain and the Established Church. They became in due course the Anglo-Irish, or in Brendan Behan’s phrase ‘Protestants on horses’. They lived in the ‘big houses’, right up to modern times. However, the cost of maintaining Palladian mansions and antique gardens became too burdensome and most of them had to be sold. They were frequently acquired by a religious order and converted into a boarding school or a house of formation. Then, in recent times, vocations to the religious life dried up and once again the ancient properties were sold and developed as elite hotels, golf clubs and wedding venues. Now, the whole nation is facing economic disaster and it is possible that the big houses, turned boarding colleges, turned hotels and county clubs may bite the dust and end up as prisons or mental asylums. One may recoil at the idea of the ‘big houses’ being reborn as luxury hotels but that was inevitable due to the cost of restoration and maintenance. At least the present owners have preserved buildings of great historical interest. We do not weep for the landed gentry who created and lived in those ‘big houses’ but for the loss of heritage. Within the stout walls of those country estates one can see a phase of the history of Ireland written in stone - a story that our history books tend to ignore. The owners were aliens and aliens do not belong. Their existence must be purged from our history books. *Sic transit gloria mundi.

Now, in my advancing years, I often ask myself: Who in Heaven’s name am I? Can I call myself Irish? Do I still bear the curse of Cromwell? My forebears were hated Cromwellians. Their names are revelatory - Coote, Ireton, Jones, Carew, Ponsonby, Bayley, Skinner, Ludlow, Campion, Elliott, Deane – a very long list of land grabbers, disciples of God’s Avenger, Puritans to the marrow, utter aliens in Ireland. Did I really want to be associated with that lot? It was no good in my saying that most of the Cromwellians became enlightened Anglicans or that I was merely a distant relative. Names do not lie. They announce that I too am one of them - an alien in my own land. The Normans who invaded Ireland in 1169 intermarried with the Irish and became more Irish than the Irish themselves; at least, that is what we were told in history lessons at school. All those anglicised French nobles - de Burgh, Butler, Barry, Devereux, Fitzgerald, were assimilated into the Irish nation. However, the Cromwellians remained aloof. Somehow, they remained aliens. I am a double alien in a sense - my father was a Carew and my mother was a Canning from Carlow. So there, I have made my genealogical confession.

My parents were not Puritan in a Cromwellian sense. They were enlightened Puritans, who became members of the Church of Ireland. Most of our neighbours and friends were Catholics, or Huguenots (in Portarlington) and Quakers (in Mountmellick). There was no bigotry or animosity in our area. We were far removed from our bellicose ancestors, the Cromwellians, who went into battle singing psalms. They were jihadists. They waged a holy way on the infidel (i.e. Roman Catholics). They did so because they believed, quite wrongly of course, that Catholics were evil. They had strayed from the true path of the Bible. I often wonder what caused such blind hatred. Cromwell’s army did unspeakable things in the name of God. They murdered priests and friars and used churches to stable their horses. Why such wanton desecration? The Puritan regime proscribed the Catholic faith. It ushered in a reign of terror. Why did Cromwell and his deputies not follow the central tenet of all Christians - ‘Love they neighbour?’ They stole the land. That was really evil, especially in Ireland, where land is sacred. Why did they not heed the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’? One has to ask how these God-fearing men (there is no mention of women in their armies) acquired such a lust for blood. It is all