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[(The Tailor and Ansty)] [ By (author) Eric Cross, Introduction by Frank O'Connor ] [February, 2011]
The Tailor never travelled further than Scotland, yet the breadth of the world could not contains the wealth of his humour and fantasy. All human life is here - marriages, inquests, matchmaking, wakes - and always the Tailor, his wife and their black cow.
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First published January 1, 1942
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 19, 2019
The characters in this book are extraordinary, so ebullient and unusual and idiosyncratic that it's difficult to believe they existed, and yet they did. The exclamations alone--thon amon dieul (your soul to the devil), thamwirrashimfaina, mwirra--make the book worth reading; most of them are new to me, and I have read hundreds of Irish stories. The Tailor, who has travelled as far as Scotland, regales callers with his worldly wisdom as though he had been around the world and seen everything. Ansty (Anastasia) has never been anywhere but where she is and is astonished daily by the news that comes their way. She has a profound innocence of the world, but that doesn't mean she's a prude. That the book was banned soon after publication in 1942 illustrates the difference between de Valera's imposition of Catholic morality on the new Irish state and the people's mix of life and lore. Ansty is in motion dawn to dusk, while The Tailor holds court, having retired from his trade. Their home is a hub of social activity, with neighbours and passersby stopping in for tea or porter or some other beverage and to talk world events or local affairs or ancient times. The Tailor uses a crutch for his disabled leg--his only outdoor duty is "standing to the cow," which means watching her every move and trying to keep her out of the vegetable patch. The entire story would make a very engaging and entertaining stage play. The audience would be exhausted by the sweeping and bantering and exclaiming.
January 29, 2013
Absolutely loved this book - two people near the end of their lives who had preserved the 'innocence, the zest, the wonder'. It transported me to a time and place in rural Ireland - would loved to have sat in their cottage and soaked in their wit and wisdom - to quote Eric Cross whose recording of their lives is exquisite in my opinion '"we are shown - had we eyes to see - that against a backdrop of poverty, of severe physical handicap and pain, that life could be, and was lived with an enormous appetite, gusto, gaiety, courage, and a certainty which made hay of the various religions, philosophical and political labels with which we buttress ourselves against the real in our individual lives" (page 219) - these two together created a little magic for me.
February 11, 2021
The subjects of this book were real people who lived in Co. Cork, in southwest Ireland. “The Tailor” was Tadhg O Buachalla (“Tim Buckley”); “Ansty” was his wife Anastasia. In 1942, when this book was published, they were in their 70s. The Tailor, long retired from his trade, loved to sit around the fire indoors or sit outside watching their only cow, doing nothing but gabbing with whoever came to visit; while Ansty bustled around, constantly coming in and going out, occasionally interjecting at whatever story her husband was telling. They were apparently the center of a large circle of friends and frequent visitors, including national literary figures; one of them, journalist Eric Cross, immortalized them in this book, which for a time was banned in Ireland for immorality (by today’s standards, that seems baffling).
Although they’re both in the title, the book is primarily about the Tailor, not Ansty. Most of the book consists of renditions of his tall tales (all of which, he insists, he personally witnessed, or happened to people he knew) and slices of his conversation; the rest is primarily setting the scene, describing the daily life of their household, describing their visitors. The stories are fun and ridiculous; there are tales of talking cats, farcical inquests, clever rogues and fools; even a much-altered version of Aladdin and his lamp.
There are some negative points, too. In the fashion of old men everywhere, the Tailor loves to denigrate modern people and explain how people in his day were smarter and tougher, and everything was made better. That grows tiresome. Sometimes, though, you have to suspect that he’s just playing a role in order to set up a pack of lies, such as when he starts criticizing modern medicine and praising folk remedies:
“A child would get the whooping cough. The cure for that was to give it the ferret’s leavings. To give food to a ferret, and then to give what the ferret left on the dish to the child. Another cure for this was to go out on to the road, and to stop the first man you met riding a white horse. You would say to him, ‘Man on the white horse, what is the best cure for the whooping cough?’ Whatever he would say should be given to the child and that would cure it. It might be Indian meal stir-about or potatoes or bread. Any damned thing, whatever he said would work the cure.
The best cure ever for pneumonia was to bury the sick man up to his neck in a dung heap, and leave him there overnight. The heat would drive the pneumonia away from him, and he could come to no harm, for it would be the warmest bed that ever he slept in.”
There’s also a certain amount of misogyny sprinkled through his stories, for instance:
“Did you ever know how dust came to be invented?... When God made women they straightaway got into mischief. You see, he forgot to give them any sort of brains, and it was too late to do anything about it then. So He had an idee. He invented dust so that they should be all day sweeping it from one end of the house to the other. But it wasn’t a great success. They still manage to get into mischief.”
But if you can abide all that, what you have here is a charming, entertaining, carefree sort of book. If you’d like to be off in the Irish countryside, sitting around a turf fire, listening to an old-style storyteller spin yarns all night long, no book will simulate that experience better than this one.
Although they’re both in the title, the book is primarily about the Tailor, not Ansty. Most of the book consists of renditions of his tall tales (all of which, he insists, he personally witnessed, or happened to people he knew) and slices of his conversation; the rest is primarily setting the scene, describing the daily life of their household, describing their visitors. The stories are fun and ridiculous; there are tales of talking cats, farcical inquests, clever rogues and fools; even a much-altered version of Aladdin and his lamp.
There are some negative points, too. In the fashion of old men everywhere, the Tailor loves to denigrate modern people and explain how people in his day were smarter and tougher, and everything was made better. That grows tiresome. Sometimes, though, you have to suspect that he’s just playing a role in order to set up a pack of lies, such as when he starts criticizing modern medicine and praising folk remedies:
“A child would get the whooping cough. The cure for that was to give it the ferret’s leavings. To give food to a ferret, and then to give what the ferret left on the dish to the child. Another cure for this was to go out on to the road, and to stop the first man you met riding a white horse. You would say to him, ‘Man on the white horse, what is the best cure for the whooping cough?’ Whatever he would say should be given to the child and that would cure it. It might be Indian meal stir-about or potatoes or bread. Any damned thing, whatever he said would work the cure.
The best cure ever for pneumonia was to bury the sick man up to his neck in a dung heap, and leave him there overnight. The heat would drive the pneumonia away from him, and he could come to no harm, for it would be the warmest bed that ever he slept in.”
There’s also a certain amount of misogyny sprinkled through his stories, for instance:
“Did you ever know how dust came to be invented?... When God made women they straightaway got into mischief. You see, he forgot to give them any sort of brains, and it was too late to do anything about it then. So He had an idee. He invented dust so that they should be all day sweeping it from one end of the house to the other. But it wasn’t a great success. They still manage to get into mischief.”
But if you can abide all that, what you have here is a charming, entertaining, carefree sort of book. If you’d like to be off in the Irish countryside, sitting around a turf fire, listening to an old-style storyteller spin yarns all night long, no book will simulate that experience better than this one.
September 25, 2018
Eric Cross had this book first published in 1942 and it was banned for being indecent...."indecent insofar as it is suggestive of or inciting to, sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any similar way to corrupt or deprave". This of course now makes it very appealing to read. The Tailor and Ansty are an elderly couple living in West Cork when Eric meets them. Their house is the centre of conversation, story telling, gossip and sessions. The Tailor and Ansty are both bilingual. Eric visits regularly as does Frank O'Connor and the stories in the book are the reminiscences of the Tailor, Ansty and their friends. The atmospheric writing means you feel you are sitting beside them of a night yarning away. You want to be there listening to the banter (often caustic) between the couple as well as sitting out in the field with the Tailor watching the Cow. This is Irish story telling at its best, the truth made better by the embellishments and worldly wisdoms thrown in. The Tailor had two mottos for which he was famous: The world is only a blue-bag. Knock a squeeze out of it when you can. And Glac bog an saol agus glacfaidh an saol bog tú, take the world fine and aisy and the world will take you fine and aisy.
April 19, 2021
This was a lot of fun to read, though it probably should have just been called The Tailor as Ansty (short for Anastasia) provides little more than an occasional musical counterpoint to the Tailor's antic tale-weaving and bloviating. The book was banned for a time in Ireland owing, as the author rightly names them, to some Pharisees that had more influence than they should have in the Ireland of the 1940s, though its subsequent "unbanning" was almost as problematic, sponsored by those who wished to make something of a romantic hero out of the couple, an emblem of Ireland's simple and fun-loving past. What actually emerges from Cross' tale is a loving portrait of man who, if there be an afterlife, will be found out by "Villon and Rabelais and Shakespeare and Montaigne and Chaucer...[who will] drop in and bring along other disreputable characters like themselves, who cared more for life than for the trimmings of life." The innocent absorption in the joys of the average everyday are here on full display, growing more timely and timeless with each passing day. If you read no other part of this book, the tale of the crossword puzzle competition toward the end is a good sampler.
March 27, 2024
“‘‘Tis a funny state of affairs when you think of it … The book is nothing but the talk and the fun and the laughter which has gone on for years round this fireside … Not alone this fireside but every fireside in Ireland for hundreds of years past and it took our own Irish government to discover that it was ‘sexual inmoralitee’… our own elected Minister for Justice and his board of ould hairpins … Did none of them, or the Minister himself, never sit at an Irish fireside at night and listen to and join in the talk …”
December 11, 2022
A true delight. The spirit and energy of the Tailor and Ansty sings on through these pages several decades after they were first set down. Irrepressible, joyful, and kind. A poignant end but, whatever hardships came about because of the book, Eric Cross gifts the Tailor and Ansty lasting legacies that those who would censor can never suppress.
October 25, 2018
Amazing storytelling. Can’t figure out why it was banned in Ireland when it came out.
May 21, 2020
Clasur. "The world is only a blue-bag. Knock a squeeze out of it when you can". Classic! :)
August 7, 2023
Wonderful book for anyone interested in Irish folklore, specifically the folk rather than the lore end of it. Written by a Newryman whose other claim to fame is as the inventor of the OXO cube.
September 11, 2024
Me and who haha
June 6, 2016
I first came across a copy of The Tailor and Ansty in a house in Bath about 25 years ago, discarded on the floor of the basement with some old magazines and other rubbish. To be honest, I was a bit surprised to find that particular Irish book there. Over the years, I’d heard many references to it but never fully in context, so although familiar with the title, I actually had no idea what it was about..
The first thing that struck me was the easy readability. Eric Cross has a lovely, nonchalant style that makes it a real pleasure to read from the very first page.
“In the townland of Garrnapeaka, in the district of Inchigeela, in the parish of Iveleary, in the barony of West Muskerry, in the county of Cork, in the province of Munster” – as he magniloquently styles his address, lives the Tailor.
His small whitewashed cottage, with its acre of ground, stands at the brow of a hill, at the side of a road which winds and climbs into a deep glen of the mountains bordering Cork and Kerry.
If you don’t know much about the story, it really is very simple and concerns Eric Cross’ record of his real-life interactions with two elderly individuals: Timothy Buckley (the laid back and talkative Tailor) and his ever-nagging wife Anastasia (Ansty) in 1940’s Gougane Barra (West Cork).
The book is gently humorous (very funny at times) and gives a beautiful insight into the lives of people in rural Ireland at a time when there was no entertainment apart from shaggy stories and philosophical musings. Mostly, the book concerns the Tailor’s amusingly erudite – if unscholarly – ramblings and various interactions between the couple and their friends and neighbours and their almost obsessive care of their single cow. Because of their age (the Tailor and Ansty were quite elderly and retired at the time Eric Cross knew them) both were very much set in their ways and, after over forty years of living together, had a polished routine of abuse and affection that comes through in the book. If you’re looking for action and high drama, you won’t find it here but you'll not find a better antidote to modern life either.
Thirty years later, I still have the original copy I found on the floor of that basement in Bath and it remains one of my favourite books to this day.
The first thing that struck me was the easy readability. Eric Cross has a lovely, nonchalant style that makes it a real pleasure to read from the very first page.
“In the townland of Garrnapeaka, in the district of Inchigeela, in the parish of Iveleary, in the barony of West Muskerry, in the county of Cork, in the province of Munster” – as he magniloquently styles his address, lives the Tailor.
His small whitewashed cottage, with its acre of ground, stands at the brow of a hill, at the side of a road which winds and climbs into a deep glen of the mountains bordering Cork and Kerry.
If you don’t know much about the story, it really is very simple and concerns Eric Cross’ record of his real-life interactions with two elderly individuals: Timothy Buckley (the laid back and talkative Tailor) and his ever-nagging wife Anastasia (Ansty) in 1940’s Gougane Barra (West Cork).
The book is gently humorous (very funny at times) and gives a beautiful insight into the lives of people in rural Ireland at a time when there was no entertainment apart from shaggy stories and philosophical musings. Mostly, the book concerns the Tailor’s amusingly erudite – if unscholarly – ramblings and various interactions between the couple and their friends and neighbours and their almost obsessive care of their single cow. Because of their age (the Tailor and Ansty were quite elderly and retired at the time Eric Cross knew them) both were very much set in their ways and, after over forty years of living together, had a polished routine of abuse and affection that comes through in the book. If you’re looking for action and high drama, you won’t find it here but you'll not find a better antidote to modern life either.
Thirty years later, I still have the original copy I found on the floor of that basement in Bath and it remains one of my favourite books to this day.
June 29, 2014
I bought this book at the Inn we stayed at, in Gougane Barra where the author lived for a number of years and where the Tailor and Ansty are buried. I even visited the cemetery but that was before I knew to look for their graves. Having spent a blink of an eye in Cork I could well envision the setting and characters. And could hear the characters telling "shtories". Makes me yearn for the individuality of my grandparents' generation when contrasted with today's homogeneity.
July 28, 2011
Absolute classic. I loved the two main characters. How this was originally banned is beyond belief.
November 12, 2012
Loved it, great for anyone that wants to more more about rural Ireland. The main characters reminded me of my grandparents so much.
December 14, 2015
This book will make you smile.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews