The Book of Killowen (Wheeler Large Print Book) - Hardcover

Erin Hart is a theater critic and former administrator at the Minnesota State Arts Board. A lifelong interest in Irish traditional music led her to cofound Minnesota’s Irish Music and Dance Association. She and her husband, musician Paddy O’Brien, live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and frequently visit Ireland. Erin Hart was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony Awards for her debut novel, Haunted Ground, and won the Friends of American Writers Award in 2004. Visit her website at ErinHart.com.

The Book of Killowen

PROLOGUE

Domfarcai fidbaidæ fál fomchain lóid luin lúad nad cél.

Huas mo lebrán indlínech fomchain trírech innanén . . .

Fommchain cói menn medair mass himbrot lass de dindgnaib doss

debrath nomchoimmdiu cóima cáinscríbaimm foróda ross.

A hedge of trees surrounds me:

a blackbird’s lay sings to me

praise which I will not hide . . .

Above my manuscript—the lined one—

the trilling of the birds sings to me.

In a gray mantle the cuckoo sings

a beautiful chant to me from the tops of bushes:

may the Lord protect me from Doom!

I write well under the greenwood.

—Verse written in the margin by an Irish scribe who copied Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae (a Latin grammar) in the mid-ninth century