The Poor Mouth by Flann O’Brien

Publisher: Hart-Davis MacGibbon - London

Date: 1973

The Poor Mouth was originally published, in Gaelic in 1941, as An Béal Bocht.

O’Brien gives us Corkadoragh, a small Gaelic village struggling with extreme poverty. The people have nothing.  They sleep amongst their pigs.  They occasionally dine on sod.  When they see bootprints in the mud for the first time, they track them thinking they were left by some terrifying beast.  The less comprehensible they are, the more beautiful and pure their Gaelic is thought to be.  It is a funny, funny book.  O’Brien sets up jokes for pages just to slip in a sharp one-liner.

There is an overall gloom throughout, enhanced by Steadman’s illustrations.  The kind of gloom that comes from living in the muck, being constantly wet from the ceaseless rain, having no food in your stomach, and having no outlet for hope.  I have to say that I don’t know a whole lot about Irish history and I am certain I missed out on some of the jokes in here, but at just over 125 pages it is a quick, easy read and well worthwhile.