 Story Collection, Wild Quiet was published in 2016 and it was listed as one of the Irish Times favourite books of the year. Her short story, How to Build a Space Rocket, was voted short story of the year in 2018 at the Irish Book Awards and she has a new book, Travelogue, which is out at the moment. It's called Home Place, Heart Place, Journeys Around Ireland and she headed off on some of her journeys actually around Ireland with Christie Muir and the lead poet and professor of English Literature, Brendan Kinnealy and also the poet Michael Farrie. Well, Roshan is from Galway but lives in Dublin where I'm guessing she joins us now. Roshan, good afternoon. Good afternoon, John. I have to correct you there. I'm not the short story measure. I'm not the real sheen O'Donnell short story measure. I write under R.J. O'Donnell just to avoid confusion. Okay, okay. Well, I'm glad you corrected me there. So, you're right on with R.J. O'Donnell. R.J. O'Donnell just to avoid confusion. Okay. Now, tell us about this book, Roshan, because it's not a travel book in the true sense of the word but you visited some very interesting places, some lesser known places and you did it in the company of some very interesting fellow travelers as well. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. Well, in the case, I did, I visited places like the Hillibush and Lavenford and places like that where people wouldn't, they wouldn't be on the normal tourist side but in the case of Johnny Gull, I, first thing I did was go to the Tullibagley walk. It's a walk that commemorates a time when Tullibagley, the most ancient burial ground there in that part of Johnny Gull and the only one for a long time. So, they had to bring their dead across the mountain to bury them. Now, this would be in the 18th century and they, and we, I joined in that walk which commemorates that. Now, it's a, it's a, it's a difficult walk without carrying a coffin at all. Now, in actual fact, they didn't have anything solar-juries as a coffin. They had a beer made of bomb wood and 16 men carried the remains. They took turns. And their turns, yeah, four, four at each time but that could be as far as 20 miles. A very difficult, very difficult climb and then the descent is nearly worse, you know. So, you can imagine in bad weather but that was the only one. That was the only red yard there in that part of the country like in Redore side, you know. So, all of your group made it back safely. Didn't end up having to get 16 to carry anybody? No, well, we weren't, we weren't carrying anything that day. But like, they stopped where the burial party used to stop. And that was three laxah. Three, that was one stop. Shops laxah was another one. And laxah are stones. They're cairns, really. And there was a custom that each funeral bearer would carry a stone and leave, leave down the heap of stones, you know. Now, the view is magnificent from the summit. It really is like that. You, you can see all the northwest coast of Joligal. You can see Torri Island, Ilan-Duhia, Inish-Bofina, all that part of and that was Torri Island, a significant because they're famous saints. Here, it's found a monastery there. It's very early, very early on. Now, the mountains, of course, here, very near Erigal, Daryl Bay, Laracus, and Makosh, and Sleuth-Schnok. And Sleuth-Schnok is interesting because it was the first place where limelight was used during the Ordnance Survey of the 1830s. They used limelight because the, the argon lamps weren't strong enough. But after that, I went on to Garten to look into the saint, Colm-Kill, because he's very revered. He, but he started off his life very abyss argon, let's, let's say. He, in the, in the sixth century, he was sixth century, he went to visit Finian, who also became a saint. And he visited him in the, he was the abbot of Plenard in present-day Khatimid. And he let Colm-Kill borrow a son in a slaughter. And he copied it. Now, and, and of course, Finian was a bit irritated about this. And most Colm-Kill wouldn't give it back to him. And he had to take to the High King of Tyre, Jim, and went low at the time and stipulated that wherever a stray calf was filmed, he belonged with his mother. So the High King took that as the precedent. And he said to every, to every cow, his calf, and the project was to every cow, his calf, to every bucket's copy. Now, this story wouldn't have been, in fact, Colm-Kill got very irate. And he put together an army. And there was a very big battle in Kulj Rehmer, which is in present-day Slago, and about 3,000 were killed. And it's because of this that he turned it to, you know, to the inner, he's in our south because he felt so guilty. But that story would have been long forgotten about only for, it was actually the first case of copyright or intellectual property if you want the more modern version. And that's, that's what makes that story significant. But then he turned into exile and with trend followers, and he founded the monastery of Iona. And they say, you know, he was said to be very, very lonely at the time in Iona. But Glen Bay was my next call. Now Glen Bay is very interesting, because apart from its beauty, you know, it's in the Glen, Glen of Ribara, Forsyne. And you can see it's like a Nancy, Nancy Peter, as you walk one scene of beauty after another. It's amazing. But in the visitor center, they show a film of the history of Glen Bay. And that was John Joseph Adair, who bought the Adair estate after the famine, because there was a lot of mistakes for sale then. So now he had stood as a young, as a tenant rights candidate just five years before he bought Glen Bay. But anyway, he switched to the rights of tenants from the rights of tenants to the rights of investors. And basically he had a whole load of tenants, because tillage was the thing before the famine wars over. And this was a new agricultural economy. And he was a lot of when people went for raising dry stock. And so he did too. He had a mountain top, which could be used for sheep, you know, the mountain sheep. And of course, he needed to get rid of the tenants. And a good excuse was when he brought in a Scottish steward just to bypass the locals. And anyway, the Scottish steward was very unpopular. He was telling he was telling Adair that they were stealing sheep that the tenants were. And well, actually, it was Moray himself who was stealing them. And he was bludgeoned to death. So Adair used this to have a large scale eviction, 244. And 100 lived there when they were young. And they made their way to Australia from Dublin, Liverpool, Plymouth, and they made their way to Australia. Yeah, particularly brutal. Yeah. And you also went down to you also went down to Glenty's. Playwright Brian Freel has featured in his work. And that was that was an interesting trip as well. It's interesting, but Glenty's would be would be lovely even without Brian Freel. But with them, it gives us an extra slice of that that's personality, because Brian used the local characters, you know, he used the local idioms, and the local accent, and they and even the, the, the pagan rituals used as a nationalist play. And they, they, the two plays, but translations, and, and they're very much based on words. And he uses in, in translations, he uses the 1830s, and ordinance survey, ordinance survey, when they changed all the scope of the Irish names, and, and it's like them. And that was, I mean, it was something that they were trying all the time. I suppose you can't be a successful colonizer, while your subjects speak a different language for you, you know. So that was it. And they, that, that was, it talks about the dislocation that that caused, you know, the, the, because place names are so special, like they are part of, part of, like, the man, they can't have to custom or bend on the river or man. So when you have them all renamed, it's, you can imagine the dislocation. Now, from Glentys, I went to Johnnie Gore Town, just to see the place where the annals of the Four Masters was written. Now, this map, this marks the climax of Irish, the Irish tradition of compiling, and it was done by Michal O'Claire, who was a Franciscan prior and three collaborators. And what they did was they were afraid that the stories and the history and of Ireland would be lost. So they wrote down everything they knew and everything, everything from hearsay to stories to history. So that's, that's a huge work. Now, from there, I went just to Norlar, because I was very anxious to visit the grave of Isaac Butch. I said Butch, I think he got a raw deal in history. He was, he founded a movement which became more, more associated with his successor, I don't know, than with him. But he, he, because he founded it, and he was genuinely concerned, unlike John Gilles Vendair, who was just concerned for himself. Butch was genuinely looked out for tenants. And then, for now, of course, he declared the 19th century. And, and he was, he radicalized the party, meaning, you know, the Irish Parliamentary Party, because he, they used to, they used to filibuster in the, in the House of Commons. And Butch didn't think that that was fishing for the dignity of the House of Commons, which was very popular. And Butch consisted of, it's, it's a very ancient thing that goes back to Roman times. Butch consisted of was drawing the Irish question into everything and just keeping the House sitting for hours, asking for endless votes. And, you know, so there's cartoon where somebody is on his feet and giving a speech and the rest can go to sleep. So you've covered, covered a lot of, a lot of ground, Roshin, and, and covered a lot of, you know, well-known stories, lesser known stories, well-known characters from, from the arts and well-known characters, political characters and historical characters. And obviously all your travels included Donegal as well, because Donegal features in a number of chapters as you've outlined there. So your book, your book is out now, and people can find it in local bookshops, and I presume online. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's called Home Place, Heart Place, Journeys Around Ireland, and It's Important Stress, that is by R. J. O'Donnell, if people want to seek it out. Roshin, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, John. All right. Take care.