Scottish Authors > Maurice Walsh Novelist 1879-1964

Maurice Walsh befriended another Exciseman turned writer, Neil Gunn, and they tried out plots and ideas on one another. It was he who urged Gunn to turn to serious novel writing.

His name was made with a novel of romance in the Highlands, The Key above the door (1926), first serialised in Chambers's journal, and which became a best seller. The whimsical language can sometimes grate on modern ears, but the underlying theme of the rewards of peace and serenity in outdoor places touched a chord.

A steady stream of novels poured out and nearly all had the same theme of romantic love and manly fights in outdoor settings in Scotland and Ireland, While rivers run (1928), The Small dark man (1929), The Road to nowhere (1934), The Hill is mine (1940), The Spanish lady (1943), Castle Gillian (1948), Trouble in the glen (1950). He departed from his normal themes to write what he considered to be his best novel, And no quarter (1937), a sword swinging tale of the seventeenth century Scottish Wars of the Covenant. Another of his novels, Blackcock's feather (1932), the story of a Scottish mercenary soldier in Elizabethan Ireland, was used as a history book in Irish schools. Maurice Walsh also wrote comic stories of a Para Handy kind, mainly suited to Irish audiences and based on a character called Thomasheen James, Man-of-no-Work.

One of his short stories, The Quiet man, was filmed in 1952 and still appears on TV screens as a cult film and stars John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. it is Hollywood's idea of Ireland and the story is superior to the film. Trouble in the glen was (poorly) filmed in 1954 with Orson Welles, Margaret Lockwood and John Laurie in leading roles.

A bust was unveiled in 1995 at Lisselton, Co. Kerry, a ceremony attended by Scottish literary figures.

It is being increasingly realised that amid the whimsy and light tone of the novels his descriptions of scenery and his emphasis on the need for people to value rural and community living, the importance of "belonging" and cherishing a sense of "place", lift him far above the level of pulp fiction.

Rennie McOwan

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