Day 14 Friday June 5th 2009 Francis Turnly’s Grass

by Conor Kelly, 9 Jun 2009

As part of the terms of agreement of my residency at Cushendall, I am expected to cut the grass in the small garden behind the tower. With little other distraction at my disposal, I have embraced this task with some gusto, and with the grass at waist height, there is more than an ample stage on which to play out my enthusiasm.

In 1906, landowner Francis Turnly, (the son of landowner Francis Turnly who thought to build a tower reminiscent of those punctuating the Great Wall of China, here, in sleepy Cushendall) refused the organisers of the second Glens Feis access to a field in which to play Gaelic games. The Feis was an event celebrating Gaelic identity (in which Casement played a pivotal role) and was championed by the Cultural Nationalist movement in the very early twentieth century. Turnly’s refusal led to the local legend of Casement grabbing a scythe and cutting the grass of an overgrown wreck of a field nearby in an act of ingenuity and exasperation. I am reminded of this as I chop Frank Snr’s grass by his tower for ‘idlers and rioters.’ Cutting Francis Turnly’s grass becomes a sort of performance to Casement’s memory.