Tailor & Ansty

The Tailor and Ansty was banned soon after its first publication in 1942 and became the subject of much bitter controversy. It has become a modern Irish classic, promising to make immortal the Tailor and his irrepressible wife, Ansty In the townland of Garrynapeaka near Inchigeela in West Cork, Ireland, lived the Tailor, Tim Buckley, and his wife Ansty (Anastasia), two of the great characters of modern Irish life. Their Boswell, Eric Cross, made their acquaintance when he came to live for a few years in nearby beautiful Gougane Barra. He – and many other people, including the Irish writer Frank O’Connor who contributed the introduction to this volume – spent many hours in the Tailor’s cottage or in his field with him as he watched the Cow. Although not wealthy in material things – the Tailor himself had what was then called a ‘withered leg’ since birth – the Tailor and his wife possessed riches untold in their generosity, spirit and the gusto with which the Tailor, especially, lived his life. The two mottos which like him became famous were: ‘The world is only a blue-bag. Knock a squeeze out of it when you can’ and ‘Glac bog an saol agus glacfaidh an saol bog tú: Take the world fine and aisy and the world will take you fine and aisy.’ (Both the Tailor and Ansty were bilingual in Irish and English.) The Tailor and Ansty spoke frankly about all topics to do with human life, sometimes in a colourful or earthy way, and their comments on human relations and animal reproduction led to the book being banned for being ‘in its general tendency indecent’ in one of the most shameful episodes of the de Valera era of censorship. The Tailor remained philosophical but Ansty was bewildered and bitterly upset. They are buried together in Gougane Barra, under a beautiful tombstone designed by Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy. The Tailor and Ansty was banned soon after its first publication in 1942 and became the subject of much bitter controversy. It has become a modern Irish classic, promising to make immortal the Tailor and his irrepressible wife, Ansty. The Tailor never travelled further than Scotland, yet the breadth of the world could not contain the wealth of his humour and fantasy. All human life is here – marriages, inquests, matchmaking, wakes – and always the Tailor, his wife and their black cow.