Déise man writes beautifully about an ancient tradition he is reviving
The Wind Beneath the Stone was published on May 21 and is available in all good book shops as well as the library.
Like most people, I first heard about David Keohan through Blindboy’s podcast. I was listening to their conversation as I was trying to fall asleep and upon hearing the way he found the stone from Liam O’Flaherty’s story, I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating (a bit like the time I listened to his episode about how a sex cult created cornflakes).
Let me explain. There is a short story by Liam O’Flaherty called ‘The Stone’. Like most people, when I first read the story, I presumed that this giant rock the main character lifts as a test of his masculinity was a narrative prop or metaphor that O’Flaherty invented. Indeed, decades passed where the story was read as a folk tale, a legend. But when David Keohan, a paint mixer, former world champion kettlebell lifter and art school graduate, read the story, he took it literally. He decided he would find the stone that O’Flaherty wrote about.
Mind you, at this time, most people would have said that the stone didn’t exist. But David was undeterred. He goes to Inis Mór, rents a bike, tells locals about his hairbrained idea and, to my surprise, they take him seriously and help him out. He finds the magnificent granite boulder, and even though he holds a world record for endurance in weightlifting, he cannot budge the rock. He is in awe that men hundreds of years ago, who would have had no protein powder or gyms, were able to lift it to their laps. He vows to return.
At the end of the book, David writes that, “In the story, the main character finds the stone again after years of it falling out of local memory and he attempts to lift it. In reality, I found the stone after years of it falling out of local memory and attempted to lift it. Now you are reading the story of me attempting to find the stone and trying to lift it. Art and actuality full circle. Maybe not a circle but a Celtic triqueta knot.”
Using an online archive of folk stories collected by schoolchildren in the 1930s, David finds a plethora of stories of stones being used as a meeting point and test of strength. He travels the length and breadth of the country seeking out these ancient rocks and attempts to lift them. It sounds bizarre, but David has developed or uncovered an entire philosophy around this practice.
He writes that, “the stone teaches you humility”.
Rather than being about muscle gains and domination over nature, the book is a meditation on what it means to be a man, specifically an Irish man.
David is obviously a very masculine person. He works out, drinks plenty of pints, and works in a hardware store. But his is a masculinity of adventure, merriment and craic. He talks about the fake study that found 100% of men would immediately leave their desk job if asked to embark upon a trans-Antarctic expedition on a wooden sailing trip. He reckons there is a kernel of truth in this joke.
He certainly takes his adventuring seriously. At times my jaw dropped at how brazen he was. At one point he gets access to an abandoned graveyard by lying about having family buried in there, at another point he breaks onto an active firearms training ground for the Irish army, he also has the gardaí called on him by locals who later turn into friends. I applaud this man’s utter brazenness, and this boyish determination is a delight to read about.
Another lovely aspect of the book is all the local people who help him on his journey. His general method of finding stones is as follows: find a folk story about a stone on Dúchas, travel to the town where the stone is said to be, drive around, and ask random people if they know anything about it. Most people are amused by this lunatic looking for a giant stone to lift, but many of them are happy to help him.
As the book progresses, David’s love for Ireland deepens, and his understanding of our history becomes more complex. He finds similarities with the Scottish and Icelandic traditions of stone lifting. After spending so much time in the west of the country, he resolves to improve his Irish, and he becomes far more emotionally open. He cries at ancient sites at how beautiful they are, and he reflects on how colonialism has alienated us from our own traditions.
Where the first half of the book is hairbrained and slightly absurd, it mellows out into something far more profound than just digging through people’s back gardens and trying to lift heavy things.
David writes that his entire life has changed since discovering this hobby, “Normally life just drifts along, doesn’t it? Bound, shaped and formed by routine: work, home, dinner, TV, a few drinks at the weekend and repeat…So to start anything new or different or difficult can be tough.” And he’s right, if this man can literally revive a long-forgotten part of Irish culture single-handedly in his spare time, I can join a book club or train for a marathon or learn a new language.
You can buy David’s book in all good bookshops and borrow it from your local library.
