Eimar O’Duffy’s Goshawk Trilogy

King Goshawk and the Birds (1926. Out of print)
The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street (1928. Out of print)
Asses in Clover (1933. (Reprinted 2003, Jon Carpenter Publishing, Now available at bargain study group price of £25 for 5 copies, or £11 each, including postage and packing. Contact Us for details.)

Asses in Clover is the last book of the Goshawk trilogy in which the quest of the hero is to save humanity from the folly of 20th century economic and military warfare, with its accompanying spiritual, cultural and ecological degradation.  Born in Dublin in 1893, O’Duffy wrote the Goshawk trilogy with vivid memories of the evils of World War I and the Easter Rising. In 1925 he left Dublin with his wife and two young children, moving to England but spending some time freelancing in Paris and working for an American newspaper. These moves are reflected in the trilogy as a whole, especially in the last book.

The trilogy starts with the Dublin Philosopher who contrasts the banality and ugliness of materialistic ‘progress’ with the beauty of God’s creation. In King Goshawk and the Birds, the Philosopher is outraged to read the following newspaper report:

‘GOSHAWK BUYS BIRDS
WHEAT KING’S LATEST ENTERPRISE

A New York message just received states that King Goshawk has completed negotiations for the purchase of all the blackbirds, robins, larks, and nightingales in the world. The vast bulk of these will be removed at an early date to the great park of Goshawk Palace, but a few will be kept in aviaries near the principal cities for the delectation of their inhabitants.

On King Goshawk’s well-known principle that “Anything free is not valued”, it is understood that there will be a small charge for admission to these aviaries.

King Goshawk deserves the gratitude of the public for having thus taken one more step in harnessing Nature to the service of mankind.’

To right this wrong, the Philosopher seeks supernatural aid, attempting first to enlist the support of Socrates. The spirit of Socrates is engaged in the pursuit of truth and the contemplation of God, and has no desire to save humanity from its follies. However, the Philosopher describes the final folly, the purchase of the song-birds and the imposition of a charge to hear them sing. At this, the spirit of Socrates at last flies into a fury:

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

What is needed is not a philosopher, but a hero from Tir na nOg, the third heaven of Irish mythology. The spirits of the heroes were to be found walking in the meadows of asphodel in Tir na nOg.

‘They were not like the spirit of Socrates, which resembled a still flame; but they had the forms of men, glorious and ethereal. A hero is a person of superabundant vitality and predominant will, with no sense of responsibility or humour, which makes him a nuisance on earth; but he is in his element in the third heaven. There the heroes take themselves and one another at their own valuation, regarding their weaknesses as strength, their defects as merits. Their life is in their fame: every time an earthly orator recites their names they experience a thrill of pleasure; if they are forgotten they die.’

Searching among many heroic figures, the Philosopher finds Cuchulain.  

‘“What is your errand?” asked Cuchulain.
“Man,” said the Philosopher, “is full of wickedness and folly.”
“True,” said Cuchulain. “Tell me what wickedness and folly he has done since I left the earth.”
“In the first place,” said the Philosopher, “he has never done fighting and killing.”
“That,” said Cuchulain, “is foolish, but it is not wicked. I fought and killed many in my time on earth. I am since convinced of folly, but I am clear of guilt.”

‘“In those days,” said the mind of the Philosopher, “men fought with men in hot blood, hand to hand, strength against strength, feat against feat, and knowing well what it was they were fighting for. But for many centuries they have been possessed of a devilish powder which enables them to kill at a distance; and by labouring hard at its improvement they have learned how to kill without seeing one another at all. So that now when countries are at war they do not send forth armies, but each hurls millions of missiles over mountains and seas at the other, destroying lands and cities, men, women and children, until one or other is utterly overwhelmed. Some of these missiles are so cunningly devised that when they hit they divide up into thousands of particles which riddle and macerate the body; others contain deadly poisons; others scatter the contagion of leprosy and such foul diseases through the air; others on bursting are converted into fine dust which is borne on the wind and blinds every eye in which it finds lodgement. They inflict on each other besides a thousand more abominations of which I cannot tell you, for already I grow weaker and must soon yield to the earthward pull of my body. But you must know this also, that nobody ever knows the real cause or meaning of these wars, and that if anyone asks he is immediately put to silence.”

‘Said the spirit of Cuchulain: “This is indeed a most iniquitous way of fighting. But is the tale of man’s wickedness complete?”

‘“No,” said the Philosopher. “That is only the beginning. While the many are thus fighting, the few are contriving against their liberties, and robbing them of their bread and their homes, so that all the wealth of the world has now passed into the hands of usurers. And at last, infamy of infamies, these have begun to covet the beauty of the world as well.” Then he told Cuchulain of the bird-purchase of King Goshawk; and at that the hero was thrown into a rage surpassing even that of Socrates.
 “Enough!” said he. “I will rest here no longer. Let us to earth at once.”’

The weapons of war to which O’Duffy refers are those used in World War I. Nuclear weapons and other sophisticated weapons systems used during World War II and subsequently, were yet to be devised. Equally, the privatisation of access to nature, in the form of nature reserves, theme parks and tourism were still virtually unknown. In King Goshawk and the Birds O’Duffy romps philosophically through social and economic life in the early decades of the 20th century. In the course of the book the hero of Asses in Clover, Cuanduine (Cu an Duine, the Hound of Man) son of Cuchulain takes over the Philosopher’s quest from his father.

After writing the second book in the trilogy, O’Duffy came across the social credit economics of Clifford Hugh Douglas. His non-fiction text, Life and Money: Being a Critical Examination of the Principles and Practice of Orthodox Economics with A Practical Scheme to End the Muddle it has made of our Civilisation, first published in 1932, came out in an enlarged revised edition in 1933 (further editions followed). The book contains quotations from economists, politicians and other leading personalities of the times, whose words are put into the mouths of the fictional characters of Asses in Clover.

In Asses in Clover  O’Duffy, continues his satirical saga of a world dominated by money. One of the birds imprisoned in a theme park aviary has escaped. It flies to Ireland, where the locals are so delighted to hear bird song once more that they refuse to obey the demand for it to be returned. Goshawk and his corporate world mount a massive attack upon Ireland, intending to devastate the country with ghastly weapons of mass destruction. Cuanduine goes to Ireland and, with the aid of supernatural powers, constructs a great airplane. In a brilliant battle scene he destroys Goshawk’s entire air force, after which he crosses the ocean to attack Goshawk’s castle. Although Goshawk dies, his financial advisor is spared. Mr. Slawmy Cander, being the real power in the world, continues to obscure the issues, making it politically impossible for Cuanduine to liberate the birds. Cuanduine returns to his wife, only to discover that in his absence his own children have become creatures of materialism. His quest having ended in defeat, Cuanduine and his wife depart from the planet, leaving the world to its own devices. In the final six chapters the logical fallacies of finance-centred growth economics are explored to their logical conclusions.

Social Credit Economics

Unfortunately, as a literary work, Asses in Clover falls far short of the first two books in O’Duffy’s trilogy. King Goshawk and the Birds and The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street continue to be read by students of Irish literature and Utopian studies. Already a sick man when he came to write Asses in Clover, at times the author allows the preacher to overcome the artist. The book is poorly constructed, in places becoming a rant about the options open to the ‘man in the street’ under an economic system dominated by finance and materialism. Nevertheless, the book explores economic issues far more comprehensibly than an economics textbook.

After writing the first two books of the trilogy, O’Duffy came across Douglas social credit. Life and Money, O’Duffy’s non-fiction work based upon social credit principles, is subtitled as “Being a Critical Examination of the Principles and Practice of Orthodox Economics with A Practical Scheme to End the Muddle it has made of our Civilisation”. Asses in Clover is a fictional interpretation of the themes explored in Life and Money. Although Life and Money ran to several editions, it has long been out of print. However, the main themes of social credit economics, together with the history of the world-wide social credit movement, are documented in The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism (Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt, Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2005, Contact Us for details).  
 
Asses in Clover (1933. (Reprinted 2003, Jon Carpenter Publishing, Now available at bargain study group price of £25 for 5 copies, or £11 each, including postage and packing. Contact Us for details.)