MICHAEL Mullen signed off his last chapter on a spring morning, and Castlebar bade farewell to a treasured son. His was a life well lived, during which he left an indelible imprint on the world of literature, across its many genres.
It was 40 years since his acclaimed debut novel, ‘Kelly’, was launched to an admiring public. Lauded by critics as a classic of Irish fantasy, it was praised as the best Irish novel of its type since James Stephen’s ‘Crock of Gold’.
But that was just the start. There followed a parade of novels, plays, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction and newspaper columns and a host of engagements as a speaker and panellist. As a writer, Michael Mullen was noted for his meticulous research; he had an admirable regard for the discipline of a writer’s calling, a duty which does not always sit easily with a man who liked good company, who enjoyed social engagement, and whose stroll through the town was relaxed and unhurried. (The daily ritual of writing his allotted 5,000 words led to him referring to his study as ‘the Bastille’.)
Michael Mullen was a man of many parts; urbane, erudite, a man of culture, a Renaissance man. And yet, he carried his learning lightly; he was as much at home passing the time of day with whoever he met on his ramble around Lough Lannagh as he was sharing a podium with Seamas Heaney or John McGahern, as he often did. He was, in the poetic words of Kipling, a man who ‘could walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch’.
He was a proud native of Castlebar, but he was a citizen of the world. Much travelled, his research took him to St Petersburg, where he was welcomed by the Romanov family; to the Florence of the de Medicis, or the Stratford of Shakespeare. His children’s books – and particularly his historic novels – introduced generations of young readers to Irish and foreign history in a highly persuasive way.
Michael was the most kindly and tolerant of people, but was not blind to the foibles of the great and the good, either nationally or locally. A twinkle in the eye would presage some wry observation or witty anecdote, the relating of which he greatly enjoyed.
Indifferent to acclaim, his reaction to the news that ‘Festival of Fools’ was being translated into Greek was one of mild bemusement at his publisher’s decision.
His funeral Mass was, as he would have wished it, dignified and understated. There was no procession of gifts to the altar; no soaring eulogy of laudation; no (as he himself would call it) bells and whistles. His brother-in-law, Ciaran, in an eloquent few words, said all that needed to be said, and left it at that. The liturgy and sacred music was suitably traditional, the only nod to the secular being Anne Marie Gibbons’s rendition of ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls’, a favourite of the departed.
The town fell silent for the final journey through the streets he knew so well, his journalistic colleagues standing in respectful homage to honour his cortege. He was laid to rest in the Old Church Cemetery, traditional burial place for old Castlebar and those who had gone before him.