The House of the Rising Sun

Laura Lake

The road from Mohill to Laura Lake (also known as Laragh Lake but appearing on maps as Rowan Lake – such are the local ways!) begins well enough until turning off at the sign for Keshcarrigan.

Marie our B&B landlady had been kind enough to scout it in advance or I doubt we would have found the house of Madeline McGahern, John’s widow.  That They May Face The Rising Sun (the title in the US was By The Lake), John McGahern’s final novel, was, like most of his fiction, strongly autobiographical.  There can be little doubt this house he and Madeline had shared for thirty years was the home of the main characters – Joe and Kate Ruttledge .

Seeing the place for the first time, many of the scenes in the book came to life. The meadows are beautifully wild.  Doubtless John, as Joe did, would have harvested them and tended a few cattle here.

In Memoir, reflecting on the routine of his daily walks to and from school with his mother John says:

I am sure it is from those days that I take the belief that the best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

And in That They May Face The Rising Sun, that belief is beautifully realised in the steady progress of the four seasons. The novel covers a year in the lives of Joe and Kate, Joe’s Uncle, their neighbours, and some of the local folk. Nothing dramatic happens, but you grow to understand each of the characters as though you had known them since they were children.

The McGahern house is approached along a narrow rutted road.  A half turn of the steering wheel would see your car in the lake.  I had written in advance to Mrs McGahern asking permission to photograph the outside of the house and the land and promising not to disturb her; she graciously consented.  I spent a happy ten minutes roaming the meadows, taking pictures and video and, listening to the birdsong.

In That They May Face The Rising Sun, Joe’s description of the flora and fauna is elegiac, and birdsong often features.   There are rural acres close to where I live in Scotland but the variety of birds and the clarity and brightness of their song around Laura Lake seemed like a full orchestra against a few buskers in my home fields.  It was striking and one of the most precious memories I took from the trip.

Laura Lake is more symmetrical than the skinny supermodel that is Lough Rynn. Its outline is similar to that of a fly-swat, the narrow ‘handle’ to the south west.   Walking its shores, you get a strong feel for its potential  to seethe and spit with white-capped breakers in a stormy winter.

I left Laura Lake and the little McGahern farm on the low hill above it with mixed feelings of reluctance and fulfilment.  That They May Face The Rising Sun is my favourite novel of John’s and I felt like a character who had arrived when the party was over and everyone had gone home, never to return. But I am so glad to have been there.  Thank you to Madeline McGahern for letting me walk her land and take, and publish, the pictures you see here.

Joe McNally

The small farm on which That They May Face The Rising Sun was probably based

A view of the lake the fictitious Joe and Kate would have seen from their garden

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