Roger Zelazny and Ireland
Kavanagh
Does anyone know what, if any, connection Roger had with Ireland? Two
stories had part of the action take place there – Eye of the Cat and
Lord Demon. There were several references to things Irish in the Amber
series – Tír na nÓg is a mythical Irish land, Déirdre and Fíona are
ancient Irish names (although not uncommon even today), Irish
wolfhounds, leprechaun like creatures. Irish dogs in ANITLO also
springs to mind.
Thank you for your time,
Des
ckovacs
The Zelaznys spent the summer of 1981 in Ireland, swapping houses with
another family who stayed in the Zelazny home in Santa Fe. He wrote an
essay about it entitled " 'I remember tea rooms, small shops, ruined
Muckross Abbey': A Writer's Guide to Getting Away from it all in
Ireland." It was published in Writer’s Yearbook 1984, p 90-92. They
stayed in County Cork and when Billy teleports to Ireland in EYE OF
CAT, he quickly passes through locations that Zelazny had visited. It
seems likely that Zelazny based those scenes on his recent
experiences; the novel would have been completed around that time
(summer 1981), a year in advance of its first publication (October
1982).
But Zelazny was fascinated by and read mythology in depth most of his
life, so he was very familiar with the Celtic myths as well as Greek,
Roman, Indian and other mythologies. His inclusion of the Celtic
Wasteland Myth and other Celtic references in the Amber series
predated this trip to Ireland. Jessie L. Weston’s 1921 book FROM
RITUAL TO ROMANCE was acknowledged by Zelazny as an important
influence on that aspect of the Amber series.
Chris
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