True History of the Kelly Gang Knopf, 355 pp., $25.00 Does the
man in the shiny blue suit still sing “The Wild Colonial Boy” at
Irish weddings? Anyone who was a child in Ireland in the middle
of the last century will remember this ubiquitous and somewhat
mysterious figure. In those days, marriage in Ireland was for
life, whether you liked it or not, divorce not being available.
Weddings were important occasions, usually held in hotel
ballrooms, with a hundred or more guests, an invariable meal of
chicken and ham, much drinking, dancing, and singing. The man in
the shiny blue suit, who wore a belt and suspenders, and whose
provenance was uncertain—somebody’s uncle, perhaps?—would choose
his moment with finesse, waiting for a lull in the proceedings
to take his stance dramatically beside the piano and launch into
his song. And as he sang, with forceful earnestness, his large
pink face perspiring and his throat sinews straining, we guests
would seem to feel the heat of the Antipodean plains, and smell
the scents