Ithell Colquhoun was a completely new name for me when I spotted this book on NetGalley recently, but I know now that she was a prominent British surrealist painter in the 1930-40s, as well as an occultist, poet and author of both fiction and non-fiction. The Crying of the Wind, originally published in 1955, describes her travels around Ireland and her impressions of the people she meets and places she visits. It’s the first of three travel books she wrote, with a book on Cornwall following in 1957 and then one on Egypt which has never been published.
Colquhoun bases herself near the village of Lucan on the River Liffey, to the west of Dublin. In each chapter, she sets out on a walk or an excursion by car to visit different parts of Ireland, including Glendalough, Connemara and Cashel. The structure seems a bit haphazard, with no real order or pattern to the places she visits, and the book definitely has the feel of a personal journal rather than something you could use to plan out your own travels. It’s an interesting book, though, and I did enjoy reading it. The descriptive writing is beautiful at times, as you would expect from a book written by a painter; here she describes the approach to Connemara’s Twelve Bens mountain range:
Across miles of mulberrydark bogland we drove towards them, the tawny of king ferns lining the ditches that bordered the road. Air of a wonderful transparency arched above us, blue washed with white gold. I did not regret our slow pace, enforced by the pot-holes in the road, since I could watch the mountains from gradually shifting angles.
Although Colquhoun includes some anecdotes about her encounters with Irish people, the way they live and the conversations she has with them, the main focus of her writing is on the beauty of the natural environment and on places of historical interest such as old churches, holy wells and remains of ancient forts and towers. She often laments the rate of progress and its effect on the natural world; when walking in the countryside, she is very aware of the noise of traffic on busy roads nearby and the sights of new housing developments and factory chimneys altering the landscape forever.
With her interest in the occult, Colquhoun spends a lot of time discussing the myths, legends and folklore of each place she visits. She believes in ghosts, spirits and supernatural beings and accepts their existence in a very matter-of-fact way.
Their forms vary; a friend described one she had seen on some downs in Dorsetshire as being ‘the size of a haystack, opaque but fluid at the edges, moving very quickly’; another is sometimes seen like a tower racing over wide sands on the north coast of Cornwall. I have myself seen in Cornwall one like a massive pillar of unknown substance, with filaments stretched from the top seemingly to hold it to the ground like the guy-ropes of a tent.
The Crying of the Wind is an unusual travel book, then, and also a fascinating one. I’ll look forward to reading her Cornwall book, The Living Stones, which is also available in a new edition from Pushkin Press.
Thanks to Pushkin Press Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.
She Reads Novels 
When the amateur Arthurian society I was involved with from the 1960s onwards occasionally strayed into more mystical or New Age topics the name Ithell Colquhoun frequently was referenced (when I also learnt how to pronounce her name!) though I never actually got round to reading her – airy-fairy hippy mysticism never appealed to me anyway. But a travelogue, now that sounds more up my street, and Pushkin do choose some interesting and obscure titles to republish.
I don’t have much interest in her mystical writings either, but I did enjoy this travelogue and will probably read the one on Cornwall as well. I’ve discovered a lot of books through Pushkin that I would probably never have been aware of otherwise.
Being a surrealist painter based in Marseille with André Breton she even got a mention in China Miéville’s weird fantasy alternative history The Last Days of New Paris, which I read a year or so back: https://wp.me/s2oNj1-manif
In retrospect it’s strange to know that many of those artistic ‘isms’ of the early 20th century – surrealism, cubism, Fauvism, futurism, Dadaism etc – were being rediscovered by 60s and 70s New Agers, though rarely with much appreciation of their divergent or contradictory philosophies.
This sounds really interesting; isn’t it funny all these people we’ve never heard of that were so prominent in their day?!
Yes! I was surprised to see how many books she had written and how much artwork she produced – it’s a shame she seems to have faded into obscurity since then.
What a lovely read this sounds! I confess she’s a new name to me, but the writing here sounds gorgeous!
She does write beautifully and it’s a shame she’s not better known. I’m looking forward to reading her other travel book now.
This does sound like a fascinating book. Though the Cornwall one appeals to me a bit more as I’ve always wanted to travel to Cornwall. 😀
I’m sure the Cornwall book will be just as interesting as this one!
I will have to look out for this author. This sounds right up my street as I like personal angles on travel.
I don’t read a lot of travel books but I do like the ones with a more personal feel.
Well… That’s interestingly different!
I checked out the Pushkin Press website. LOTS of interesting things to explore [rubs hands…]
Pushkin are currently one of my favourite publishers. They’re bringing a lot of forgotten classics back into print, as well as some intriguing Japanese crime under the Pushkin Vertigo imprint. Definitely worth exploring!