Rare Book & Collectors' Sale 1st & 2nd October 2025

103 Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 886. “The Music of What Happens” Heaney (Seamus) Song, Autograph Signed Manuscript of this quintessential Heaney lyric, eight lines and title, on a single A4 sheet, slightly foxed, faint fold marks, pinhole at top, neatly held in a custom made folding clamshell box, green cloth, mor. gilt title label on upper cover. Perhaps Heaney’s best -known single poem. ‘ A rowan like a lipsticked girl../ There are the mud-flowers of dialect / and the immortelles of perfect pitch / and that moment when the bird sings very close / to the music of what happens.’ as a m/ss, w.a.f. First published in Field Work, 1979. (1) €1500 - €2000 888. Heaney (Seamus) Alphabets, Typescript, 4pp, inscribed at head in Heaney’s hand ‘Phi Beta Kappa Poem - Dainty, I know, but related to the occasion where it is to be read. S.’With a few minor corrections; further inscribed at foot of p. 4 by the Derry poet James Simmons, ‘ Seamus gave me this when I visited him in Britain - probably 1984. He knows I have reservations about his work and was forestalling criticism. In fact I think it is a very charming poem, though a bit diagrammatic.. James Simmons, March ‘89’. Fold marks, upper page a bit foxed, neatly held in a custom made folding clamshell box, green cloth, morocco gilt title label on upper cover. First published in Hailstones , 1984. €1500 - €1800 887. Heaney (Seamus) From Five Derry Glosses. Manuscript, in Heaney’s hand, 2pp A-4, Signed at foot, dated September 1989, (‘Three section of Five Derry Glasses,’ from 32 Counties.’) Neatly held in a custom made folding clamshell box, green cloth, morocco gilt title label on upper cover. [Note: Title label mis-spelled ‘Fine Derry Glasses’]. (1) Published in 32 Counties: Photographs of Ireland by Donovan Wylie [1989]. €1000 - €1500