Where Irish traditions are alive and kicking!
To many, Irish culture has come to mean leprechauns and dodgy theme pubs, but in
the wilds of Connemara, Kevin Rushby finds a unique centre that is ensuring traditions
survive
By Kevin Rushby
The Guardian, Saturday 21 March 2009
Way out west ... the emphasis at Cnoc Suain’s cottages is on Irish musical heritage.
Sitting around the fire in a stone cottage with distant views of the Connemara mountains,
we get talking about Dearbhaill Standún's childhood in the early 1960s. "There was
always music," she says, "And reciting of poems and stories. I remember Seamus Heaney
standing by the fire and doing a poem about his brother. All the old guys there had
poems. My dad had The Shooting of Dan McGrew." She grins at the memory and spins a
few lines.
"Were you ever out in the Great Alone when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you 'most could hear."
Charlie Troy restored Cnoc Suain cottages.
The Great Alone is a description that might be applied to Dearbhaill (pronounced Dervil)
and husband Charlie Troy's cottage. Built on a plug of green land, Cnoc Suain, that rises
from the Connemara bogs, the house looks north across a sweeping landscape dotted with
Connemara ponies to the Twelve Pin mountains. To the south is Galway Bay and the
Arran islands. This is about plumb centre in what is known as the gaeltacht, the Irishspeaking
part of Ireland.
When they arrived here in 1995, Dearbhaill and Charlie found ruined cottages in the
undergrowth, the previous inhabitants having gone off to America half a century earlier.
Those cottages are now restored and much more has been added: organic gardens, a
workroom, library, and most important of all, a great collection of interesting local
personalities who bring to the weekend courses their knowledge, plus lots of stories and
songs.
To call Cnoc Suain a cultural centre will not do - a generation of places selling soft toy
leprechauns, four-leaf clovers and green beer have forever debased that coinage in
Ireland. But now, hearing Dearbhaill reminisce, I begin to understand. What they are
creating here is that sublime Irish brew: comhluadar, ceol, craic - company, music and
fun - the brew that Dearbhaill supped as a child.
"Musicians would turn up looking for a party," she says. "It was never planned, but we'd
be up till seven in the morning with all sorts of people - the Chieftains, the Dubliners, the
Clancys . . . they all came. Mother would say to them: 'Go upstairs and if ye find a bed,
get into it, and hold on to it."'
She takes out her fiddle and plays a slow air, one she wrote herself, called McSorley's
Repose. The turf on the fire hiss and crackle; outside the dogs are barking. I lean back in
the armchair and close my eyes.
Ireland has always, it seems, been either in the feverish grip of a cultural revival or the
agonies of a cultural panic. There have been anxieties about the loss of cultural heritage
for at least three centuries. JM Synge, travelling through in the early 1900s for this
newspaper, lamented the changes in architecture, clothing and language. "All the
characteristics which give colour and attractiveness to Irish life are bound up with a
social condition that is near to penury," he observed.
And tourists have long been coming to sample what was supposedly on the verge of
extinction. In 1695 John Daunton, a London bookseller, came to Connemara for the
express purpose of viewing "the last of the wild Irish savages" - namely the O'Flaherty
clan whose women, he noted, washed their hair in a mixture of urine and ashes.
Nowadays the search for disappearing Irish culture is more likely to be for that legendary
pub where the bar is in the general store and U2 are swapping guitar licks with the local
lads over a Guinness. Is that a myth, I wonder? Charlie takes me down for a pint to the
nearby village of Spiddal where, in Hughes' Bar, he points out a photo on the wall of
Adam Clayton, U2's bassist, jamming in the back room with a horde of local musicians.
Maybe this legend is not yet dead then? But Charlie thinks that there is something of a
crisis at the moment. "The great tradition of music sessions in pubs is under threat in rural
areas," he explains. "And that's because so many pubs are closing down. Changes in
licensing laws have had an effect too. Young people go out later in the evening now, after
the old folk are in bed. It has separated the generations from each other."
Hughes' has no music that night so we head off, ending up at The Forge in the nearby
village of Moycullen in time to catch Gerry O'Connor, one of Ireland's great banjo
players. It's more like a concert than the boozy pub session of legend, but there are all
ages here, and lots of friendly banter. Gerry recalls a bad night spent with three other
musicians at a festival: "We had to sleep on the floor and after a couple of hours, the
drummer woke up and whispered, 'Hey, there's a rat on my chest!' There was a pause,
then our piper, who was a bit of a character, said, 'Ask him if he's got a cigarette.'"
My bed that night was a good deal more comfortable - in a white-washed cottage
overlooking a small lake. Sensitively restored by Charlie, these cottages are idyllic
thatched places, the walls dominated by vast boulders of granite, the floors heated by
ground source heat pumps. Breakfast is self-service in the small kitchen, while other
meals are around the communal table up in the main house.
Each of the weekend courses focuses on a different subject: Irish language or organic
gardening, for example, but this weekend's topic is culture and history. Needless to say,
music and storytelling permeate every course.
Down at the workroom I get a lesson in how to make a traditional Arran islander's belt, a
crios, from local author Sean Barrett. "Every man had a different pattern and colour," he
explains, adding with a ghoulish grin, "so when he drowned they could identify the
body."
Sean is full of tales. Like the time he found a pat of butter three metres down in the bog.
"The people used to use the bog as a larder and this butter was more than a thousand
years old," he says. "Mind you, the dog ate some of it and he's all right."
The bog surrounds Cnoc Suain like a sea of sphagnum moss. Growing at a millimetre a
year, the vegetation slowly rises in broad spongy heads, crushing its own fibrous mass
below and producing peat. Down there, under the centuries of growth and decay, are
relics of vanished communities. Later in the day, local archaeologist Michael Gibbons
explains more about the history of the area. "When I started in archaeology, Connemara
was considered to have nothing," he says. "Now we've identified hundreds of sites and
found lots of astonishing artefacts." They are still turning up. He jumps up and down on
the turf near Dearbhaill and Charlie's cottage. "Under this is a neolithic burial site - we'll
dig it one day."
Like Sean, Michael's talks tend to encompass some wonderful extraneous details. Ludwig
Wittgenstein, it turns out, came to Connemara to think. "Unfortunately the remote cottage
he chose was next to where the herring boats landed and he spent his time complaining
about the noise."
For music in the evenings, we have Dearbhaill's own band, Dordán, and some local
teenagers: Orla Ní Fhinneadha and Breandán Ó hIarnáin, awesomely talented and full of
enthusiasm. "Traditional Irish music is big among young people now," Orla tells me,
after a powerful example of unaccompanied Sean Nós, old-style singing. "It's the social
side I like - and the singing, of course."
Breandán and the others confirm it: there is a huge revival of interest among young
people at the moment. He then shows off his prodigious talents: a series of jigs and reels
on the fiddle, accompanied by harpist Kathleen Loughnane and Mary Bergin on the
whistle, then a dazzling display of Irish dance steps. Before we've finished applauding
he's out the door, heading off to a karate lesson. We troop up the hill for a convivial
dinner around one table, then a session of storytelling with another local personality,
Gerry Conneely.
Was it true that everyone used to have a recital ready to hand? Gerry is the man to prove
it, pulling Dan McGrew effortlessly from his stock and topping it off with The Ballad of
Reading Gaol. It's his stories of village life, however, that everyone remembers: "The day
the German blondes arrived" and "Why a man can't just drink his 16 or 18 pints in peace
and quiet."
At the end of the evening I sit with Dearbhaill and she tells me a story of her own cultural
renaissance. "In 1970 I'd given up the fiddle for two years and Séamus Ennis, a famous
piper, came to call on us. He insisted I play, then he kept me going for the next few years
by giving me tunes - wonderful tunes he had learned in the 1930s from an old man, Colm
Ó Caoidheáin, who didn't want them to die with him."
She digs out the faded manuscripts and we pore over them: beautiful slow airs that she
plays for me. Ennis copied these out by hand for her, recalling every note and word some
30 or 40 years after he heard the songs.
It is individuals, I realise, who by their personal choices can keep a culture alive and
kicking. That is what Cnoc Suain is about: individuals picking up the fiddle and refusing
to put it down. My only complaint was that a weekend is too short. All that music and all
those stories need time - a lifetime perhaps - plus the challenge of learning to pronounce
those Irish names. I'm just trying to remember comhluadar, ceol and craic. It's not hard:
co-loo-dar, key-hole and crack - company, music and fun. That should be enough to get
started.
Getting There
From Dublin/ Dublin Airport to Galway City - Bus or Train:-
GoBus (www.GoBus.ie ) provides a non- stop service.
City link (www.Citylink.ie ) and Bus Eireann
(www.BusEireann.ie ) also provide a regular bus service.
Irish Rail (www.irishrail.ie ) provides a regular train service.
Flights to Galway AirportAer Arann (www.aerarann.ie) operates flights
from Dublin, Luton & Manchester.Car Hire is also available at
Galway Airport (www.GalwayAirport.com)
Cultural programmes
Residential programmes run from March to October. The cost of a 3 day/2 night
programme includes, accommodation, meals, drinks with dinner, talks, tuition
and entertainment. Dates & details from www.CnocSuain.com .
Cnoc Suain, in conjunction with The Galway Tour Company,
also run a day tour ~ The Conamara Culture & Craft Experience ~
which gives a unique window into Irish/Gaelic culture.Cost is E50 per person
and includes, transport from & to Galway City and entrance to Cnoc Suain.
Details at
www.CnocSuain.com or www.GalwayTourCompany.com
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