The Wind - An Ghaoth

In primary (grade) school I learned this little poem about the four winds ...in Irish, or 'as gaeilge' as we say here in Ireland. The Irish or Gaelic it is written in, is lovely, rich and rhyming, in a kind of way. There's a wonderful cadence to it and a predictable pattern, akin I suppose to the continuum of waves towards a shore, or a field of ripening barley rippling back and forth as the wind blows across it.

An Ghaoth

An ghaoth aneas bíonn sí tais
agus cuireann sí iasg i líonta.
An ghaoth aniar bíonn sí fial
agus cuireann sí rath ar shíolta
An ghaoth anoir bíonn sí tirim
agus cuireann sí brat ar chaoirigh,
An ghaoth adtuaidh bíonn sí fuar
agus cuireann sí fuacht ar dhaoine.

I remembered learning the poem by rote as we did all stuff in school back then. Despite the teachers best intentions and menacing ministrations, I forgot the poem and only recently came across it again. Such 'learning by rote' at the business end of a ruler or strap, didn't engender any love in me for the poem, or for the language and frankly, it's meaning was beyond me, kind of, given that I was a townie, being taught in a country school, and the wind, if it ever bothered me was one that blew in a howling gale around the high gable of our shop-cum-home in the middle of Main Street, Loughrea, far from the sea and the open prairies of oats out the country.

A high wind in the town sometimes meant a few slates flying off the impossibly high three storey roof, giving my dad real headaches on how to replace the blue Bangor slates that weighed several pounds each and measured a half square metre or more. Or the unruly wind from a certain direction, dodging between the towns gables and tall chimneys meant a down-draught that prevented the fire from being lit, or smoked out the sitting room and kitchen where we always had a fire going for heat, there being no central heating in our house, or in any house for that matter, back in the sixties.

While my country school-pals were fluent in weather and weather signs, we in the town were fairly clueless. We were cosseted away from nature back then, though to be fair, not as cosseted as our children are these days. They have no idea at all how to read the signs that mother nature signals to us every day. Low flying crows, high flying swallows, far-inland seagulls and grass-feeding starlings all meant something to the farmer, the sailor or the fisherman, but mean naught to most of us these days.

Nowadays we live by our hourly radio weather forecasts and the luridly coloured weather apps on our phones. In general, without these modern aids, we would be blissfully unaware of impending storms or the promise of fine weather. Not for us the tapping on the glass of the hallway barometer to confirm the appropriateness, or otherwise of our fashionable clothing choices.

My father's and my grand-father's last act before going out the door was to set the dial on the barometer, matching the static needle to the barometric pointer, and then tap the glass sharply with one finger-nail. If the barometric arrow, or needle in the barometer moved, you read the words on the dial next to the direction the needle moved.

Those words on the home barometer read read, clockwise, left to right: Stormy, Rain, Change, Fair and Very Dry.

That was it, they were simple, uncomplicated, easy to understand descriptions of impending weather events. We didn't have terms for a 'mixed bag' or 'scattered showers', or 'wind-chill'. No, back in the day, you got fair warning, maybe 24 hours notice, to pull the boat further up the beach, or take in the washing, or to head for the bog to turn the turf. 

Times, and weather-forecasting were both fairly simple and uncomplicated back then. There were no tightly packed isobars or Doppler Radar to confuse and amuse the amateur weather forecasters back then.

Everyone had their own way to forecast the weather. Some had a feeling in their bones. More had a look at the clarity of the distant hills, or the corona on the moon or sun, whether the rainbow was in the north, or in the west, the colours of the dawn and the twilight skies. Others relied on birds and animal behaviour, dogs, chickens, cats, all got a chance to chime in on the weather.

In my house it was the mercury. Dad talked always in terms of the falling mercury, or the rising mercury. In fact, mercurial was the term my father used a lot when sudden change came in the weather, in politics, or in his or someone else's mood. 

And did I mention that my dad was a primary school teacher, taught me, (not really a good idea) and believe me, while I couldn't predict the weather, very accurately, I probably was that boy that Oliver Goldsmith wrote about in his wonderful 18th century poem, Sweet Auburn, when describing the vicissitudes of the Village Schoolmaster  "the boding tremblers learn'd to trace, the days disasters in his morning face"

Speaking of Primary School teachers, here's a treat for you. If you go to the Duchas website www.duchas.ie and then go to the tab, 'Collections' and then, 'Schools Collection', the browser will open up a treasure trove of Irish lore that was collected by Primary School teachers from all over Ireland in 1937 and 1938. They collected copy books full of interviews that were conducted with only rudimentary supervision and then they sent the end result off to a warehouse in University College Dublin where until recently, they lay, undisturbed and forgotten.

To create the collection, school children around the country were asked to go to the oldest person in their village or family and ask them various questions about what they remembered learning or hearing or doing in their lives. Consequently Ireland has a unique and invaluable first-hand record of the lives and stories of a couple of generations that in places go back to the Famine period in Ireland. Each school's collection is searchable online. You may find your parents or grand-parents or great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents were involved as interviewers, or interviewees.

Many of the stories these children collected are now being translated, (some were in Irish or Gaelic) and transcribed ,(all were hand-written by children, with the expected variations in hand-writing styles and abilities). The results are astonishing dn delightful and most are available online now and are free to browse.

Many of the children asked similar questions, no doubt prompted by the suggested template the Department of Education gave the teachers. Many of the children asked their older interviewees for local folklore and for local sayings. The results are fascinating and if nothing else, they prove one thing for sure. The Irish have always been fascinated with the weather. They had a saying or a poem or a wise word for most weather types and occurrences and signs.

In fact, page 1 of the Folklore Collection from the Schools Collection is from a tiny primary school Cill Éinne on the Aran Islands and the first pages in their interviews are about how to forecast good weather and rain. (you can click on Cill Einne above and the link will bring you straight to the page. Use the arrow key to go page by page, or the search function to find your or your parents' or grand-parents' primary school.

The Irish on the Cill Einne page is gorgeous and is easy to understand.
Here's a sample, about good, wet and bad weather signs.

"Seo iad cuid dé na comhartaí atá ag muinntir Árainn i dtaobh na h-aimsire.

Aimsear Breág
Bíonn torann mór ag an bhfairrge. Nuair a bions dath nádúrach ar an bfairrge Tagann an rón ingar dón talamh Bíonn an t-iasg ag éirge aníos as an bfairrge. Bíonn an liabhán ingar don talamh. Tagann na faoilleain isteach ar an talamh. Bíonn an talamh o dheas agus o tuaidh i bhfad amach.
Téigheann na géada fiadhain o dheas. Bíonn torann mór ag an bfairrge ag bualadh in aghaidh Túr-Máirtín. Bíonn dath dearg ar an ngréin. Nuair a bhíos an gaoth dtuighe án bíonn na réalta i bfad ón ngealach. An bhfairrge a béith chiúin. Bíonn na mucha mara ag eirghe ar bárr na fairrge. An t-aer a béith glan. Dath dearg a béith ar an spéir. Gaoth adthuiadh a béith ann.

Baisteach
Dath gorm a beith ar an bhfarrige. An rón a dul i bfad amach ins an bfairrge. An traigh a bhéith bog. An talamh ó thuaid a béith ingar. Bíonn solas mór ar Ceann Bóirne. Bíon cuileóga ag imteacht ins an aer. Taoille mhór a bhéith ann. Easgain a bhéith i bhfior-uisge. Súgha a bhéith ag tuitim. Gaoth andheas a bhéith ann. Rud a bheith timcheall ar an gealach.

Droch Aimsear
Na faoilleáin a bhéith ar an bfairrge. an fairrge a bhéith garbh. An t-iasg a bhéith ag imteacht amach ins an bhfairrge. Na faoilleáin a bhéith ag teacht aníos ag piocadh ar bféar. Na muca mara a dul amach i bhfad ins an bhfairrge. Na réalta a bhéith ingar dé'm ghealach, Bíonn an t-éar dórcha".

(I can translate this for you or you can simply go to google translate... but the ghist of it is that the older people told the younger school-children that the signs for good weather, bad weather and rain were to be seen in the behaviour of dolphins, seals, seagulls and fish, as well as the appearance of the sun, moon, stars and the waves and colour of the sea).

Back to my poem about the wind. These little poems, adages or pithy sayings were mnemonics, to help people who had no barometers, or indeed, who did not have much formal education, to remember important stuff, in this case how to predict the weather. There are many of these poems. Some are adult, most are designed for teaching children how to recognise signs in nature. The Irish is lovely, but a catchy version in the english language might be nice

So, with that in mind, and recognising how lovely and poetic the Irish version is, I have tried to make the english translation a little more pretty and less like a google translate mechanised translation.
I'm no poet so this is a challenge. 

So here goes...first a rough translation. An Ghaoth - The Wind

An ghaoth andeas bíonn sí tais agus cuireann sí iasg i líonta.
The southerly wind is moist/humid and puts fish into nets.
An ghaoth aniar bíonn sí fial agus cuireann sí rath ar shíolta,
The westerly wind is generous and develops seeds,
An ghaoth anoir bíonn sí tirim agus cuireann sí brat ar chaoirigh,
The easterly wind is dry and grows wool on sheep,
An ghaoth adtuaidh bíonn sí fuar agus cuireann sí fuacht ar dhaoine.
The northerly wind is cold and really chills people.

And so, here is my mnemonic verse
----------------------------------------------------
The Wind

The wind from the South is a warming wind
and fills the nets with fishes.
The wind from the West is welcoming and kind
and blesses the planting.
The wind from the East is a drying wind
and thickens the sheeps' fleece.
The wind from the North is bitter, unkind
and leaves the people wanting.

And the original Irish/Gaelic
-------------------------------------------------------
An Ghaoth
An ghaoth aneas bíonn sí tais
agus cuireann sí iasg i líonta.
An ghaoth aniar bíonn sí fial
agus cuireann sí rath ar shíolta,
An ghaoth anoir bíonn sí tirim
agus cuireann sí brat ar chaoirigh,
An ghaoth adtuaidh bíonn sí fuar
agus cuireann sí fuacht ar dhaoine.
-------------------------------------------------------

I hope you like it.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment and/or share.

Words are Copyright Brian Nolan 12/02/2019  - All photographs by Brian Nolan

Galway Walks www.galwaywalks.com galwaywalks@gmail.com phone 0863273560 @galwaywalks Walking Tours of Galway

#Folklore #Irish #Ireland #Duchas #Weather #Wind #Primaryschool#Gradeschool #Aran #Inishmore #Islands

The pipe

Y'know, when you pass someone on the street and you realise something about that person has triggered an old memory that brings a warm feeling to you, brings you back in time, to your childhood, to an innocent time, perhaps, even to a specific moment, one you may not be able to immediately identify, but the comforting warmth resonates, your senses bristling at the fuzzy, familiar, feeling. 

Doniel Sexton, from 'out the country' by his own admission, but living now on Nuns Island, passed me on Dominick Street this evening, a fine, persistent drizzle had hastened everyone else off the street, just the two of us, walking, head-down in the soft rain, opposed on the narrow footpath, made narrower by a bollard, that swept us closer together, between the wall and the road, two polite, beanie-heads, "excuse me, excuse me", we part-passed, his pipe smoke enveloped me in a sweet, damp, retro haze, transporting me in an instant, back to Loughrea, fifty-five years ago, to an old farmer, John Ryan, visiting my father and mother in our kitchen, his big frame fairly filling the small armchair by the Aga cooker, him, tamping his pipe with a gnarled, work-calloused thumb, and slowly, patiently, alternately lighting and puffing and tamping, and lighting and puffing again, patiently reddening the shredded plug tobacco, waving the lit match, and exhaling a long blue-hued plume of smoke, smiling wistfully, before launching again into a story of the 'old days' in the town. 

Lost in this sudden un-bidden memory, I turned and looked back at his half-turned head, at his teeth-clenched pipe, he, similarly, simultaneously half-turned, gazing down at my barefoot sandals. I said, "What brand of pipe tobacco is that?" He said "Sandals, for the summer, it's coming too, next Wednesday, or Thursday, though I wouldn't be betting the house on it, still, at least you aren't wearing socks, I can't understand that, in this wet weather." I said, "Can I take your photo?" He quipped, as he posed, "Go on ahead, sure it's a free country, for the time-being anyhow, or until we start charging for it."


#Pipe #Tobacco #MickMcQuaid #Oldholborn #StBruno #Cutterschoice#cuttobacco #plugtobacco #aroma #smoke #Pipesmoke #cantremember#amnesia #retro #memories #childhood #rain #mist #Galway #Ireland

This poem was penned after the death of King Charles I who was beheaded outside Whitehall Palace in London on the afternoon of January 30th, 1649, exactly 368 years ago, today. 

"He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene:
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try.
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed."

- The Poem was written by Andrew Marvell, in ‘An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return to Ireland’, one of many Royalist publicity coups designed to reinstate the monarchy.
The Galway connection is obviously 'The Kings Head' bar on High Street. Nowadays a popular pub, entertainment venue and restaurant, back in 1649 when Charles was executed it was the Bank Castle, one of many Lynch manor houses in Galway city. 

The execution of Charles I put an end to the Civil War in England but marked the start the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, earning him the reputation of a mass-murderer for his terrible treatment of Royalists and Catholics in Ireland. While the English Civil War led to the deaths of some 300,000 people in the period 1642-1649, or 6% of the population, in Ireland it led to the deaths of about 600,000 Irish, or 40% of the then Irish population of 1.5 million. The dead were soldiers sure, but the wars and general chaos killed many hundreds of thousands of poor peasants who starved to death during Cromwell's policy of crop-burning and agrarian interruption, denying the enemy food and supplies, and causing famine to stalk the land. 

Galway city was besieged by Cromwell's army under General Coote (who directed operations from Claregalway Castle) for 10 months, from June 1651 to April 1652, after which a surrender of the city, on terms was arranged. 

Colonel Peter Stubbers was put in charge of the now surrendered and devastated city. He confiscated The Bank Castle, (Kings Head today) for use as his headquarters and billeted his troops, some 1,000 battle-hardened and land-hungry Puritan soldiers and their officers. They had but one thing in mind, confiscation of Royalist land. Galway's first non-native Mayor (previously mainly Norman Tribe names) was Peter Stubbers, who in 1654 expelled all rebellious people (mainly city merchants and their servants) from the city. Whether he profited from shipping catholics to Barbados is up for debate, but he certainly profited from something. 

He was not to stay in Galway much longer. 
The Restoration was his downfall.
Once the Great Protector, Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, and after a disastrous short period of rule by his son Richard Cromwell, in 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. His first act was to command that all the 59 signatories of his father's execution warrant be rounded up and executed themselves. Some had died in the meantime, some were captured, though many more had fled, to Europe and some to Connecticut, where they were protected by the Puritans there. 

Peter Stubbers didn't sign Charles I's Execution Warrant. He didn't have that status. He was nothing but an opportunistic, journeyman soldier, taking advantage of a devastating war to enrich himself, and his fellow soldier, Richard Gunning, who took the house behind the Bank Castle as his own. They both disappeared from Galway, in 1660, no doubt feeling the heat from the hue and cry, as the former Cromwellian statesmen and their followers were coughed up, arrested, imprisoned and even hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn and Charing Cross... a spectacle of horror that can only be imagined. (Cromwell was subjected to that too, though two years after he had died). 
Going back to that chilly afternoon in London, with Charles I kneeling, his long hair tied up in a hair-net, his head resting on the block, wearing two shirts lest he shiver in the cold and appear afraid to the huge assembled crowd. 

The executioner was masked and disguised. Let's face it, this was no ordinary execution. This was a Regicide. There would be repercussions. There is much debate over his identity and that of his 'headsman'...whose unenviable job was to retrieve the newly severed head and display it to the crowd. 
Richard Brandon, (not Branson) was then the common hangman of London, but he refused this lucrative job, despite being offered £200 for the chop, the equivalent of maybe £200,000 nowadays. Many other handy axemen have been proffered as potential executioners, including George Joyce, William Hulet and Hugh Peters, however his identity remains a secret as nobody has ever come forward and said 'I did it'. 
Well almost no one. 

'Seems Peter Stubbers and Richard Gunning were fond of over-imbibing on the confiscated wines and brandies that filled the cellars of the merchants of Galway, cellars that they now laid claim to. Rumour has it that they were close, 'thick as thieves' one might say, and so they were. Galway lore has it that they had 'done the deed' in London in 1649. They were certainly boastful, brash, bold, cruel, and rich, rich beyond their Gloucester dreams, they lived high on the hog in Galway until 1660, when in the dead of night, shortly after Charles II was restored to the throne, they both quit town. 
Galway has seen many a night-time flit, since, and before, but these two, well they take the prize. Could they have been the hooded axeman and headsman on the scaffold outside Whitehall Palace in London, on that wintry January 30th day in 1649? Who knows? 
Brian Nolan Jan 30 2018
PS. Charles I was a Catholic, and his enemies a mix of Anglican Protestants and Dissenters, Presbyterians, Methodists and Puritans. The institutional distrust of Catholics continued long after Charles I death and culminated in Ireland with the passage of the Penal Laws at the end of the 17th century, essentially proscribing the Catholic religion and condemning catholics to poverty and persecution that lasted into the 19th century. 
Catholicism went underground, priests were hunted down and killed, churches destroyed and land confiscated. Admitting to being catholic was dangerous and did your career prospects no good. Secret signs were used and one became quite popular in Ireland. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, so favoured by the executed King and his son Charles II, became a secret symbol silently, secretly declaring 'this is a catholic house'. The practice of displaying two pottery dogs on the mantle pieces and windows of cottages stems from this. 

Check out O'Connor's Famous Pub in #Salthill where they have over 40 such 'dogs' scattered around the pub. Come on one of my 'Fireside Tours' at O'Connor's pub, or take a Galway City Tour with me, for more stories like these. 
Check out my website Galwaywalks.com 
Feel free to share; 
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The Heron

Sometimes you just know that there are forces and energies all around us that we rarely experience, until the unexpected occurs. It all started with a mother's enduring love for her daughter and a promise kept. Cheryl Miller from Indiana walked into Liam Garvey's gift shop on Shop St. Galway on last Thursday and the die was cast. 

It had been a wickedly wet day, her first day in Ireland, and having flown all night, driven in torrential rain across Ireland, she and her daughter and both their husbands checked into the Victoria Hotel, all of them exhausted. They hit the bed for an hour, to shake off the jet-lag, but they overslept, really overslept.. When they finally got their act together hours later, the rain had eased a bit, so they decided to chance a quick walk around the city and get some dinner. It was to be a fortuitous evening.

After they'd eaten, because of the late hour, only a very few shops were open. Cheryl was looking for a very simple Claddagh pendant, and luckily Liam's 'Galway Bay Gift Shop' stocked just what she wanted. As Liam wrapped Cheryl's purchase, he felt her subdued mood, not quite the usual tourist's high, and then he noticed her top, a printed T-shirt with a woman's photo on it. Liam inquired, to be told that it was the final photo Cheryl had taken of her 40 year old daughter Cynthia, just days before she'd succumbed to cancer, earlier this year. 

Her wish, all during her chemotherapy was that once she'd recovered enough, she was going to fulfill her lifelong wish to visit Ireland, a desire she'd had since she was a teenager. 
Alas, it was not to be. Life and chemotherapy can be cruel. Later on, Cheryl decided she would go on Cynthia's journey, a hard decision for a Mum grieving her dead daughter, and so it was she found herself in Liam's shop, telling her daughter's story. 

Liam asked her what Cynthia really wanted to do in Ireland, and Cheryl told him that she'd talked incessantly about sitting in a pub, listening to an old man telling stories. 

After she'd left, Liam called me, wondering could I give the family my 'Fireside Stories' tour in O'Connors bar in Salthill. I like Liam... he gets me, and my stories, so I said yes. It was already 10.30pm, but i called their hotel room anyway, only to be told that they were leaving Galway at ten am the following morning... heading for Killarney, so that was kinda that, no tour possible. 

We talked a few minutes, hung up. That should have been it, but the next morning, I had an early walking tour.. at ten am. 

When I awoke, at 7.30, I was still thinking about the conversation I'd had with the mum, so I called her back. Told her to be ready at the hotel door at 9am..reassured her I'd have her back to the hotel within an hour. I picked the four of them up... they were intrigued and bemused... and a little reluctant... but decided to go with the flow, and the nutty, enthusiastic stranger, safety in numbers. 

I brought them to one of my favourite spots in the city, 'the circle of life' garden in Salthill Galway built two years ago by the Goggin family, after they'd lost their son in a car accident. It's a place of peace and salve, and a place that speaks many languages, heals many wounds.

It's a garden filled with gorgeous flowers and plants and stones, stones from all over Ireland. At the rear of the garden is a park, with a lovely pond. In the middle of the pond stands a bronze statue of a heron, a magical bird, a deadly hunter, but also a bird that represents the healing and other powers of the ancient Celtic druids. 

I was telling Cheryl about just that when we crested the path that leads from the garden to the pond. 
On another day, under the time constraints that we had, I might have skipped the pond, but something told me to tarry a little longer with Cheryl... no it wasn't a conscious decision, just an inevitable sequence. 

Cheryl, I am sure, was just dragging along...half jet-lagged, half humouring the weirdo...and then there she was... waiting for us to visit... a real heron, standing by the heron statue. 
Just like that! Bam!

Cheryl and I both stopped... drawn into the most amazing awareness of a 'presence' in the stillness at the pond's edge. The silence was broken only by Cheryl's heaving sob as she spoke her daughter's name. 

There is no question.. no doubt in my mind, Cynthia, or her spirit, or her personified memory, was right here, waiting patiently for us, knowing that her mum had asked Liam, who'd asked me, to bring her mum and sister to see her, to get one last group photo, to breathe the same air together, to laugh and cry together, to embrace and hug and say hello, and goodbye together. 

We were ten feet from the heron... she never moved... a message-bearer from four thousand miles away, from four thousand years ago, unmistakable, 'hello mom, I'm here, I'm safe, I'm not in pain, don't cry, I love you mom, enjoy your, our, trip to Ireland, I'm here with you, and we are going to have a fabulous time, thank you, thank you for bringing me, thank you, this means so much, I know you are hurting, don't, don't, it's going to be OK, you are going to be ok'.

Not kidding you... the hairs were standing straight up on the back of my neck, the goose-pimples dry, hard on my arms my mouth dry. This was real...yet surreal.

I see herons all the time... on the river, on the canals, on the salmon weir, in the drain at the back of my house. This one was different. This one was here for us.... with a message. 
After what seemed like an age, I dropped them back to the hotel and went off to find my tour, but the buzz, the heart-warming sensation, stayed with me all day. 

I've had this before, many times in fact, an awareness of a presence or a spirit, but rarely so powerful. 
Maybe it was something entirely different... the heaviness of the air , a hurricane had just come through here, devastating Donegal, maybe it was that, a charge in the air, mother nature telling us she's here, or maybe I'd had an after-burn from a late-night whiskey....who knows...but I know... something happened on Friday ... and you know what... it was pure magic.

There are lots of Herons in Galway, testament to the rich, clean waters we have all around us in this beautiful city. Don't ignore them...they may be trying to tell us something. I see them all the time on my Walking Tours of Galway. www.galwaywalks.com galwaywalks@gmail.com Twitter and Instagram @galwaywalks 086-3273560

The Unquiet Grave

Until this century, life expectancy in Ireland was short, very short, less than forty years for most people.
If you lived to be fifty you were considered a rarity and if you made it to sixty or seventy or eighty, you were an elder, a revered personage, a respected sage, for you had seen two, or three, or four generations come and go. Not many people could say that.

Can you imagine how hard life was n the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century here in Ireland? Most people lived from hand to mouth, subsisting on too-small farms, that were over-worked and hopelessly inadequate to amply feed the too-big families of the poor tenant farmers who made up the largest proportion of the people in Ireland. Life was uncertain. 
Aside from being poor, they were governed in the main by antagonistic or at best unsympathetic Protestant and Presbyterian English settlers, who themselves, though they were better off, also had a relatively short life expectancy. War, famine, disease and accidents were the more likely cause of death for most people. For women, child-birth was one of the biggest killers. Life was cheap, hard and unfair. Death did not discriminate, rich and poor died at an astonishing rate.

Men especially, died young. They worked outside, in all elements, in poor clothing and with little food or shelter. Widows did not fare well without their men to provide for them. Life was hard. Death, and especially an early or unexpected death was a fact of life. The dead, both rich and poor, were mourned by their loved ones, buried quickly, and but for a few, quickly forgotten.

Very few left any kind of records, and almost no one had a permanent grave marker. If you were memorialised at all it was probably in song or story. That job fell to the local, or sometimes itinerant seanachai, or story-teller. Those ancient bards were revered and respected and gained the valuable patronage of the Irish and indeed the Norman upper class, allowing them to survive and thrive in that society. By the 18th century, with the demise of the Irish ruling class, the bards and shanachies were thrown on the generosity of the less well-off farming classes.

On my walking tours of Galway ( www.galwaywalks.com ) I tell my visitors about the intrinsic value of the story-teller or ‘shanachie’ in Irish culture. The shanachie was a revered and respected individual, poor no doubt, but hearkening back to the minstrels who lived with the ancient Irish nobility and recorded their histories. The older people, men and women, were a store of learned experience and handed down traditions that younger people could access, verbally when you were alive, because you had witnessed events and were able to recount them first-hand or from memory. Unfortunately, most stories died when you died, but if we were lucky, your stories, your knowledge, your wisdom was carried to the next generation by the shanachai.

Shanachies were skilled at recounting a good tale, especially when gathered around the hearth in the long winter nights. Family histories and legends were passed down from generation to generation in this way, from father to son, mother to daughter, but in ear-shot of the elders, who would act as editors of the tales, correcting, embellishing, reinforcing the stories before they themselves passed away.

So too it was with ballad singers and poets. The wandering musicians who went from village to village sang their songs, recounted stories, collected new stories, a latter-day Reuters, spreading the news of the day, but 'singing for their supper' too. They relied on local hospitality for their lodging and food, because no one had money to pay for their services and the ‘Big Houses of the Irish nobility were long gone and the patrons long dead or banished overseas as 'The Wild Geese'. The old Irish ascendancy had been replaced by ‘Planters’ who wouldn't have understood the language, had no interest in the ‘old Irish tales’ and even less interest in being a patron of a mendicant minstrel.

This reliance on travelling minstrels to collect and disseminate news and stories became even more important during the Penal Laws, and right up until the Famine, during which period the Irish language, religion, education and culture were suppressed. Literacy rates among all classes of Catholics plummeted. By the mid 18th century very few Irish speakers could write or read and their stories, their histories, their customs and folk-tales were lost as the generations passed away.

Most of the Irish population were tenant farmers, mainly illiterate, unable to read the papers of the day, and now heavily relied on itinerant poets musicians for entertainment and for news. The suppression of the Irish language was a major cause of this cultural loss. The upside is that despite their hardship and changed circumstances, the Irish kept the tradition of the shanachai and bard alive, as well as the music, the stories, the faith. Those fragile stories survived in the poems and songs, but only barely.

After the Great Hunger however, from 1842 on, emigration, evictions and famine finally broke the back of millennia of Irish tradition and culture. There was a flight to the towns and rural traditions were quickly forgotten. So too were the thousands of songs and stories that were the stock-in-trade of the shanachai. Very little of our history and cultural lore had been written down, much was lost forever as these seanachai and bards died.

Fortunately, some of the stories and songs and poems were collected and written down, much of it by Anglo-Irish academics during the late 19th and early 20th century while there was still some folk memories of the great stories and indeed while some of the itinerant story-tellers still lived. Lady Gregory was one such collector. Her work amongst the tenant farmers rescued countless stories from permanent loss. There were many others around Ireland doing similar work, many of them women. We have through them, some glimpse of the imagination, tales, ballads and poems of these often under-estimated poets, musicians and shanachies, the druids of a bye-gone era.

Later on in the 20th century, there was a Gaelic Revival and much credit has to be given to the many writers including Padraic Pearse and Douglas Hyde who wrote down many of these stories. Finally, with the invention of the wax disc recorders, and with some foresight, very many ‘Oral Histories’ and ‘Folk-Tales’ were recorded and collected in the 1930’s and 1940’s by the volunteers working for the 'Irish Folklore Commission’ and they have been saved. Of course much more was lost, died with the people and the tumbled cottages, buried forever in a restless grave.

England, like Ireland had also lost touch with its own shanachie and rural traditions. Their stories and songs were lost at an accellerated rate during the 19th century industrialisation and urbanisation of Britain. Unlike Ireland, literacy rates were much higher in Britain and there was a large academic and wealthy class who dedicated themselves to writing down these dying traditions, stories and songs. Collectors like Child, working dilligently up and down the country, dilligently and avidly recorded thousands of songs and stories and these collections now inform our academics and singers on that lost oral history. 

A hundred years or so after the Famine, ‘The Clancy Brothers’ and ‘The Dubliners’ emerged from the cities and entertained us with a new genre of Irish Music. They sang songs we had never heard before and we embraced them, these new brand of minstrels, our own latter-day shanachies mined that treasure trove of collected songs in Irish and British museums and universities and revived these otherwise lost songs. The songs they sang were really the stories and poems of the past, handed down, generation to generation, now put into ballads. they breathed life back into our folklore and the ‘Folk’ movement blossomed. We now called our shanachies 'folk-singers' and the name and genre stuck.

Luke Kelly was one of our best folk-singers. A founding member of The Dubliners, Luke was a sponge, soaking up words and stories anywhere he lived, especially in England in the early sixties. He collected songs and poems like other people collect stamps or rare coins. He collected many of his songs in England where he worked as a younger man.

Luke was the quintessential story-teller, but one with a singing voice that once heard will never be forgotten. The world and Ireland is so lucky to have had such a balladeer. He and his fellow musicians, including Christy Moore and Ewan McColl have saved an entire tranche of Irish and British folk history from oblivion.

Recently I made a little time to research a poem/ballad I’d never heard of, ‘The Unquiet Grave’. This song was alluded to by the widow of Luke Kelly (Luke of the Dubliners, died 32 years ago) in an interview I heard on the radio. Luke apparently sang this song and it was her favourite memory of him, for reasons that will become apparent when you read the poem or listen to the song. This is an ancient poem, one that probably existed in parts, and in other versions for over five hundred years, but the sentiment of loss and of undying love contained in this song or poem is powerful and utterly timeless. It is a true folk-tale.

Enjoy…but be prepared, it is a very moving piece.

“The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true-love,
In cold grave she was lain.

“I’ll do as much for my true-love
As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave 
For a twelvemonth and a day.”

The twelvemonth and a day being up, 
The dead began to speak: 
“Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?”

” ‘Tis I, my love, sits on your grave, 
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek.”

“You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips, 
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips, 
Your time will not be long.

” ‘Tis down in yonder garden green, 
Love, where we used to walk, 
The finest flower that e’re was seen 
Is withered to a stalk.

“The stalk is withered dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay; 
So make yourself content, my love, 
Till God calls you away.”

‘The Unquiet Grave – or Child Ballad # 78, is a street ballad that was collected by the Harvard scholar, Francis James Child, in his unfinished ten volume collection, ‘The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1892-98)’. Without him, this little story which could have its roots in Ireland, England, Scotland or Wales, may have been lost forever. We do not know where or when Luke Kelly found this ballad, but he did, and it is beautiful. This is his version of a timeless story of tragic true love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyqBA_Qr3qs

Luke Kelly passed away on the 30th of January 1984.  

Enjoy, Brian.

You can also read my blog on http://www.thenewwildgeese.com 
Photos, John Carlos, Anna King and various others in Public Domain. 

Prayer of St. Brendan, the Navigator

-Prayer of St. Brendan, the Navigator- 

When St. Brendan got back from his travels discovering America in a small wooden and leather boat around 564 AD, he wrote a book in Latin, 'Navigatio Brendani' or 'The Voyage of Brendan', which, some 900 years later (1477) convinced Christopher Columbus that there might just be something out there beyond the western horizon.
The rest is history!

After he got back to Ireland, Brendan, filled with a missionary zeal, sailed from his native Kerry, round by the Aran islands, in by Salthill to Galway and soon founded an Abbey at Annaghdown, five miles up the Corrib River from Galway City (which did not exist for another 700 years). 

Later on, he founded the Cathedral at Clonfert, between Portumna and Athlone, on the banks of the River Shannon. Clonfert Cathedral is still in use as a church today and has a most magnificent Romanesque doorway that attracts visitors from all over the world each year. St. Brendan is the Patron Saint of the Diocese of Clonfert and I suppose, he really is our Irish patron saint of Journeys and Voyages. 

He died at the Abbey in Annaghdown in the care of his sister, Briga and is buried at Clonfert. 

This is his prayer. It can be applied to many journeys, including the spirit and the mind.
It is as meaningful today as it was 1500 years ago.

-Prayer of St. Brendan, the Navigator-

'Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You'.

One of the many stories I tell on my Walking Tours of Galway. If you ever go to Galway, come join me on a wonderful walk of discovery in Galway, the City of the Tribes, European Capital of Culture 2020. Follow me on Twitter @galwaywalks or on Facebook www.facebook.com/galwaywalks/
Photo - Image from 'Navigatio Brendani', St. Brendan encounters a whale.