Seanchaí

My exit interview with Ms. Clare Murphy

Clare Murphy

On my very last day in Ireland I had the good fortune to meet Clare Murphy in Galway City.

The youngest of the storytellers I’ve met, Clare’s repertoire delves deep into the past with mind to the present. She tells Celtic tales with respect to the rest of the world.

In the span of 10 minutes she outlined the millennia-long history of the peoples of Ireland on a small piece of notebook paper.

She is, in a word, fluid.

Under British rule, she explained, storytelling is how Irish culture survived when its rights, religion, education and music were taken away.

Now, with the Republic approaching 100 years of independence, storytelling will likely shift again.

“It has to change,” Clare said. “How can it not? We’re organic. We humans change all the time. If we want something to stay the same, we’re fools, because we’re clinging to something.”

What a fateful way to end the trip, eh?

Later, Clare and I went down to the River Corrib, where she told a story from the youth of the Irish hero Cuchulainn.

Click here to watch a video clip, in which you'll learn how the young Cuchulainn, at the time named Setanta, disobeyed his parents and entered history.

This post is dedicated to Denise & Ritch Koeth

May the wind be always at your back

The Cliffs of Moher

I am leaving Ireland today. I am leaving the seanchaí, the file and everything in between. My journey has been defined by a density of experience. I am not leaving here the same person I arrived.

In the words of an author I discovered at “Seanchaí,” Co. Kerry’s writer’s museum:

You who come to me with such avid eyes
I wonder what you expect to find …

Is there anywhere in the world you do not meet yourself?

My time here is finished. Come on now, leave Ireland with me.

Stay tuned for updates from London in the next several days.

This post is dedicated to Mike Prewett

And another Guinness, and another Guinness

It is a strange problem to have somebody buying too many drinks for you. But this was the case Wednesday with Mr. Kieran Shiels, Ballinderreen, Co. Galway.

Beware, telecommunications types: the world “multimedia" does not presently apply.

Having recently been divested of my rental car, I wandered Wednesday into the nearest pub, Jordan’s, for an afternoon diversion.

There I met Kieran Shiels, a local farmer whose family has lived in the village for generations. He politely turned down my attempt to record him, but in the meanwhile bought me several pints and regaled me with local lore.

He told me the devil lived in the fireplace of Jordan’s pub. He told me there was a haunted house not far from his homestead. He told me the latest drink he bought me was filled with piseóg (pish-OAG), or Irish black magic.

In the end, I had to refuse Mr. Shiels’ offer to buy me a fifth pint, “for the road.” I left him feeling very much satisfied I had encountered the true type of Irish storytelling. The kind you can’t capture. The kind that sticks with you, regardless of recorders or cameras.

And anyway, I felt like putting down my equipment for a day.

For further explanation, ask me when you see me again. I'll tell you a story.

This post is dedicated to James Chesebro

An evening with The Master, Eamon Kelly

Eamon Kelly Portrait

“I only know what I heard, I only heard what I said, and a lot of what was said was lies.”

This is how Eamon Kelly, Ireland’s famous storyteller, ended the recording I bought of his work. I had been hearing Mr. Kelly’s name through all my travels and so felt compelled to see his work myself.

And he is a master storyteller. He hooks his audience with intensely local narrative threads. He relates details so minute as to defy reason. People laugh, gasp and cheer.

It’s easy to see why Mr. Kelly captured Ireland’s attention with his radio and television recordings.

But there’s a tension in his work, too.

Mr. Kelly is widely known as a seanchaí, but it’s been said to me that he was not; that instead he was an actor playing the role of a seanchaí, which even at the time he was working was a figure disappearing from Ireland.

I wish I had the chance to interview Mr. Kelly, but he passed away almost three years ago.

The recording I watched is 20 years old. On the back, the liner notes dwell almost completely in the past tense.

“In the Irish countryside the traditional storyteller was known as ‘The Seanachie,' " they read " … Eamon Kelly is Ireland’s master Seanachie. This video captures the art he has preserved for all to enjoy.”

This post is dedicated to KT Early

Come warm your arse by the fire

Pat Speight at The English Market, Cork

It’s luck that I met Pat Speight near the end of my trip. This man I would have called a seanchaí three weeks ago offered a lucid point when I met him in Cork City on Saturday.

He says the seanchaí no longer exists, at least in the pure cultural sense. That term belonged to a time when storytelling was more endemic to the Irish way of life: neighborhoods gathered together in a house to hear tales, and this was the entertainment.

“The seanchaí is part of a time that is gone,” Mr. Speight explained. “We don’t generally meet around houses as we did before, because the context for storytelling has changed.”

That being said, Mr. Speight is a full-time storyteller with a quick accent and a robust joie de vivre. Usually appearing in a dark fedora, he goes by “Pat the Hat” to friends and fans.

His work, he said, carries on the tradition of the seanchaí, but it does not represent a new generation of the old Irish culture.

At any rate, you must come warm your arse by the fire with this short tale Mr. Speight shared with me.

This post is dedicated to Jessica Millis

The father, the son and the holy pagan rituals

Celtic Cross, Co. Tipperary

There’s a tree in the Costa Rican rainforest that grows from the top down. Birds drop the seeds in the canopy and the sapling winds down around another, already-mature trunk, intertwining with the branches and soon reaching the ground.

This is as apt a metaphor as I can think of for paganism and Christianity in Ireland. Perhaps more than many would suspect, Catholicism here is historically joined with the non-Christian past.

Richard Marsh tells the tale of Oisín (ah-SHEEN), a pagan warrior poet who, at least as far as the story goes, spent his later years living and working with St. Patrick.

Eddie Lenihan suggests that if you don’t believe in fairies you’re one step away from not believing in God.

And at Croagh Patrick, visitor centre manager Geraldine Kilcoyne responds to the stories of St. Patrick and paganism separately.

A religion so often understood as rigid is in fact more pliable in light of Ireland's deep and varied history.

This post is dedicated to Christoph Schulte

A harrowing tale from the undersea depths

Sean O'Donoghue

Sean O’Donoghue’s business card reads: “Native Freeborn Irishman. Feng Shui Specialist. Irish Healing Poetry.”

Had I not met Mr. O’Donoghue last week, I would wonder how poetry could heal. The notion seems a bit new-agey for me. However, having heard him speak, I now understand exactly what he means.

When he tells a story, Mr. O’Donoghue speaks with a kind of understated intensity. His voice is gentle yet persistent, and it’s hard not to be captured by his words.

Last week in Dublin he shared a story called “Ripples,” which recounts a near-fatal accident he suffered while working as an oil company diver off the coast of Scotland. He had to haul himself back to the surface on his own cord, one foot “for each year of my young life,” he recalls.

Listen to a brief clip of “Ripples” here.

This post is dedicated to Judy Totts

Be careful: Demons still live on Croagh Patrick

Croagh Patrick

Perhaps more than any other place in Ireland, stories live in the land on Croagh Patrick, a 2,500-foot mountain in Co. Mayo.

It’s said St. Patrick cast the snakes out of Ireland from a spot on this mountain, and that he drove the malevolent demon Corra into submission from another.

Interestingly, Croagh Patrick was also a pagan worship site in pre-Christian times, particularly for the Celtic festival of Lughnasa.

Today, Catholic pilgrims make the ascent to the summit as penance, sometimes without shoes, stopping along the way to say prayers at various stations.

Thursday was a miserable day for hiking. Within an hour high winds and horizontal rain drove me off the mountain. The demons still live here, in my estimation.

But I did meet some pilgrims on the way down.

Two young, barefoot Irish men, Andrew and Patrick, told me they were doing what they were doing to wash away their sins, and for the simple reason of meeting a challenge. For them, at least, the stories hold a valuable truth.

This post is dedicated to Luke Trout

‘The Burren is all around you,’ Curtin says

The Roadside Tavern

In the hills of the Burren it’s always a different day than it is on the ground.

Wednesday was overcast and dry as I left Ballinderreen, but once I drove up and up, through the many switchbacks and down the narrow roads into the Burren’s hill country, the air was thick and humid, and a fog crept in from every corner.

In the village of Lisdoonvarna – featured in a moderately-known Janeane Garofalo movie from the ’90s – I met Peter Curtin.

He is the third generation of his family to run Curtin’s Roadside Tavern, a pub off the main drag in which many of the family, including Peter, grew up.

Peter Curtin

It didn’t take much prodding for him to sit down with me and begin sharing an afternoon’s worth of stories, from the public to the personal.

What struck me was how often the Burren, one of Ireland’s most unique landscapes, showed up in the narrative.

Treat yourself to one of Mr. Curtin’s stories here. This one is about a photo book called “A Day in the Life of Ireland" published in 1995.

This post is dedicated to Laura Dixon

Must be something in the River Feale

Seanchai Centre

It’s said that Co. Kerry has three capitals: Killarney of the lakes, Tralee of the roses and Listowel of the writers. I visited the latter on Tuesday for two reasons.

First, the “Seanchai” Kerry Literary and Cultural Centre is located there. An inordinate number of famous Irish writers come from Co. Kerry, and this is their home. Second, Ireland’s most famous seanchai, Eamon Kelly, is enshrined at the centre.

Mr. Kelly, who passed away a few years ago, is part of the Irish consciousness in the way that Johnny Carson is part of the American. For years his Sunday-night radio programs captivated much of the country.

Almost every storyteller I have met so far has given him a nod, so I went to Listowel hoping to learn more. I met Noreen Pattwell, a centre employee who knew Mr. Kelly personally.

He was a gentle man who always had time for a chat with people about town, she remembered, no matter who they were.

Eamon & Noreen

Listen to Mrs. Patwell describe his storytelling presence here.

After a quick walk along the River Feale, I left Listowel with the only Eamon Kelly memorabilia the centre had on hand: a recording called “Stories From Ireland, as told by Eamon Kelly,” and God help me it’s on VHS.

I have not watched it yet. I barely know what to do with it.

This post is dedicated to Jill Christman