Liz's Ireland Journal

The Busiest Day I Ever Had in Ireland

          My busiest day ever in Ireland started late afternoon on Wednesday, June  18^th. The next day, June 19th, included a guest storyteller in class, a trip to Portumna to tell stories, Sandy and Dwight Oglesby arriving in Athlone, and the evening concert of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival.

I picked up storyteller and scholar, Miceál Ross, at the train station in Athlone at 6:30 p.m.  Here’s what happened after that over the next 28 hours:

ü  6:45 p.m. – Drove Miceál back to the apartment, made him an omelet and visited with him and my flat mates Mary and Elizabeth.  He was able to explain the Lisbon treaty that the Irish had voted down. He had spent a lot of time campaigning for it and was livid that it hadn’t passed.

ü  10:00 p.m. – Before I went to bed I remembered that Sandy and Dwight would be arriving the next day at the Croi Oige Student accommodation.  I had forgotten to get towels ready for them, so I ran a load over to the laundry.

ü  10:15 p.m. – Went on to Google. Maps and got detailed directions to Portumna, emailed myself the link so that I could print them in the lab the next morning.

ü  11:00 p.m. – Thought through what stories I would tell the next day at the Portumna library.

ü  11:30 p.m. – Tossed and turned in bed until about 5:30.

ü  5:30 a.m. – Got up, showered, ate, dressed, and ran over to the laundry to put the towels in the dryer.

ü  8:00 a.m. – Made sure Miceál was up.

ü  8:15 a.m. – Went back to the classroom and printed off the map and directions to Portumna.

ü  8:30 a.m. – Started class and gave the students who were telling that evening in the concert a chance to rehearse.

ü  9:30 a.m. – Ran back to the apartment to bring Miceál back to class. We had an exciting session with him over the next hour and a half.  That's him regaling us at the beginning of the post.

ü  11:00 a.m. – Grabbed the towels out of the laundry and folded them when class was over.

ü  11:30 a.m. – Drove Miceál to the train station.

ü  11:45 a.m. – Carefully placed my map, directions, and cell phone in the seat next to me.

ü  11: 50 a.m. – Drove directly to Portumna with nary a false turn.  A beautiful drive through the Irish countryside. I took a conscious moment to remind myself how glad I was to be in Ireland.

ü  1:00 p.m. – Met the librarians, had delicious sandwiches and tea and then a  really satisfying session with the children and teachers from the local school.

ü  2:30 p.m. – Drove home.

ü  3:30 p.m. – Dropped my cell phone in the toilet and flushed before I realized it was in the bowl.

ü  3:31 p.m. – Cursed.  Cursed again.  Took phone apart to try to dry.

ü  4:15 p.m. – Drove to the bus station to wait for Sandy and Dwight around the time I thought they were supposed to arrive, since now my phone would not be receiving a call from them.

ü  4:30 p.m. – Found them, explained why I hadn’t answered the phone, and drove back to the apartments.  Found Gavin.  Found their apartment.  Took them their towels and a few other amenities.  Told them where the Londis was and that we would be leaving for the concert at 5:30.

ü  5:00 p.m. – Grabbed a quick bite, threw on a different set of clothes, attempted to style hair.

ü  5:30 p.m. – Drove Sandy and Dwight to the Aidan Heavey Library in Athlone.

ü  5:45 p.m. – Met Mae McLynn and the other librarians, moved some chairs, welcomed Danielle and our featured teller Jack Lynch from Dublin.

ü  6:30 p.m. – Welcomed the audience, composed of almost all of our Study  Abroad Ireland Students, the librarians, our arts officer from the Westmeath County Council, and several other local people.  Three of my students from the Irish Storytelling Tradition told stories:  Jake McKindles and Amber Watson (pictured), and Lindsey Stokes.  They all did extremely well. Jack Lynch was, of course, the star of the show.  In between emceeing, I posed for the photographer from the Westmeath Independent with Mae and Danielle.

ü  8:00 p.m. – Concluded the concert, gabbed with lots of people, and said our  good-byes.

ü  8:30 p.m. – Drove to The Shack for a celebratory pint with Jack, Danielle, Sandy and Dwight, my colleagues and several students.

ü  9:30 p.m. – Said more good-byes and drove home.

ü  10:00 p.m. – Fell in bed!

ü  10:30 p.m. – zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I Got Lost in Ballinasloe!

             We got back from Dublin on Tuesday afternoon, the 17^th of June.  Wednesday and Thursday were my days to tell stories in the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival.  I was expected in Ballinasloe for a 1:30 session at the library on Wednesday.  I wanted to be there at 1:00 so I could visit with Mary Dillon, the librarian in Ballinasloe and one of the Festival planners. 

             I’ve been to the library in Ballinasloe many times and I was sure I could drive right to it.  I did drive right to Ballinasloe, but then I spent the next 25 minutes driving around in the rain trying to find the library. I pawed around in my purse for my phone as I drove so that I could call Mary. I could not put my hand on my phone and convinced myself that I'd left it home. I hadn't.  Once I got there and calmed down, I found it lurking in a dark corner of my bag where phones should not go alone.

             I really was very close the whole time, but I just couldn’t quite get there. Check out this link for a map of Ballinasloe.  You’ll see it is not a complicated town.  How clever it would have been for me to have a nice map like this before I left Athlone! Perhaps also knowing which street the library was on would have helped. Or how about having my phone sitting in the console of the Nissan Micra where I could reach it?  This is a regrettably apt illustration of what my husband Mark often says about me: "What she lacks in facts, she makes up for in confidence." I was so sure I knew just how to get there!

            I finally stopped at the county council offices and got directions. I was only two blocks away from the library and probably hadn't ever been much more than that. I just kept finding new ways to circle it without getting there.  I walked in the front door of the library just as the children were walking around the corner from their school.  We had a good session, and when the children left, Mary brought out a beautiful tray of sandwiches and hot cups of tea.  That’s them at the beginning of the post.

Mary told me not to worry about getting lost in Ballinasloe. She said that signage in Ireland is terrible, and sometimes even nonexistent.  She told me about a time that she and a group of people were being driven to an event on the other side of the island in a small bus.  The professional driver got lost! 

It made me feel better, but I did get very explicit directions from her to my session in Portumna the next day. Portumna is on the north end of Lough Derg, and another 30 minutes past Ballinasloe.

Ballyhoo in Baile Atha Cliath

She is not an Irish town

And she is not English,

Historic with guns and vermin

And the cold renown

Of a fragment of Church latin,

Of an oratorical phrase.

But oh the days are soft,

Soft enough to forget

The lesson better learnt,

The bullet on the wet

Streets, the crooked deal,

The steel behind the laugh,

The Four Courts burnt.

This is the fourth stanza from Dublin by Louis MacNeice. Its baleful tone is a good match for my memories of Dublin this year, especially the first day or two.

The Gaelic for Dublin is Baile Atha Cliath, pronounced Bal-yeh Awe-hah Clee-ah, which means something like ‘town of the hurdled ford,’ or ‘settlement of the ford of the reed hurdles.’  Study Abroad Ireland goes to the Town of the Hurdled Ford every summer for Bloom’s Day, June 16^th, the day described in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

This summer’s trip to Dublin got off to a very bad start – one that left the faculty fearing ‘the crooked deal, the steel behind the laugh.’  We arrived at the Abbey Court Hostel to discover that our first night’s rooms had been cancelled.  Somehow, the hostel had figured out it was an error before we arrived.  Although they had already rebooked most of the rooms, they still had enough for about 40% of our group of 35. They had found additional rooms for the remaining 60% in a hostel quite a distance from the city center.

Mary and I divided up the group.  We stood out on the busy sidewalk and told everyone what had happened and who was going where. We made arrangements to meet back at Abbey Court early the next morning. The hostel paid for taxis to take them there.  We sent all the young men, some of the young women, and three of the faculty – both of the men and the most experienced traveler.

With the value of hindsight, I now wish I’d gone too, or instead of one of the other faculty. But, I didn’t; I stayed at the Abbey Court. Instead of sleeping in a room with a bunch of backpackers in their 20’s, I dragged the mattress from bed #5 – the one I’d been assigned – into Mary’s room and spent the night on the floor.  That’s me hamming it up in the photo at the top of the post.

It was very stressful. We were upset that the arrangements were scrambled and we were confused as to how they got that way. We were worried about the students we had sent out to the other hostel. Later we learned that the alternate hostel was not the most secure and that made us feel even worse. The students handled it with great aplomb.  Many of them stayed out very late which meant they weren’t even in those rooms for very long.  The next day the whole group was installed in rooms at the Abbey Court.

As I said to myself and to Mary several times, “Nothing bad happened.”  And that was true, but how did it happen that the rooms were cancelled? I was with Mary when she confirmed them earlier in the week.  Did the hostel get a call from someone meaning to cancel other rooms and accidentally cancel ours instead? The manager told us that she had talked to an American, but that was about all she knew.

And even though nothing bad happened, and our students more than rose to the occasion, it really put a dent in my Dublin enthusiasm. It was as if my anticipation of a great Dublin weekend had been a bright red balloon floating above my head.  Once it burst, I couldn’t let go of the string and drug it along, deflated, for the rest of the weekend.

Looking Over Dublin Town

I remember sitting on a roof, looking over Dublin town

It still seems so warm

A sunny day, the shirts were off with love in the air

Oh, we had it captured there

We didn’t care too much about the weight of it all

(from Dublin Song by T. Noonan )

Dublin got off to a rough start, and my enthusiasm for being there was dented, but not crippled.  I still managed to have some fun.  On Saturday night, even as we were reeling from the hostel mix-up, Mary and Elizabeth and I had dinner with Sandy and Dwight Oglesby at Dunne & Crescenzi, the great Italian restaurant where Liz Weir and I had eaten earlier in the week. 

Liz and her daughter Clare were in Dublin that weekend for their pilgrimage to the Leonard Cohen concert.  I met them and their friend Kay Sunday morning for brunch at The Queen of Tarts.  Liz said it was the best concert she’d ever attended.  Clare asked, “Is it wrong to lust after a 70 year old?”  We said it was not! After brunch with them, I spent most of the rest of the day with Miceal Ross.  We sat in Johnny Fox’s Pub on top of the Dublin Mountains and talked for several hours.

That night I ran into a group of students who were all heading out to take the Dublin Ghost Bus Tour. “It’s storytelling! You have to go!” So I went.  Most of the participants were about their age – early twenties.  I’m pretty sure I was the oldest person on the bus by a good 15 to 20 years.  As a storyteller, I’d have loved to had a crack at crafting the “stories” the actor on the bus told.  Some of them were really worth telling!  But, in his defense, he really knew his audience – they were delighted with their experience. And the point wasn’t really the stories, it was to create an opportunity for people to feel scared, jump, and squeal while simultaneously being perfectly safe.  The fun for me was being with our students – and that they wanted me to go!

Monday was Bloomsday, and I decided to go out for breakfast before the events.  On my way, I passed the hearse and re-enactors preparing for Paddy Dignam’s funeral, which takes up most of Chapter 6 in Ulysses.  Later we all trooped behind Mary to Meeting House Square in Temple Bar to hear readings from Ulysses by celebrities, politicians, writers, scholars, and diplomats.  We stayed less than an hour and then cut the students loose.  Mary and I headed for Hodges Figgis Bookstore on Dawson Street.  On our way to lunch at Bewley’s on Grafton Street, we passed Davy Byrne’s Pub on Duke Street.  Since the pub is mentioned in Ulysses, there were actors in the street playing a scene from the book.  It was great!  I wish the students could have seen that instead of listening to the Korean ambassador read from the first chapter.

After lunch we passed a living statue of James Joyce on Grafton Street.  He stood absolutely still until someone dropped coins into his case. Then he slowly and decorously opened a box and offered it.  Inside were folded scraps of paper with lines from Ulysses.  I can’t remember what mine said.  I stuck it in my pocket so that I’d have it for the blog, but I never saw it again. 

Once every one got settled in Abbey Court, Mary and Elizabeth had a room in a new building owned by the hostel.  It was a full apartment on the fourth floor of a building facing the Liffey.  Their window looked right across the river into Temple Bar.  One evening we saw a rainbow behind the buildings.  I took it as a good sign.

Clonmacnoise

I got to go to Clonmacnoise twice this summer.  It’s just south of Athlone on the Shannon.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the midlands of Ireland.  Since I live in a place where the river is held captive to provide water and electricity, I love to see a river running free. The first time I went with our students; they were impressed.  The second time I went with Mark; he was not.  Both times it was crawling with busloads of German, and some Spanish tourists, but not many Irish people. 

The first time I went to Clonmacnoise was the first summer I taught for Study Abroad Ireland in 2005.  When we returned I went to the Londis, our corner market, for some groceries.  The young Irish clerk asked me where we’d gone that day.  When I told her we’d taken the Viking Boat down the Shannon to Clonmacnoise, she looked puzzled.  When I told her a little more about it, she shook her head, “No, it doesn’t ring any bells.”   Over the following years I’ve become ever more aware that the old sites and old stories of Ireland that fascinate me and other tourists are often of little interest or relevance to many modern Irish people. 

Nonetheless, the old stories and myths do a have a very strong presence in Irish life and culture. The Cuchualain Transport is just one example of how the mythic heroes pop up in everyday life.  It was parked outside the hospital in Athlone.  Maybe the connection is between the wheelchair and Cuchulainn's chariot.                                                The picture at the top shows five Study Abroad Ireland students at Clonmacnoise with the Shannon and its flood plain behind them. From left: Jared Corder, Kalli Fox, Ashley Bagley, Alex Shannon, and Ed Pettet 

Why I Love Clonmacnoise

His two guardian angels then came to Patrick and he asked them if it were the will of the King of Heaven and Earth that he be listening to the tales of the Fian.  They answered him with one voice: ‘Dear holy cleric,’ they said, ‘these old warriors tell you no more than a third of their stories, because their memories are faulty. Have these stories written down on poets’ tablets in refined language, so that the hearing of them will provide entertainment for the lords and commons of later times.’*

             We have texts like the one above from Tales of the Elders of Ireland because of monasteries like Clonmacnoise, a monastic site established in 545 A.D.  Although that particular story wasn’t written there, Clonmacnoise held a central role in the bardic system that recorded many of the old stories. We wouldn’t have many of the great tales of Irish myth if the monks at monasteries like Clonmacnoise hadn’t written them down.  Robin Flower in The Irish Tradition writes, “No evidence has ever been produced to prove the existence of writing for literary purposes in Ireland before the coming of Christianity” (p. 73).

As I’ve learned more about Ireland in early Christian times, I’ve developed a better understanding of why the Irish embraced Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Fianna were the warrior bands that patrolled Ireland.  There job was to protect the borders and the people.  At their best they did that with honor and glory.  At their worst they were bloodthirsty gangs. Their exploits make great stories, but the reality of living with them took a toll on the populace.  The translators of Tales of the Elders of Ireland write:

(T)he Church moved rapidly into a central and dominant role in Irish society.  Once established, it also felt obliged in Ireland, as elsewhere in medieval Europe, to mediate and mitigate the effects of endemic violence in society.  Thus it is likely that the Church was the major agent in the demise of the fian as a viable social institution.**

             Finn McCool, the greatest leader of the Fianna, represents the best of the honorable warrior tradition.  Finn was a poet and a warrior, and known for his generosity.  In Tales of the Elders of Ireland, St. Patrick asks Caoilte, the ancient warrior who had served Finn, if Finn McCool had been a good leader.  Caoilte responds:

             ‘Were the dark leaves gold, that the trees discard,

             And the white waves sliver, Finn would give away all.’

‘What has kept you warriors alive for all these years?’ asked Patrick.  Cailte replied, ‘The truth of our hearts, the strength of our arms, and the constancy of our tongues.’ ***

             That last line is what I’d like to see on my tombstone: Elizabeth Ann Warren, 1954-2054, Kept alive for one hundred years by the truth of her heart, the strength of her arms, and the constancy of her tongue.

*Dooley and Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland, p. 12, ** p. xii, *** p. 6.

Bringing a Little Bit of Arizona to Dublin

"But one year as I grew older

Mama firmly told me no.

When the boys went out on roundup,

Mama said I couldn't go.

Then she tried to teach me cooking,

How to sew and keep the place.

But my heart was roping yearlings,

And I longed to barrel race."

(from "Tomboy," by Dee Strickland Johnson)

Last year I was the featured teller for the June meeting of the Dublin Yarnspinners.  I got an email from Aideen McBride in early May asking if I would tell for them again on June 12^th and I was delighted to accept.

The Dublin Yarnspinners are led by Aideen, her father Jack Sheehan, and Jack Lynch.  That’s me talking to Jack Sheehan at the left.  Jack is one of my favorite people.  I first met him two years ago when we both participated in Tales on the Rails.  We, and several other storytellers, told stories on the train from Dublin to Belfast to call attention to storytelling in general and to Cultra specifically.  Cultra is the annual storytelling festival at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum that Liz Weir has been organizing for twenty years. I had a great time with Jack and later told Aideen that, god forbid, should anything happen to my husband Mark, I’d be interested in her dad.  “Get in line,” she said.

Liz Weir drove me to Dublin for the evening.  When we got inside the Teacher’s Club on Parnell Square where the meetings are held, there was Dwight Oglesby sitting outside the room on a bench.  In just another moment, Sandy came around the corner!  Liz knew they would be in Dublin and had helped them figure out how to be there as a surprise for me.

They had a good turnout.  I’m not sure exactly how many, but the room felt full. Last year I told stories about my grandmother, so this year I told about my grandfather, Harry P. Irving.  After giving some general background and a few anecdotes about him, I told “The Horny Toad’s Grandparent’s.” Then I told Dee Strickland Johnson’s poem “Tomboy.” I finished the first set with “The Calf Scramble.” 

Then several people, including Sandy and Liz, came up from the audience to tell.  We took a break and I visited with lots of people from the audience including Richard Marsh, a Dublin storyteller, and a woman I’d met the previous year. When we resumed, several more people told and then it was my turn again.  I told “The Underground Forest” and closed with “A Full Brain,” a story about how storyteller’s came to be.  I had intended to work in “Ballerina Eyelashes,” but we ran out of time.

We had to drive back to Athlone, so we got out of there as quickly as we could – which wasn’t all that quickly.  Jack Lynch drove us back to the Setanta Car Park where we’d left our car.  We got back to Athlone about 12:30 a.m.  I expected to fall into bed, but my two flatmates, Mary Aldridge and Elizabeth Ursic, were still up, so we stayed up too and exchanged rants on various topics with them.

Liz Weir

“The lamp that lit that room, a thousand pounds wouldn’t buy a wick for it.”  (a disguised description of the moon from “Lord Benbow’s Table” from When Turkeys Chewed Tobacco by George Sheridan)

Liz Weir was the lamp that lit the room of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival for most of the week of June 10^th.  She arrived on Monday night to tell in Longford on Tuesday.  She told for two Galway libraries, Loughrea and Portumna, on Wednesday.  On Thursday she came to my class in the morning and then told for Athlone’s Aidan Heavey Library in the afternoon.  Thursday night she took me to the Yarnspinners in Dublin.  Friday morning she told at the library in Ballinasloe and by Friday night she was back home in Cushendall. 

During the week we had three great dinners out: Tuesday at The Olive Garden by the bridge over the Shannon in Athlone, Wednesday night with Danielle Allison at Grogan’s Pub in Glasson on Lough Ree, and Thursday night in Dublin at Dunne & Crescenzi, a wonderful Italian place a couple of streets over from Grafton Street.  It was a week full of stories, conversation, and food.  I was so sorry to see her go.

With my students in The Irish Storytelling Tradition, Liz emphasized the importance of being yourself as a storyteller and that each of us has his or her own style to find, develop and honor.  She told them how she became a storyteller and some of the ways that she has applied storytelling to issues of social justice. She told them several stories including “Lord Benbow’s Table” which is one of my favorites.

Her work to stop bullying and to promote tolerance made a great impression on them.  She developed and wrote the scripts for a series of cartoons on Early Years: The Organization for Young Children.  If you haven’t seen them, check them out here. They are deceptively simple and very moving.  There are six cartoons on themes including the inclusion of children who live in minority ethnic communities or who have a disability or physical difference. Last year when she was here she met some Traveler children in Ballinasloe and told them about one of the scripts she was developing.  One of their comments ended up in the final product – a comment about a dog – “He’s only being playful.”

             I had asked the class to read two articles by Liz, “Listen Up! A Tale of the Teller” and “Paddy the Irishman.”  Here are some of their comments about Liz and what they read:

“This was probably my favorite article so far because I could relate to it. I’m studying human development and declining communication skills and confidence are two major things that this generation is faced with, probably due to so much instant technology i.e. texting, e-mail, TV.. Everything’s so efficient that we no longer require good old fashion books, phone calls, or face to face chats!  I’m totally guilty too, but I’m afraid to see what’s going to happen to my kids or grandkids. I really love reading children’s books. I collect all the good ones because I have so much fun reading to them and acting them out. It’s something I hope to instill in my own children someday.”

“I really liked this. I loved Liz. She was so cool. I love that she wrote this and I want everyone to read it. Because even though it seems like we’re are becoming a more okay society with different ethnicities were still making jokes at others expenses just to get a laugh and that’s not okay. And we need to realize when we have gone too far.

“I really liked this article! I love that they (storytellers) are giving their skills back to the community! I love that they care enough about these kids and help them better with the talking and listening skills! It is such a good idea to have every teacher have this in their classrooms!”

“I enjoyed reading this article because I got an understanding of how important storytelling really is and also how effective it can be too. It makes me want to start telling stories to little kids.”

Liz told my students that the power of storytelling lies in the imagination.  The storyteller evokes images, but does not actually provide them the way television or movies do.  Listening to stories allows "the audience to do a bit of the work."  That, says Liz, is what engages them more deeply in what they are hearing. 

Niall De Búrca Comes to Athlone

                                                                                                                
                         “Stories are everywhere – they fall from the trees.” So we learned from Niall De Búrca, the second of our Three Rivers Storytelling Festival tellers. His exuberant, boisterous passionate, kinetic style of telling dazzled the students in my class. He started off with one of his signature stories; he called it his “flagship” story, “How the English Language Came to Be.”

Niall was raised in Galway, but his “bones” – his ancestors – come from County Mayo. I was delighted with the way that he consistently reinforced something that I want the students to understand: the connection between story, place, and family. All of his stories were connected to a particular place or to places in the Irish landscape. More than once he leapt to the map at the back of the room to show us just exactly where the story took place, or which family names were associated with which region of the country.

             He told us that it was the responsibility of the storyteller to “know the landscape, know the peoples of the landscape, and to know the stories of the people.” He talked about the huge social changes that were taking place in Ireland as the “new Irish” came with their talents, traditions and stories. He is committed to insuring that children are connected to traditional knowledge.

             His second story was “The Origin of the River Shannon.” He based his version on that of Douglas Hyde. He told us that folklore was so important to the Irish that their first president, Mr. Hyde, was a folklorist. The previous week Nuala Hayes had told one of the library audiences a very different version of the story. I wished my students had been able to hear both versions. It would have been a great teaching moment on the variety of stories in the tradition and what happens to them in the hands of different storytellers.

              One of my favorites of the day was a story about a woman he met in a nursing home in New Zealand. She asked him if he liked to sing, and when he said he did, they sang “Johnson’s Motor Car,” (click here for the lyrics) which is a song from the rebellion. In brief, Doctor Johnson’s car is appropriated by the rebels to transport guns and soldiers. After the war, he and his family emigrate to New Zealand. We end up learning that the old woman was his daughter. It was a great example of how to integrate history, music, and tradition into a story that can link them all together.

He ended his session with us by telling a long ghost story about Bearchan, one of the four wise men of Ireland. As he had throughout the session, he made the students jump with sudden changes in volume and intensity. They loved it every time.

Niall said that the storyteller’s primary tasks were to tell from the tradition, to add to the tradition, and most importantly to enjoy the process. He embodied all three. He told us traditional stories in modern accessible language and there was absolutely no doubt that he was enjoying himself. He incorporated some Irish when he was telling to my students, but later in the afternoon he was telling to the students from the Gael school he often told bilingually.

             Niall’s style is to embody his stories. He tells them with great physicality, and with every muscle of his body – especially those in his face. He incorporates accents from all over Ireland into his stories as well. We, with our inexperienced ears, could perceive the differences but not really understand their referents. The children in the afternoon, however, knew them well and it was clear that it deepened their enjoyment of the stories. To my class he had explained that the accents and facial expressions were all part of “setting hooks” to pull people into the story.

After his session with my students we grabbed lunch at the Londis and rushed down to the Aidan Heavey Library in Athlone. We had tea with Gearoid O’Brien and then Niall did his first session. We squeezed another cup of tea in before his second session. By 2:30 he was back on the road to a recording studio in Dublin where he was working on a recording of stories told by children.

One of the last things he told my students was that stories are “press-ups” for the imagination. He credited the Kerry writer Brian McMahon with saying that as food is to the body, and church is to the spirit, stories are to the imagination. I hope they remember that.

A Dream Realized

           The first night she got here we learned from our new colleague, Elizabeth Ursic, that she had been harboring a dream since the last time she visited Dublin in the summer of 2005.  Her dream, tenderly nurtured these many years, was to play the spoons. She already played the piano and the cello, but the problem with them is that neither is portable or percussive.  She said the spoons were the perfect third instrument for her since they met both of those criteria.

             When we were at the South Roscommon Singers Circle last Saturday night, Elizabeth asked Declan Coyne if he knew anybody who could teach her how to play the spoons.  He discouraged her in the strongest terms from undertaking such a task.  Now, if an Irish musician had told me that the spoons weren’t a proper instrument, and in fact were considered a nuisance, I would have skulked off in humiliation and abandoned my goal in an instant.  Not Elizabeth; she held on tight to her dream.

              Her constancy paid off quickly.  It turned out that Danielle Allison actually had some experience with the spoons.  She came in with us late Saturday night – actually early Sunday morning – and gave Elizabeth a quick lesson.

                But the big payoff came the next day.  Elizabeth told her students about her dream, and one of them introduced her to Barry Brady, a local friend of our colleague Bob Farwell.  Barry is a musician and he sat Elizabeth down on the apartment steps and gave her accelerated and highly effective training in the spoons.  Within a matter of moments she was playing them with verve and style. 

             Then she and Barry were joined by Peter, also known as “Mouse,” with his twelve-string guitar. Next, out came one of our SAI participants, Jared Corder, and his six-string guitar. Barry ran home and got his tin whistles and they all began to play, with Elizabeth accompanying them on the spoons.  Then several other students came to sit on the steps for the impromptu concert.

             Within eight days of arriving in Ireland, Elizabeth had achieved her dream.  By early the following week she was teaching others. It’s moving and inspiring to see such a powerful connection between a musician and her instrument.  The woman was born for it!