The tradition of Donegal fiddle is populated with giants, including the hidden ones who kept the tradition alive at any given time over the past century or so. At the turn of the last millennium, it could be argued that the patriarchs of Donegal fiddle were the Campbell brothers, Jimmy and Vincent. They related to Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, who cemented his place as one of the giants with his history of the tradition, “Between the Jigs and Reels,” that each year during the harvest, the travelers would converge and set up camp near Glenties. One of the gypsies, a tall, exceptional burly fellow known only as Gypsy Mor, was an accomplished fiddler, who believed firmly in the power of the harvest moon. In fact, it was only on the appearance of the harvest moon that Gypsy Mor would consent to shave. His favorite tune, thought composed in the 1840s by a man named Mac Fhionnlaioch, Gealach na gCoinnleach is now known throughout the world, appropriately enough as Harvest Moon.
I knew the above story, having not only met, but inebriated myself in the company of not only Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, but the Campbell brothers as well, on the very night of the harvest moon, twenty something years ago. The occasion was the Glenties Fiddlers Weekend, held the first weekend in October in the Highland Hotel. I was steeping myself in traditional Irish music, and delving into the rural culture of house dances that had apparently recently died out in the mid to late twentieth century.
I was in Donegal with the ex which wasn’t yet an ex, and another family and their three kids. The yet to be ex and the kids were all learning traditional Irish fiddle. I was gathering information, on the music, the rural culture that it sprang from, and the folklore that colored it.
Where I came from, in the midwest of the United States, the tradition in the mid-twentieth century was barn dances. Same concept as the Irish house dances, mainly the same instruments and even some of the same tunes. I remember visiting my grandpa’s mother at her farm in the country, and in the corner was a couple of fiddles. The tradition was that when someone who could play happens along, you provide the fiddle, and there would be a dance. I wanted to explore the connection.
I first heard traditional Irish music on The Thistle and Shamrock, a National Public Radio show, hosted by the lilting voice of Fiona Ritchie back in the early eighties, and fell in love with it immediately. Like a lot of other people, we’d record the broadcasts and guard those cassettes with our lives. Because it was impossible where we lived to find the music to buy. The internet hadn’t been invented yet, and I lived in comparatively speaking, the middle of nowhere.
Welcome to Donegal
There was a man living down in Glenties not very long ago. He was at a dance one night a long distance from his home. When he was cycling home about two oclock in the morning he saw somebody some distance ahead of him. It was a clear moonlight night. He cycled on until he came as far as her. When he was passing he spoke. The person had her head down and did not speak to him. He kept looking at her and when he was past he saw she was wearing a dance frock and that it was a girl who was dead for ten years. He cycled on and about a mile distant a great black dog jumped out from behind the ditch and attacked him. The dog jumped at his throat and was tossing him off his bicycle. He managed to get away from him. He went very quickly trying to go home before he would overtake him again. He could hear the whining of the dog in the distance. At the head of his own lane the dog overtook him again. He managed to get in home and banged the door behind him. When he entered he fainted. The people of the house were very much annoyed when they heard the story.
INFORMANT: Mrs A. Mc Dyer, National Folklore Collection, from a collection of folklore compiled by 1920 era Irish schoolchildren
Some places resurrect their regional folk music. In some places it never died, and Donegal is one of those places where the tradition had continued unbroken. This isn’t the diddly dee most people think of when they think of Irish traditional music. They don’t get the number of foreign tourists up there like they do in other places. Down south they often play a slower, lilting style. Up north it’s fire and blood. It’s the Led Zeppelin of Irish music.
Blame it on the mountains. It made traveling outside of the area difficult. It kept outsiders away. And it blocked the radio transmissions of the early twentieth century which would have brought new musical styles in much sooner.
At its heart, the Donegal tradition is a single fiddler, maybe two playing tunes passed down from generation to generation. In the era of the house dances it was all about dancing. But as that died out, and increasingly the music retreated to the pubs, it clung to an age old part of the tradition. The story that went along with the song.
In a lot of places, the people who play Irish music almost make it a point of pride not remembering the name of a tune. After all, they know so many. Up north they can tell you the name, the person they got it from, who they got it from before that, and the story of their lives. And if there was a bit of folklore that went with the tune, they tossed that in as well.
The Glenties Fiddlers Weekend at the time at least, was a very informal affair. The great thing about the weekend at the time was it wasn’t well known. In Donegal they called it a homecoming, and the term fit. All you had to do was be there, and be reasonably well behaved, and you were taken in.
It was the first night of the festival, or rather early morning of the second day, and I was lounging on the stairs of the Highland Hotel, leading up to the rooms, talking to Jimmy Campbell and Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, I had noticed that the conversation felt distinctly metaphysical, when Caoimhin said “we should speak in English so he can understand us.” At some point in the conversation they had slipped into speaking in Irish. Jimmy looked at me and said “nonsense, he understands every word we’re saying.”
And the funny thing was, despite knowing nothing about the Irish language, I understood every word they were saying.
The days were spent with workshops learning the fiddle tradition, which left me free to wander. I didn’t have to wander far. The bar usually had a fiddler playing, sometimes several. It was in the afternoon and I was at the bar with Vincent Campbell. One of the tunes we had been playing back home with great acclaim, was called Vincent Campbell’s Mazurkas. To me, it was like sitting across from a rock star. He saw my video camera and asked what I wanted him to play, and I asked for the Mazurkas that bear his name.
I don’t think he wanted me to film him out of some narcissistic desires. Mac Aoidh’s book had the effect of placing ordinary people into an extraordinary story, one spanning many generations. They represented the last of their line in some ways. I asked Caoimhin when people stopped believing in the folklore in Donegal. He told me that people of his generation has pretty much rejected it, which was a trend in the generation before him. Which would have been the generation of Jimmy and Vincent Campbell. The generation before that however, still had a lot of believers.
So even though you might be able to learn the tunes and the history behind them, you’ll never play them with the belief and superstition if you will, of those who came before you.
“Photography is magic. You can stop time itself. Catch slivers of moments to savor and share time and again.” Text by Jill Freedman
John Doherty, the traveling tinsmith finds the sweet spot in Donegal fiddle
There is no central location for Donegal fiddle music. Glenties claims a spot for hosting the homecoming. Another candidate would be Ardara, famous for its woolen industry, a short high street and Nancy’s pub. But mainly for the Doherty name that hailed from there, and one fiddler in particular, the tenth child of Mickey and Mary Doherty, who they named John. Music was in their blood, hailing from the line of hereditary pipers to the chieftains that ruled over the clans of Donegal. Mickey was a piper, a fiddler and a tinsmith. His mother sang and lilted, the art of singing the melody of tunes for dancing. His four brothers and one sister played the fiddle. So it was natural John picked it up as well.
His brother Mickey, named after their father made a name for himself nationwide, famous for radio broadcasts and field recordings. Mickey played more like the father, direct, full of power, fire and brimstone. John could do that as well, but he was known for dressing the tunes up a little more, more ornamentation, more of a bagpipe sound and feel coming out of the fiddle for the tunes that sprung up from that instrument. More delicate for the old harp tunes played on fiddles.
As the story goes, the English banned the harp due to its nationalistic symbolism, as they were trying to conquer the country at the time. When Ireland broke free, people picked up the harp once again. But there was no one alive who still played in the old style. Much of what we know about the old harp style of Ireland, came from the playing of the Dohertys in Donegal. In that family, the children inherited the tunes of their parents, and they had recorded if you will, in their fiddling, the style and ornamentation of the harp, along with many of the old harp tunes which would have been lost.
One of the reasons why John’s brother Mickey was more famous for a while in Ireland was that he stayed in one place, lived in a house and was easier to track down for performances and interviews. John carried on the family tradition of traveling tinsmith, walking across Donegal from town to town, house to house, selling his wares and services, and bringing them tunes as well. He’d do a bit of work for the family during the day, they’d give him a bed for the night, and when the neighbors got word he was there, they’d come around for the music.
A fairy ring in Donegal
“The girl was coming past this bush from the well with a can of water. She saw a little violin just the length of her own little hand and a bow beside it for playing it and both were as white as snow. She brought it home with her to show her father. She was going to try and play on it but her father stopped her and told her to bring it back and leave it where she found it. When she looked for it the next morning it was gone. At other times there were little pipes found at the same place, but only very small ones. The heads of the the pipes were only as small as my thimble.”
Collected from an elderly local informant by Caoimhin MacAoidh in “Betweeen the Jigs and Reels.”
In addition to writing about Donegal music, Caoimhin MacAoidh also plays it, and even offered instruction at his home. Which was also conveniently enough a bed and breakfast. It was situated in the townland of Ballyshannon, and I’m not sure anyone else lived in the town. They would start fiddle instruction in the morning and I’d walk out the back door and into the countryside.
The fairy ring was just down the road. He also pointed me to a bridge, and told me to lay on the side of it, just as twilight was coming on. Which I did. At the magical hour a horde of bats came flying out from beneath it, zooming inches above me as they danced around to begin their night.
It was a fairly short drive down to Sligo where I’d wander in the shadow of Ben Bulben. Going northwest you found yourself on the Atlantic coast, which is steeped in folklore.
An Irish folk tale, The Maid of Mullaghmore and memories of Muckross Head, county Donegal
One of the tune’s Mac Aoidh pointed me to when I asked about the connection between folklore and music was Maighdean Mhara Mhullach Mhoir, or The Maid or more precise, The Mermaid of Mullaghmore. I became quite familiar with the stretch of road between Killybegs, Kilcar and Teelin, and that was the tune that was playing when I finally decided to make a turn for the beach at Muckross Head, in hopes of catching the storm coming in.
In the story behind the song, a fishing captain kept hearing the song of a mermaid, and became enchanted. She was enamored with him as well, and despite the obvious difficulties in their anatomies, they pledged their love.
The mermaid told her father, who recognized true love at once. He knew she’d never be happy with life on the sea when she loved a mortal man from the shore. So he did what all loving fathers would do.
He decided the kill the captain.
One afternoon as the captain was in the bay fishing, the mermaid’s father called up a great storm. The small boat was tossed this way and that. Some of the crew went overboard and the craft began to come apart.
The night before, the captain and the mermaid had secretly married each other. She had a premonition of danger, and had given her new husband a magic dagger. He was to use it as his final hope on the sea, when all appeared to be lost.
The mermaid felt the sea rising with the storm. She went to her father who was nowhere to be found. So she set out for the bay to find her love and keep him safe.
When it was obvious all was lost, the desperate captain threw the dagger into sea, but held out little hope that it would work.
And yet it did. The sea calmed, and the captain turned his boat to the shore. As he did, he saw floating in the water, the body of his love, his dagger in her breast.
He never went to sea again.
The witches of Teelin
In Between The Jigs and Reels, Caoimhin MacAoidh relates the following story about a tune by the name of Taibhse Chonaill, or Conall’s Ghost. John Doherty played the tune as well, only he gave it the title of The Ghost of Bunglass. Bunglass is referred to as Sliabh Liag, or Slieve League in the tale.
“There were these three men from Teelin and they were up the back here making poitin by the stream. They had a still hidden in a small turf hut so it couldn’t be seen and the stream came nearby for water. When the first run was through they took off some of the wash and they had a few wee drinks to see how the poitín was coming along and they were satisfied everything was right. There came down a very severe fog from Sliabh Liag and nothing could be seen. The three of them got worried and decided they had better make for home because it would be easy to get lost in such conditions. So away they went but they got separated. One of them, this man Conall, was wandering for a long time and couldn’t find his way but all the time he could hear this piper playing this tune. And he was musical himself and he picked up the tune. He was frightened for his life but when he got home he was able to play the full tune. People say that it must have been some kind of faerie piper. But that story’s true and the man lived down here and his name was Conall and they called the tune Taibhse Chonaill ever since.”
There are a lot of similarities between the Irish beliefs in witches, and those found here in the midwest. Probably because many of our early settlers were Irish immigrants. They are know for screwing with the cows, and by extension, milk and butter. The witch, or hag would sneak into the churn and hide there, often in the form of a rabbit, and no matter how long you churned, you’d never get butter.
As a traveling tinsmith in Donegal, John Doherty collected more than tunes. He knew the history and the folklore of the places he frequented. He’d learned from his father that there was a particular double jig, An Sean Cailleach sa Mhaistrim or The Old Hag in the Churn that witches hated, they could not stand the sound of it. If you lilted it while churning, the witch would fly away and butter would flow.
Another tune associated with witches, imported from Scotland was An Cailleach Oiche, also known as The Night Hag or The Owl. Irish witches were known for shapeshifting, and the owl was one of their preferred methods of flight.
We found ourselves in Teelin early in the morning. We were trying to hook up with Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and her husband at the time, Dermott Byrne, as they had just bought and reopened the Rusty Mackerel, Teelin’s only pub.
Teelin is on the edge of the world. There’s nothing to the west but ocean. There wasn’t much to Teelin at the time, little more than a post office, a few B&Bs and this pub. We heard from the bartender that the BBC had been there the night before, till well in the morning, along with Mairead’s family and Jimmy and Peter Campbell. The BBC had been around much of our trip, filming a documentary on Donegal fiddle, which watching it now looks like an expensive home movie of the trip.
As the bartender suspected, when they showed up they showed up hungover, and were planning on leaving early. Which was disappointing. But Jimmy Campbell didn’t want to leave without a tune and so he got out his fiddle. He started talking about the music, then a tune, then he started to play. Mairead had hers out by the time he’d finished and started one. Then her father and pretty soon the pub was full of music.
And drink. Jimmy Campbell described himself as a mountain fiddler, and true, his style wasn’t as smooth as some of the others. But it had fire and grit. And it had Jimmy talking before and after the tune, telling its story, the story of the people who played it. I had spent the last night in Glenties, locked in with a slowly dwindling crowd of fiddlers, with Jimmy holding court in the center. By the end of the night there was about a half dozen of us, a few more snoozing on the floors and chairs, and Jimmy was still talking and playing. When they finally opened the door, the sun streamed through and they went straight from there to Mass.
The pub in Teelin was filling up. A guitar player showed up, who turned out to be John “Sean” Byrne, who wrote Psychotic Reaction which was a hit for the American band Count Five in1966. Count Five was known for wearing vampire capes on stage, and for disappearing right after the first album. Byrne, the lone Irishman in group told me told me knew they were destined to be one wonders, so he saved his royalties, headed to Donegal and had lived there ever since. He was a bit worse for the wear that day, though he did play along with a few of the tunes. But his biggest contribution to the afternoon was leading a singalong of Roger Miller’s King of the Road.
Around dark I carried the luggage down the road to the B&B, pretty certain I didn’t want to be driving. I checked in, the landlady eyed me suspiciously and I promptly passed out on the bed for an hour or so. There was no food available in Teelin at the time, and I’d subsisted for the entire day on Guinness, Jameson whiskey and crisps.
I eventually made my way back to The Rusty Mackerel which was packed to the gills as it was their first night open in a while. I found the ex who was not yet an ex at a table, and continued with the Guiness. After a while I got up for the loo. Blocking my way was a tiny blonde lady who just looked like trouble, and a bit like an owl. I believe I said “pardon me” and she stepped out of the way, said something I didn’t quite catch and I smiled and went in to do my business.
When I came back out we smiled at each other and I went back to the future ex. The lady followed and asked who this woman was. I said my wife. This seemed to be the wrong answer.
She asked for a cigarette and I gave her one. She broke it and threw it on the floor. She did this three times. She started speaking of how I had led her on, how I was ignoring the fact that I really wanted her, we both knew it and stormed off. A fellow whispered in my ear that whatever I did sure pissed her off, and I might want be careful, because she was a witch who lived down by the water.
Before I had a chance to thank him she was back and the crowd cleared out of her way as she dramatically raised her arms up and her hands over head, quite owl-like and brought the wrath of some unknown gods down on me. She was likely speaking Gaelic, I didn’t understand a word of it, but I knew something was about to happen.
I half expected to turn into a frog to be honest. I have to say, the experience certainly felt authentic. Especially her piercing screams and curses as she was drug out and the proprietor apologized and tried to make sure I was okay.
The funny thing is, she was right. I didn’t say anything, look at her any particular way, hadn’t even thought about it, but when I finally did … yeah. If she had just grabbed my hand and drug me outside to the rocky beach I would have been lost.
I’d likely feel more guilty for lusting in my heart, except if a certain Shetland fiddler had drug my wife out to the beach, she likely would have beat him there. So there’s that.
Pagans and monks merge above the sea in ancient Glencolumcille
I’d spent most of the past two weeks in various stages of drunk, chasing the fiddle music of county Donegal. The day before in Teelin, on the edge of the world, the music started late in the morning. I have a vague memory of staggering back to the B&B late that night. I didn’t make it till closing time. Before I left I had a curse put on me by a witch.
It did occur to me through the fog of hangover, that today I might find out whether the curse stuck or not.
A stop at Glencolumcille and a trip around the stations of the cross seemed to be in order. Glencolumcille has been a religious site for over 5,000 years. Some of the standing stones of the ancients were later Christianized with their own carvings. Glencolumcille was one of the earliest Christian sites in Europe, dating to the sixth century. The landscape around the village is dotted with ancient reminders from the neolithic period, but the Christians turned the landscape into a stations of the cross, based on all the holy sites, pagan and Christian of the area.
It was holy here before the Christians, St. Colm Cille blessed each of these stations, and today it’s hard to say what was originally a pagan stone, and what stones the Christians erected. And it really doesn’t matter, because in Glencolumcille the old religion and the new met peacefully and absorbed each other. What St. Colm Cille did here affected him greatly and when he moved on to Iona, he changed Christianity and in some ways, the world.
As for my curse, the worst thing that happened was a slide on my ass halfway down the valley of Baile na nDeamhan, or the Village of the Demons. Luckily St. Colm Cille banished the demons long ago and I chalk it up to a natural clumsiness, slick shoes and the rain that had begun to fall. And continued to fall.
The top of Glengesh Pass in Donegal, Ireland is breathtaking. You’re in one of the most remote corners of the country here, sparsely populated, windswept and wild. You’re as likely to hear Gaelic spoken as English, for life hasn’t changed a whole lot over the past hundred years. The land and sea and the weather it brings still govern people’s lives, as it once did in the village of Port.
Coming down off the pass leads you to Ardara, famous for its weaving. Behind us was the holy land of Glencomcille, deep in the Gaeltacht. The rain had been alternating between pounding and steady, the wind buffeting the car and it was a helluva a climb to the top of the pass. Particularly as it was being driven by an American who has no great love of heights and a nasty hangover.
I took a right, back towards the wild, windy north Atlantic, and the abandoned ghost village of Port.
On the abandoned village of Port, in Donegal Ireland … wind swept, wet and wild, the folklore of Irish music and the ideal place to go drowning
It wasn’t long before we were on a single lane road. It didn’t matter as there was no traffic. There were no signs, very few cottages, just open bog and rain. I was on my third raincoat since I’d arrived in Ireland. I didn’t pack one because I figured there’d be more of a selection in Donegal. I was right, but I didn’t expect to buy a whole range of them.
The first proved impossibly light – the rain poured in every available orifice. The second one … I don’t remember what happened to it. But it didn’t work either. Finally in the fishing village of Killybegs I bought a lined wax coat, with drawstring around every opening and a hood. I was ready.
Somewhere around here was the hamlet of Kityfanad, if anything of it remains. All I know about the place is a fiddler came there by the name of Padai Bhilli na Ropai. He’s famous for a tune called the Black Mare of Fanad, as well as a few others. There is some debate about whether the Fanad in question lies further north, where there’s a peninsula by that name. The tune is known there as well, credited to a fiddler by the name of Doyle. But the source for both versions of the tale was John Doherty, whose circuit that took him to this area. John was as important for the stories behind the tunes as he was for the tunes and his otherworldly technique. But John’s stories tended to vary depending on where he was and who was playing for.
John Doherty is quoted telling the tale in the book The Northern Fiddler. “It seems that Fiddler Doyle was returning home on horseback after playing at a dance party when he came to a crossroads, a place where visions had lately appeared of an old druid. As they approached the crossroads the horse, seeing the apparition when the man didn’t, shied away, and Fiddler Boyle, unaware of what might be wrong, had to exert mastery of the animal to get it to approach the road again. As horse and rider arrived at the intersection once again the vision reappeared, and this time the horse halted and threw back its head. Boyle managed to stay on the mount, but the horse’s gaze was fixed to the side, and he finally broke into a gallop. The vision stayed at the horses side and Boyle finally saw what it was. Though frightened, the fiddler and his mount finally made it home. After retreating to bed and sleep, the next morning Boyle was inspired by the rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the road and heard a reel in his mind, which he called “The Black Mare of Fanad.”
John Doherty telling the story and playing the tune The Black Mare of Fanad. Video from The Gravel Walks YouTube Channel, full of great Irish music. Visit The Gravel Walks
At the time we visited Port, there were no instructions on the internet to find it. It wasn’t on any of my maps. I finally found it on the Ordnance Survey Map, which was spread out over half the car as we were sure we had to be lost. Suddenly below us there was the ocean, and there was the turn marked on the map, which looked a road to nowhere.
I took it. As you come over the rise the Atlantic is below you. Port is almost like a shallow bowl, open on one side with the sea rushing in. We parked, I got out of the car to see how badly it was raining. It was tolerable, but the wind almost blew you over. Still, there were the ruined cottages just in front of me, so I took a step towards them. I sank almost to my thigh in the bog. After fishing my boot out I was pretty wet, but the coat held. I put my boot back on and said “come on.”
One of the things this area was famous for was its rope. The wind was giving a lesson in why. The winter gales that come off the north Atlantic are fierce. Concentrated in this shallow bowl, they’re amplified. These cottages date from the 19th century if not before and were roofed with thatch. Thatch is held down onto the roof with ropes and if the rope doesn’t hold, you lose the roof. The rope that these people made to hold their roofs down had to hold and so they developed their own technique. The wove together the boiled roots of fir trees which made an exceptionally strong rope, and that became one of the few commodities that came from Port.
It’s believed that Port was the first port opened in county Donegal. Trawlers still come in on occasion, but the port, like the village itself is long since abandoned. It’s often said it was abandoned during the famine because of lack of food. Caoimin MacAoidh, author of Between the Jigs and Reels – which had become my defacto tour guide, told me they left because life was just too damned hard there.
And yes, on a day like today you can see why, as there’s a gloom that settles on you as you wander the abandoned cottages. There are ghosts here, watching as you move through their homes, those hardy roofs long gone, doors and windows as well, nothing left but stone skeletons.
Once there was music here, and dancing. This was a stop on John Doherty’s route even. I stood in front of a hearth in one of the larger cottages. The best place for dancing was there on the hearth stone, as it was often hollow beneath for the ashes. The hearth stone was missing, but I could see the man in his heavy boots dancing before me on it, hear the scratchy fiddle coming from the corner of the room and feel the hot breath of the people within the small space.
Though the village itself had been abandoned long before, people continued to live here for periods of time long after. It was a bolthole, a place to pull yourself together, to plan your next move, to hide away from the world.
The walls of the cottage blocked the wind, but without a roof it didn’t do much about the rain. The waxed canvas did a great job of repelling it. It ran in rivulets down my arms, off my head and managed to find its way up inside the cuffs, around my neck and inside the coat, soaking the lining. I figured “what the hell” and abandoned my attempt at shelter.
Eventually I wandered out and down towards the sea. There’s a creek that runs into the ocean here, and I recalled a story about it. Tarlach Neill, head of the clan of Ui Bhaoill had a daughter, Siobhan who was learning to swim in that creek. She was swept to sea and drowned.
There’s an alternate version of that story. In that one his daughter was to be married to a man who lived nearby. She didn’t love him, instead she loved a sweet boy from here in Port. When the day of the wedding came she ran. She ran here to Port with her father in hot pursuit. As she reached the low cliffs looking over the ocean below, the cottage beyond where her beloved lived, her father caught up with her. She was given one last chance to come back and go through with the marriage. She refused. Her father picked her up and threw her off the cliffs and onto the jagged rocks below, and her body was washed away by the sea.
Some madness seized me and I decided to walk out a few feet into the water. The beach was covered in stones big enough to fit into the palm of your hand. I was happy to see my boot were waterproof after all, and didn’t plan on going out over the tops. I’m not stupid. Or so I thought.
The first waves that sizzled around my feet, grabbed the back of my boots like hooks and pulled me back towards the sea as it went back out. The rocks were like glass and within a couple of seconds the water was over the boots, and almost up to my knees. I danced that delicate dance people do when they’re trying not to topple over into the surf. So I wasn’t even aware when the second wave hit, splashing halfway up my thighs. As it receded I slipped further out, almost to my knees. It wasn’t hard to imagine Siobhan’s icy hands grabbing me by the ankles, pulling me out deeper towards my doom. It was time to panic, or at least make a concerted effort to find my way to shore.
It wasn’t as easy as it looked, and for a moment I thought of just letting go, getting out into deeper water and swimming towards the shore a bit to my right. But I instantly realized the waves would throw me into the rocks behind me. Or if I did make it away from this stretch, I’d be pounded into the jagged rocks that lay to my sides.
As I pondered my predicament, I slipped into deeper water.
The ex wasn’t helping much. She’d wandered over and was watching, and offered helpfully “don’t you think you’re out kind of far?” I thought about asking her to look for a stick I could grab onto, but there were no trees. She asked if I needed a hand, but I figured she’d go straight down if I grabbed it, and she wouldn’t hit land again till Iceland.
I inched my way back towards shore, moving a tiny bit then bracing myself to stay put when the next wave tried to pull me out and I finally stepped out of the surf and back into sanity.
Drying out in Ardara, literally if not figuratively
Another story told by John Doherty and recounted by Caoimin MacAoidh in Between the Jigs and Reels, is about a fiddler coming home one night, taking a shortcut across the park – which is what they called a field. There he hears the mournful song of the banshee, and he follows her through the park, to learn her song.
“It is a known fact that the Banshee was heard in this country fin this sense the word country implies a particular part of Donegal. Oh surely that’s no lie. But Paddy was coming past this park anyhow and then at that time the workers, you know, would, if there were stones lying in the park, they would gather them all up and pile them into a pile here and pile there and so on like that. But anyway, Paddy was late on coming home at night and there he heard the Banshee. Oh the people were all sleeping. All the whole country was all asleep. Well they used to call these lumps of stones “carnans” you know. But he heard the Banshee at the first carnan and he just stepped across the ditch very quick to see who was the singer. But when he went as far as the first carnan then the Banshee was at the second carnan. And Paddy followed on and there he was through the park all night till a little while before daylight in the morning. And the song that the Banshee sang Paddy had it all learned and it’s called Paddy’s Rambles Through The Park. It’s a very old, weird kind of an air.”
We ended up in Ardara, where John Doherty was born, and was a familiar fixture here throughout his life. When you duck into Nancy’s Bar you’d swear you could still hear his fiddle resonating off the walls. I also had the third best cheeseburger I’ve ever had in my life there. Twice.
We stayed at the Woodhill House, which dates partly from the 17th century and took a quiet break from the fiddles. As my soggy boots and coat steamed dry on the radiator, it brought the scent of the day into the room.
The following morning was sunny and I finally got a chance to get out in the fields alone. You can’t really get the feel for a countryside till you’ve found yourself lost and alone there. As it was late October and the tourist season was over, I got some fabulous deals on woolen wear in downtown Ardara. And almost almost got punched by a seventy year old man. I deserved it. As he pointed out, my parking was barbaric.
We’re finishing breakfast at the Woodhill House and the lady who owns it sat down for a chat, which turned to music. She said we should stay, because John Gallagher was coming by the play for a tour bus having lunch there. “John the Tay?” I asked and she was agog I knew who he was. She didn’t know about Caoimhin MacAoidh’s book, and I didn’t even realize he was still alive. I’m not sure he ever got over the fact that an American tourist would know who he was, and what tune to ask for.
That in a nutshell was Donegal for me. A place where anything might happen at anytime, where the wildness never seeped back into the sea. What I found was the fiddle was the carrier the of the folklore, not just from house to house, but from generation to generation.
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