At the Edge of Ireland Read online

  At the Edge of Ireland

  Seasons on the Beara Peninsula

  Written and Illustrated by

  David Yeadon

  In loving memory of my wife Anne’s late father, Sydney Coultish whose Yorkshire humor, courage, and warmth remain as examples to us of a full and fine life. He will be a vital part of our lives forever.

  Also with wonderful memories of the late Theo Westenberger dear friend, photographer supreme, and creator of beauty, magic, and mystery. You will never be forgotten.

  Also in admiration of the late Tommy Makem “Mr. Ireland” himself, renowned singer, songwriter, author, philosopher, compatriot of the beloved Clancy Brothers, and friend.

  The Beara—a haunting array of scenery—least toured but most spectacular of the southwestern peninsulas, showed herself to be an eerie beauty of the mists, especially suited for the ghosts and fairies who live there…. Wind, fog, sea and craggy rock crescendo here and the wildest of Ireland’s wild moors give testimony to the mysticism of the land.

  —JILL AND LEON URIS,

  from: Ireland: A Terrible Beauty (1975)

  Contents

  Epigraph

  List of Illustrations

  A Note on Research

  A Note on the Illustrations

  Little Insights on Ireland

  Introduction: Where and Why Beara?

  Spring

  The Season of Imbolc

  1 Coming into Dublin

  2 “Blow-In” Initiation

  3 Irish History—Fast

  4 The Ring of Beara: Our First “Loop” Adventure

  5 The Magic at MacCarthy’s

  6 An Introduction to Dzogchen Beara

  7 Monologue on Mortality

  8 Moments of Meditation

  9 A Delicious Work in Progress: Gastronomic Romps Around Beara

  10 Padraig O’Reagan: Ireland Then and Now

  11 A Very Revealing May Day

  12 Beara Healers

  13 Leaving Beara for the First Time

  Summer

  The Season of Beltaine (“Bright Fire”)

  14 Days with Carey Conrad

  15 Cookies with Cormac and Rachael

  16 The Creators

  17 The Enumerator Cometh

  18 Luka Bloom (and Christy Moore)

  19 At Anam Cara

  20 Listening and Learning

  Autumn

  The Season of Lughnasa

  21 The Ryder Cup Roars In

  22 With the Fish People

  23 This Farming Life

  24 A Scrap Odyssey

  25 Walking the Beara Way (or Not…)

  26 Weather Signs (and Visions Too)

  27 Danny’s “Song of Beara”

  Winter

  The Season of Samhain

  28 Set Dancing at Twomey’s

  29 Tales of the Seanachai

  30 A Trip to Tuosist (and Way Beyond)

  31 Celtic Conversations

  32 Returning to the Stones

  33 Rooting Around: A Final Adventure in Search of My Irish Heritage

  About the Author

  Other Books by David Yeadon

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  List of Illustrations

  Beara Peninsula

  George Bernard Shaw

  Castletownbere

  SPRING

  St. Brigid

  Samuel Beckett

  James Joyce

  Barman in Pub

  Liam Farrell—“Historian”

  Standing Stone

  Old Gas Pump near Healy Pass

  Old Copper Mines—Allihies

  Ballydonegan Beach and Allihies

  Derreenataggart Stone Circle

  The Bamboo Park—Glengarriff

  MacCarthy’s Bar

  Dzogchen Beara

  Skelligs in a Storm

  Norman Steele: Cheese Maker

  Nellie O’Connolly

  Padraig O’Reagan

  William Butler Yeats

  Seamus Heaney

  Trawlers at Castletownbere

  Dr. Michael Murphy by Celia Teichman

  Julie Aldridge by Celia Teichman

  O’Neill’s—Allihies

  “Clochans” on Skellig Michael

  SUMMER

  Hungry Hill

  The Hag of Beara

  “Curved Strata” near Allihies

  Cormac Boydell

  Leanne O’Sullivan

  Farm near Eyeries

  Luka Bloom

  Eyeries Village

  Sculpture at Mill Cove Gallery

  The Three Seanachai

  AUTUMN

  Barn Door, Adrigole

  Fisherman’s Boots

  Fisherman with Pot

  Mending Nets by Hand

  Beara Shepherd (a Rare Sight)

  Old Tractor near Dursey Island

  Poppa’s Boots

  Beara Way Scene

  Ancient Stones—A Fallen Dolmen

  Danny Quinn by Celia Teichman

  Céilí Faces

  WINTER

  A Seisuin Group

  Tom O’Ryan

  The Healy Pass

  Sheela-na-gigs

  A Collage of Celtic-Christian Symbols

  Derreenataggart at Night

  Castletownbere Boats

  A Note on Research

  FIRST, I’M SURE THAT CONNOISSEURS OF Irish history and the country’s socioeconomic subtleties will find a few places in this book to let fly with contradictions at my gleaned research. The problem with Irish history is the viewpoint. This of course is what led Henry Ford to the blunt conclusion that “history is bunk,” based largely on the fact that historical facts are malleable, selectable, and notoriously unfactual (a quandary obvious in any law court every day). Ford also pointed out that history and the facts to support it were invariably compiled by the victors or survivors of any particular battle or other shifts in the status quo, not to mention the personal spins of the historians’ political/social biases and regular revisions in the context of longer term hindsights and perspectives and shifts in power, control, and politics.

  So—generally speaking I’ve taken what one might call the “cautious” path with Irish and even local Beara history. I’ve tried to avoid putting my own overly neophyte spin on things (despite arduous research that inevitably made it even more difficult for me to arrive at any hard and fast conclusions). I thus left it largely to the locals—some very opinionated locals usually—to give me their erudite and effervescent summations. And in terms of their and everyone else’s words in this book, I have relied primarily upon transcripts from my beloved little microtapes, used whenever I chatted with potential contributors. In most instances they were fully aware of the taping, and I respected their wishes for anonymity whenever (rarely) requested, by modifying names a little or merely paraphrasing their inputs.

  Also, to all those who shared their views on and love for Ireland and the Beara Peninsula—thank you all for your invaluable assistance. This book would not have been possible without you. And you know who you are…

  Finally, “a thousand thanks” to Bridget Allen, my loyal partner in manuscript production; to Hugh Van Dusen, my longtime (and long-patient) colleague and editor, whose advice and support are always vital; and to my wife—Anne—traveling companion, gentle critic, spirit nurturer, and best friend without whom all my ventures and wanderings would be hollow shards indeed.

  A Note on the Illustrations

  I AM CONSTANTLY INSPIRED BY THE amazing artistic work and publications of my friend Neil Watson. In his most recent book, Drawing: Developing a Lively and Expressive Approach, I noted a series of suggestions that helped redefine
my usual approach to book illustration:

  Our mechanisms of visual perception do not result in an innate ability to copy things visually, but rather to experience them, react to them, respond to them, interpret them…. The human mind excels at interpretation and imagination so it makes sense to play to those strengths when we come to embark upon any form of personalized graphic expression, rather than to become bogged down in over-descriptive draughtsmanship.

  Be still and just look. Let the subject speak. Constantly ask yourself what your drawings are about, their purpose and intent.

  And in the end—be enthusiastic. It is contagious!

  So—I’ve tried something a little different with the illustrations in this book.

  In my previous self-illustrated publications I’ve tended to select a specific medium and—for want of a better word—a “style” and use them consistently through each specific book.

  In this instance I’ve taken a different approach. Or, maybe more accurately, a different approach has taken me in new directions. As I began sketching, particularly “on site,” I found that the power and impact of each subject tended to suggest its own distinct medium and its own “style.” My materials consisted primarily of various blendings of pencil (HB to 6B), charcoal, pen and ink, monochrome brush washes, bamboo pen, and a range of paper textures. I found great freedom and joy in letting the subject speak to me and guide the combination of hand, brain, and eye from fast—even frantic—flurries of lines and shadings to far more measured articulations of form, texture, and dimensionality.

  The process has been both fascinating and satisfying. Boundaries have been pushed out in terms of my own learning and technique experimentation. Some may find the intended inconsistencies and permutations of style a touch bizarre—maybe even a little self-indulgent. But I blame Beara itself. The power and intensity of both the land and the people are such that I celebrated the subjects imposing their uniquenesses upon me. Ireland had that effect on my spirit.

  And it also had that effect on the spirit of my longtime friend and coartist, Celia Teichman. She joined us with her husband, Robby, on Beara for a spate of sketching and produced such fine portraits of three of our friends—Danny Quinn, Michael Murphy, and Julie Aldridge—that I asked if I could include these in the book. She agreed—so thank you, Celia, and may your art continue to be ever inspired by the unique essence of Beara.

  Little Insights on Ireland

  Edmund Spenser, poet, 1596:

  Ah to be sure it is yet a most bewtifull and sweete country as any is under Heaven.

  A Quandary: Southern Star 5/13/06:

  The enthusiasm surrounding the launch of a new marketing tool for Cork-Kerry Tourism was offset by the confusion surrounding the upcoming disbandonment of Cork-Kerry Tourism.

  Benjamin Disraeli:

  Ah Ireland…That damnable delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be.

  Brendan Behan:

  Sex is still in its infancy in Ireland.

  Weather, Irish Times, 17 May 2006:

  There will be early morning showers becoming heavier and more persistent as the day progresses. This is now the 22nd consecutive day of this forecast.

  “Water and Whiskey,” from St. Patrick’s People, Tony Gray. Macmillan, 1996:

  Irishmen don’t take much water in their whiskey. They’re deeply prejudiced against it, perhaps for the very good reason that there’s far too much of it about. You can’t get away from water in Ireland.

  Shane Connaughton:

  Jesus must have been an Irishman. After all, He was unmarried at thirty-two years old, still living at home, and His mother thought he was God.

  Patrick Murray:

  God created alcohol just to stop the Irish ruling the world.

  Introduction: Where and Why Beara?

  A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO I spent a week or so roaming the wild moorland hills and ragged coastline of County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula. Set deep in the southwest corner of Ireland, far above and far less discovered than the overtouristic Killarney and the Ring of Kerry (aka the Iveragh Peninsula), The Dingle is the northernmost of the five mountainous peninsulas that thrust out like ancient gnarled fingers into the Atlantic. It was, as far as I can remember, a most intriguing if rather predictable romp of village dances, stout-drinking nights in lopsided pubs rowdy with Irish folk music, quaint guest-houses serving true Irish “comfort food” (heavy on “salt-meadow” lamb, just-caught fish, and such strange vegetable concoctions as boxty, pandy, strand, and fadge), and locals whose ability to befriend with good-humored graciousness softened the dramatic desolation of the moors and mountain ranges all around.

  After that week, The Dingle seemed to me the epitome of an authentic Irish experience. One that I promised myself to repeat, and maybe I would even trace my own Anglo-Irish roots to learn something about my father’s mother’s County Mayo heritage. And I did indeed return—to prepare a chapter for my book The World’s Secret Places (National Geographic)—only to find that, while still majestic in its scenic appeal, the Dingle had gone tourist in ways that had blurred and distorted its original unfussy, unself-conscious appeal.

  I was ready to move on and out until the owner of a small B and B in Tralee suggested that “if it’s in search of the ‘real Ireland’ that y’are, y’d best be sneakin’ a peep at Mór Choaird Bheara, the Beara Peninsula, before that gets ‘Dingled’ too!” Actually his advice was a little more succinct: “I’d bugger off to Beara, fast as y’can now, before that fella over there sees y’ve bin chattin’ up his bird…”

  I was going to explain that my “chattin’ up” was merely an innocent discussion about the Dingle’s recent and remarkable surge in popularity when I spotted the boyfriend pushing up his sleeves in a particularly determined manner…

  My journey was not wasted (as obviously I could have been). Beara is certainly a long way from being “Dingled.” “Stubbornly and gloriously remote at the edge of the world,” was the way one local described it at MacCarthy’s Bar in Castletownbere. William Makepeace Thackeray was a little more flowery, as befits that famous nineteenth-century author: “Here is a country the magnificence of which no pen can give an idea.” Leon Uris in his book Ireland: A Terrible Beauty writes more recently: “‘The Bere’ [local spelling] is the least toured but the most spectacular of the peninsulas and shows herself to be an eerie beauty of the mists, especially suited for the ghosts and fairies who live there…Wind, fog, sea and craggy rock crescendo here with the wildest of Ireland’s wild moors, giving testimony to the mysticism of the land.” Mysteries that have also lured here such other notable writers as William Wordsworth, Anthony Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, Alfred Tennyson, and much more recently, Daphne du Maurier, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, Seamus Heaney, and many others. A fine host of mutual Beara celebrants!

  H. V. Morton, in his classic book In Search of Ireland, suggests: “Here [on Beara], away from the roads and among mountains that go down sharply to the sea, you understand why in such lonely places the Irish believe in fairies and things not of this earth…High up on the hillsides, there is a reek of peat and the distant creak of a cart grinding the dust of the road, then silence deep as the ocean—the silence of enchanted hills, the silence of the sky.” Morton admits to being utterly seduced by this beguiling region: “It encourages fantastic thought…There is one sign that a writer is beginning to enjoy Ireland: he stops writing. There is another: he disappears. This generally happens when he enters County Kerry!”

  George Bernard Shaw

  Other writers, however, were a little less gushy. Dublin-born James Joyce, who spent little time in the country, dismissed the whole of Ireland as “a mere afterthought of Europe.” And Louis MacNeice wrote: “The Irish have nothing but an insidious bonhomie, an obsolete bravado and a way with horses.” But, there again—he was from Belfast in Northern Ireland, a whole different kind of country.
/>
  So Anne, my wife and favorite traveling companion, and I plan on following H. V. Morton’s example and…disappearing. Although the writing will continue, here on this thirty-mile-long peninsula, with a population of around 14,000 (in a nation of around four million), half in County Kerry and half in County Cork. Beara is blessed with some of the finest Gulf Stream–bathed coastal scenery in Ireland: glacier-gouged mountain passes and trails across the Caha and Slieve Miskish ranges on the 125-mile-long Beara Way; prehistoric remnants and stone circles; bird and seal colony islands; whale-watching perches on the 700-foot-high Mizen Head cliffs; color-be-decked villages (tiny Allihies and Eyeries also have small but flourishing artist communities); ancient castles and manors—and, of course, history. The full gamut of that riotous Irish heritage of revolutions, decimations, evictions, emigrations, famines, and ultimately celebrations of hard-won freedoms that are at the very heart of Irish poetry, literature, and folk songs. Songs that can make you weep, laugh, curse, and cheer all in the flow of a few melodic stanzas while the stout pours out, thick and black, in the traditional grocery store–pubs that are the focal point of every village on this “secret” peninsula.

  I remember one splendid folk song about St. Brendan, who set off in a tiny curagh (a wattle and cowskin boat) and supposedly discovered America. Apparently it was not unusual for monks who sought to bear witness to their faith to set sail without food, water, or any means of steering. This sometimes proved a remarkably convenient and rapid way of getting to heaven rather than to the New World. Or anywhere else for that matter.

  Castletownbere

  And while significant tourist trappings in Beara are a long way off yet—due in part to the narrowness of its roads and the rugged nature of its topography—it’s good to know that the charmingly unspoilt town of Kenmare (population 6,500 or so) offers some of the finest dining outside Dublin, not to mention some of the best handmade lace in the world. In addition the villages here, while simple and remote, are celebrated for their beauty and authenticity. Quaint Castletownbere has one of the busiest fishing harbors in the southwest, along with its beloved ultratraditional famed MacCarthy’s pub offering pure Irish ambience—what the writer Pete McCarthy describes as: “The dream Irish pub of the popular romantic imagination.”