Hello all,
Do you remember my telling you, some months ago, about
Sharon Murphy, the singer/songwriter? I heard her perform here during Arts
Week last September, and the year before, too. Sharon was raised here in
Clifden, at St. Joseph's Orphanage, which closed about 1983. Her father
was Black, from the West Indies, and her mother Irish. In both her appearances
here she performed the Bob Marley song "No woman, no cry", accompanying
herself on guitar. She was here again not long ago, playing out in Renvyle.
I didn't get to hear her then, but I heard her the next day when she was
interviewed on Connemara Community Radio, and did some songs live in the
studio, including the Bob Marley song. But this time she was accompanied
by Eithne Hannigan on violin -- she's part of a local group "Some
Like It Hot", is classically trained, but performs pop and traditional
music. The violin accompaniment to the guitar was grave, almost baroque,
and gave the song an elegiac quality. Sharon sang the words of the original
piece, not the updated lyrics of the Fugees cover of the song. But the
Fugees version is popular here now, and this treatment by Sharon and Eithne
adds another layer of history to the lament. In the original it was a consolation
to the West Indian exiles in America; the Fugees reading of the song is
-- this is my hope, from here on the other edge of the Atlantic -- a consolation
to those exiled to the projects down in Brooklyn and Jersey. And as done
here in Connemara, on guitar by a Connemara woman who is also West Indian,
accompanied on violin by a woman who is Irish and in harmony with her,
it seems to tell us that not all the Irish exiles are abroad, that there
are many variations on the theme of exile, and that consolation is always
wanted, and never enough.
Have you heard about the ground-breaking study undertaken
by some chemistry students at the Clifden Community School? They brought
a project to the "Young Scientists of the Year" competition in
Dublin -- a chemical analysis of poteen. They used 25 samples of poteen
(from of course undisclosed sources) to determine that it can be as much
as 89% alcohol, and contains methanol. Well, you can say what you want
about the youth of today, but in Connemara the apple doesn't fall far from
the tree. Poteen was good enough for their fathers and it's good enough
for them, please God with only traces of methanol.
Trout season opens in three weeks. Yesterday was bright
and warm and I went well out on the bog, to a lake I haven't visited before
-- Lough Nambrackderg More, as the new Ordinance Survey map optimistically
informs me. Like Lough Nambrackmore (lake of the big trout) it had no name
on other maps I've seen. "Brackderg" would be "red trout",
and there are lovely trout with red scales in other lakes on that bog to
be sure. But yesterday there was nothing to be seen as I sat on a rock
in the sun, only a duck diving to get his tea and coming up hungry, which
reminded me that contrary to wisdom, experience, and habit I had brought
nothing with me, only a pipe of tobacco, which I smoked as some small comfort,
and so did better than the duck, which had none a'tall.
From Tullyvoheen, good night and God bless you.
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