"Pubs, Entertainment, and blasts from the past in County Galway"

Pub lore and nostalgia

There are two pubs - one in Galway City still standing and the other outside the city, which survived not the voracious grappling of the 'Celtic Tiger' - that I'd like to eulogise here. Both are examples of the vintage Irish pub - vintage like an old vintage car or the best of wines - and what makes County Galway so special!

The first one - Naughton's - Tigh Neachtain - I first encountered in 2002, and in 2004 I returned to show it to a Hungarian visitor. The pub is famous for Live Irish music - is an Irish music pub extraordinaire - which is saying something in the oasis, that is Galway City - has a very unique decor, photos, pub architecture, but most of all, has the typical feature of an Irish Pub - a Snug - on both sides. The Snug being the place where the shy type, the private taciturn individual, can 'hide in' and wear the garland of anonymity to one's heart's content. These Snugs are authentic to boot, and conjure up images of a novelist, a struggling poet, a murder mystery writer, snuggling up into them during the day and writing their tomes and canons. I wonder did Liam O' Flaherty ever haunt or hang out here?

But this particular visit was special for a specific reason: as I sat down in a Snug with the Hungarian visitor, I spotted in the Snug behind, a man who I recognised as the Chieftain Browne from the Browne Clan of Galway, about whom I had just read in a magazine (touch of serendipity here, I think!) with a very aristocratic foreign gentleman. I headed off to the toilet, and on the way back, I approached them (breaking the code and etiquette of privacy in the process) and said "Your name is Browne? "Yes, how did you know that?" he replied, so I explained I'd read an article about him recently. He duly invited us to join them!! We were introduced to his friend, who it just happened was Hugo O'Neill, the descendent of 'Red' Hugh O'Neill who claimed the title of the Chieftain of the O'Neills, and a rightful heir to the titles of the Earl himself. I recited him a poem and then he asked me would I do some Yeats? I did "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", then "The Stolen Child" and hand on my heart, a tear descended down his cheek, as if some army rapidly advancing across the field of peace. He thanked me; we talked some more and then parted (little did I think we'd meet again but again serendipity, as I call it, works in strange ways; three years later, I met him in Rathmullan, County Donegal, at the seminar for the '400th anniversary of "The Flight of the Earls"').

At night, the pub is brimming with Irish music and has the craic, the magic of the west and Galway, to such an extent, that one would think it had an infinite patent on such things........ and as an aside, has been known to unfurl French flags for Bastille Day!               www.tighneachtain.com

The Connemara Coast Hotel This hotel has great Irish music sessions on a Thursday night, in which local musicians come to perform, doing their thing, in a laid back relaxing way! But it's the establishment's previous incarnation, when it was the music venue Teach Furbo that bids me to reminisce and go down memory lane. Going back to the 80's, the memories flood - like an inundation whose water is as pure and moist as ever - of gigs I attended there whilst on holiday in Galway. And this is riven with the presence of my father RIP (who'd such connections with the west, and especially Galway). For it was there, we went to see the legendary Wolfe Tones perform! We also saw Stockton's Wing there, if my memory serves me right! And these gigs still stand the test of time from the decade when the Irish ballad scene seemed to be at its zenith and reached its halcyon heights. Teach Furbo had a special kind of atmosphere, and the fact that it straddled the Atlantic, and was nestled at the cusp of Connemara, seemed to be part of its cocktail of magic and chemistry; it was in a great setting.

So Teach Furbo at Maam Cross - now reincarnated as the Connemara Coast Hotel - had the true 'craic' and substance of Irish pubs, music venues, ballads etc and was once again an example of everything that makes Galway special and the diadem in the crown of the west. This reminiscence is a real blast from the past for me but perhaps on Thursday nights, something of this halcyon time survives in the Coast Hotel!

There's no better place in Ireland for pubs, 'craic', musical odysseys, than both Galway city and county. To quote the great WB Yeats, they carry the spirit of  "The indomitable Irishry!"

''Prose for an Irish Folk Singer''

Liam Clancy came at a time when Irish Folk Music was arguably dead! It was the dawn of the decade of the 60's - before 'Planxty' or 'The Bothy Band' came on the scene and even before 'The Dubliners'; the decade of 'Flower Power' was yet to weave its psychedelic loom; the Beatles were yet to take the world by storm; the decade of the seminal 'Woodstock' festivals had still to be seen; that prodgious wordsmith, troubadour and rebel artist, Bob Dylan, had just started hewing great hollows out of the status quo's rocky strata - both Joan Baez and him embedding adamantine rocks on the plains of indifference; and it was the decade of the twin Civil Rights movements of the US and Ireland, about to illuminate their pristine Summers on Winter's evergreens.

So this was the backdrop for Liam Clancy's burgeoning emergence on the Folk - ultimately - world scene; his first incarnation if you like, as a member of the Clancy Brothers! From the outset, the Pioneer's paths were staked out, as musical strategists on a mission, reconnoitring the uncharted territories, the forgotten vistas of Minstrelsy! The raucous and boisterous harmonies, conjuring up images of Fishermen docked at some port of Newfoundland, lifting the rafters of a local pub, or some Whalers out of a Moby Dick Film in port at Nantucket Bay, raising the decibels to the High Heavens of some tavern; the Aran Sweaters - their omnipresent attire; bedecking and serenading the spirits haunting the halcyon echoes of Carnegie Hall and the very lyrical and soulful vocals of a young Liam, so smooth and unwavering, as if conjuring a vessel at sea in the balance of the waves and the even keel of its voyage!

The Irish Folk music scene - if not dead - was certainly moribund in the 60's; for it was an emasculated shell in comparison to the English Folk scene of the time, which was riding high in the North of England. But that all changed with the Clancy Brothers; they resurrected Irish Folk music from the giant crater, where but laconic dreams resided; from the still waters where but the shadows of the Bards and Minstrels and Balladeers could be seen; they navigated the Backwater Straits of the Folk Culture of the Gael; gave it a force again. The great art of the Irish Celt (the Gael) was resplendent again as if the Emerald Isle were given an extra sheen of green!

                                           
That great and effervescent South Armagh Ballad Singer (who would carve his own niche as an Irish Troubadour), Tommy Makem, joined ranks and the Clancy Brothers continued on their merry way! Eventually, they broke up and Liam and Tommy Makem limbered up as a musical duo or a stage act revolving around the repartee of Liam and Tommy; then the four ultimately re-united for a series of concerts in the 80's - this was Liam's second incarnation! It didn't take long for this limbering up between Liam and Tommy to become a fully fledged and potent dynamic on the Ballad and Folk scene.

The visual accoutrements were retained: the ubiquitous Aran Sweater - now having become almost a fashion statement or the emblem of the Gael - and the cap, the sailor's cap, once again the iconography of the Aran Fisherman and his journeyings. And the musical duo's act was a perfectly balanced juggling act, in exact symmetry; a selfless operation at work. They both complimented each other and allowed the other to express the full gamut of their craft and abilities, as they were very clearly the main men now in this re-uniting!

In the latter part of Liam's life and career, he went solo - this was his final incarnation. His stage performance having the wee bit of magic in it - a seeming magician at work, who could orchestrate and whip up an audience, at his whim and will. His timbre and song delivery - befitting a Songster in full possession of his faculties and at the zenith of his powers - as crisp as an Irish turf fire being prodded and nurtured along to full glare and heat! Then the poetry, recited the way poetry should be recited - fluid like Guinness flowing endlessly from the taps or milk running down the back of a milk churn which has overflowed! And the other ingredients of his act - the pathos and reminiscences remaining indelibly engraved upon the mind's eye!

In the end, he lived his final days, as aptly and appropriately as it should have been; narrating a documentary about his life in the true Narrator's style! It was called The Yellow Bittern and the Bittern sure sang for him in his life, his chosen vocation and at his time's end. In the words of Bob Dylan: 'The Greatest Folk/Ballad Singer in the world!'

Footnote: The Clancy Brothers were born in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary and were buried in Rinne, Co Waterford and Tommy Makem hailed from Keady, Co Armagh or the republic of South Armagh, as he said.