Sean McCarthy was born in Listowel
The Bog isn't a Place, it's a Feeling...
by Mattie Lennon
Sean
McCarthy was born in Listowel, one of ten children, on 5th July 1923. He
attended Listowel Primary School and his first teacher was Bryan McMahon
who later said of him; "He was always a special person. I'll even go
so far as to say he was unique" And unique indeed he was. A fact much
appreciated by his fans world-wide and particularly his friends in North
Kerry.
The annual Sean McCarthy Memorial Weekend, in Finuge, has been going
from strength to strength since it started in 1991. This year Michael O
Muirchearytaigh opened it on Friday 04th August. We learned that Michael;
Taught Luke Kelly, Likes greyhounds, Thinks Dublin might win another All
Ireland.
The Dingleman with the famous voice regaled us with stories serious and
amusing and went on to introduce Jim McCann who played to a packed Teach
Siamsa. And I'm sure DeValera would have been delighted with the assembly
of comely maidens at the crossroads dance, which followed, even if the
male half of the company wasn't made up entirely of "athletic
youths".
On Saturday morning legendary songwriters Pete St. John and Mickie
McConnell gave a workshop on Ballad-writing. They shared a few tricks of
the trade with us and while it's unlikely any of us will go on to write
another "Fields Of Athenry" or "Only Our Rivers Run
Free" it was an educational experience.
Meanwhile
Eimer O' Connor was giving a course in Art at a local school. Later, Mike
Joe Thornton and, the David Bellemy of North Kerry, Paul Kennelly, took us
on a bog trek which included a demonstration of cutting, spreading,
futting and clamping the native peat while a docile donkey stood
patiently by waiting for the "drawing out". I wouldn't like to
give any politician a swelled head but I have to say Jimmy Deenihan is a
fair man with a slaen. When I told a man from Drumcluck that in my
turfcutting heyday, in my native Wicklow, I could "keep two in the
air and one on the slaen" he wasn't impressed. But it can be
difficult to impress a Kerryman.
We
were treated to "tay" made in the traditional manner and a very
special boxty. I tried sweet-talking a local female but failed to wheedle
the recipe out of her. (Even in my younger days Kerrywomen always were too
cute for me) Thanks to Paul Kennelly I now know that about 100,000 years
ago, at he end of the last ice age, Innismore Bog was a basin of
calcareous boulder clay, where water accumulated creating a lake. This was
gradually overgrown with fen vegetation and infilled with fea peat. As the
dept of peat grew the surface vegetation was deprived of the mineral-rich
water below. The fen plants died through lack of nutrients and bog mosses,
which are much less nutrient demanding, survived on the few nutrients
present in rainfall. Due to lack of oxygen plants could not decompose
completely and so the remains of dead vegetation accumulated as peat with
the energy trapped and concentrated. And so the fossil fuel burned by the
people of Killocrim, and surrounding areas, was formed by a process even
slower than that of the refund section of the Revenue Commissioners.
It is very fitting to have a bog-day in memory of Sean McCarthy. For
wile he was free from county, and indeed, national prejudice, his heart
was always in the bogs of North Kerry. He once said; " The bog isn't
a place it's a feeling. You don't grow up in the bog... you grow up with
the bog". He wrote 160 songs, 24 of which have been recorded on two
albums by Peggy Sweeney. Many of his songs feature the area around his
childhood home, which he described as "a house of
entertainment". Once on Arthur Godfrey's radio show, in America, he
expressed what he perceived as his own inability to describe "... the
sheer magic lunacy of the Rambling House as experienced by a barefoot
boy". He had a very early awareness of the power of words and once
said; " The writing of songs, poetry or indeed any type of creative
writing is a drug to me, I can do without whiskey, wine, even food for
long stretches but a week without writing something if only a four line
poem, would be a wasted week".
Yet I'm sure he would agree with Shakespeare; "For those fellows
of infinite tongue, that, can rhyme themselves into lady's favours, they
do always reason themselves out again". Sean had great admiration for
local songwriter Paddy Drury, who wrote "The Valley of Knockanure",
but illustrated the pitfalls of being a poet with the following story
which he told, with relish, about Paddy; Paddy Drury was employed by a
Vicar whose housekeeper, Kate Nealon, even by the standards of that
double-gusset-knickers-era, kept her lions exceptionally well girded...
out of bounds to Paddy who said; "She has so many iron bands woven
into her corset that it would take a blacksmith two weeks to open her
up...". Paddy found himself unemployed after he expressed his
bewilderment, and frustration, in verse;
"Kate Nealon's virtue remains intact
'Tis locked up hard and tight.
One puzzling aspect of that fact,
How does she piss at night?"
There was no such risqué material in the songs of any of the twelve
finalists in The Sean McCarthy Ballad Competition on Saturday night. The
winner was a young man from Glencolumcille, Eunan MCIntyre, with his own
song "Josie". And as Eunan took the long road to Donegal with
his £600, perpetual trophy and special prize, of an expensive piece of
Waterford glass, donated by Pete St. John, the night was only beginning.
The dawn was breaking over Rathea when D&D SOUND played the last note
on the road- side platform.
The
Sean McCarthy Memorial Committee has purchased a thatched cottage in
Finuge for a nominal price and on Sunday afternoon the sprightly vendor,
Patrick Sheehan, officially handed over the key to Eamon Kelly, Seanchai.
The "scraw-roof" with the "couples" and
"cross-laths", the open fire, the half-door and whitewashed
walls provided a perfect set for Eamon's account of what happened "In
My Father's Time". I had witnessed the dedication (and humility) of
the 86 year old pro in The Listowel Arms earlier in the day. His request,
to a member of staff, for rehearsal facilities was a polite; "I
wonder could I have somewhere where I could talk to myself for a
while"? At three o'clock the "Bogadeers" arrived. Yes,
who are they? You may well ask. Well, they are a pageant group made up of
the cream of singing, dancing, acting, story-telling and musical talent of
North Kerry. And this time they were embarking on a very authentic
"journey to the bog". They gave a very fine performance to a
distinguished audience. And when octogenarian John Lyons arrived his mode
of transport brought to mind Kavanagh's poem "Kerrs Ass";
The winkers with no chokeband
The collar and the hames.
In Ealing, Broadway, London,
I recall their several names.
The asse's cart was loaded with slaens, forks, barrell-sacks, enamel
mugs and a cast-iron "kittle". Not an anachronism in sight.
There was even a butterbox bearing the name of a long forgotten co-op in
the Kingdom, containing farmer's butter, soda bread and home-cured bacon
(not too well shaved) John Lyons even had a spare item of tackling, which
he gracefully gave me as a gift.
The evening finished with another al fresco session with music by
Country Moonlight. But I couldn't wait for the National Anthem. It is a
long road back to Kylebeg and I left at 3 A.M. I was stopped by a tired
Garda, with cap at a rakish angle, in Borris-in-Ossery, who didn't comment
on my present from John Lyons, which was on the back seat. But I would
have strenuously argued that an asse's hames is not an offensive weapon.