Comhaltas

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann [Finola tells me that this is how you say it: kole tuss kyole tory air run – the literal translation is the Society of Musicians of Ireland] is an organisation founded in 1951 to ‘preserve and promote Irish traditional music and culture’. Its activities are very much in evidence – not just in Ireland, but anywhere in the world where Irish people have settled. They were evident in Skibbereen last week, when CCE featured some of its top class performers in music, dance, song and storytelling on a whistle-stop tour around the whole island of Ireland. We were fortunate that their venue in the south west was on the doorstep here.

It was a most inhospitable October night: gales and floods were rife across Ireland and Britain. Yet the Skibb Town Hall was full to capacity, and the concert was well worth braving the elements for. The whole programme was polished and professionally produced: not a wrong note was played, nor a dance step placed out of kilter. It was a most memorable, satisfying and entertaining treat for the senses.

This was a showcase for the principal work that CCE has been carrying out for over sixty years: training people young and older in the crafts of playing and dancing in the traditional style. Once this would have happened naturally – through families and generations handing on the skills and the tunes. The fact that a CCE was needed and is now so established suggests that there was a danger of The Tradition dying out, or at least becoming diluted or rarified. This may or may not have been the case – for decades and all over the world collectors of folk culture have been convinced that they are recording the dying remnants of customs and lore, but perhaps there are always undercurrents of renewal which happen naturally: many of the most skilled exponents of The Music today learn their craft in the ‘old’ way – at the hearthside from parents, uncles, aunts and cousins. In our electronic age, however, lifestyles are radically changing and the formalised classes and competitions which CCE runs, and which are within easy reach of every community, can only be for the good. The latent talents shine through in performances such as those at Skibbereen. I taught myself to play the melodeon and concertina at the age of fifteen (and I’m still learning): now I’m watching far younger people perform with skills which outshine any I might have at this stage of my life, and who are storing up great potential for their own futures.

The showcase of Comhaltas talent at Skibbereen: the dancer on the left is Fernando Marcos from the Buenos Aries Branch of CCE!

As I drove back to Nead an Iolair through the lashing rain squalls I pondered our own weekly music sessions in the pubs of Ballydehob. They are rough affairs: plenty of wrong notes, certainly, and arguments on tuning, timing, song names and ornamentation; very little polish… And, while we play mainly Irish traditional music, very few of us are Irish. Nonetheless we do (mostly) enjoy the experiences, and the sessions maintain a life of their own. However you do it, it’s great to keep The Music going…

Keeping The Music going – session style

Posted on November 3, 2013November 3, 2013
15 Comments

Making Butter

Robert take a turn, supervised by Kevin and young butter maker

Robert takes a turn, supervised by Kevin and young butter maker

At the recent Autumn Fair (known as the Thrashing) in Ballydehob, Robert and I got a chance to take a turn at the butter churn and to watch the magical transformation of milk into butter and buttermilk.

Pouring off the buttermilk

It’s ready!

Washing, salting, shaping

To reward us for all that labour (turning that handle was so hard), we had a butter feast – homemade soda bread made using the buttermilk, with homemade butter and homemade jam. There are lots of good Irish soda bread recipes on the internet: here’s the one I used. And yes, you can get buttermilk in North America – take a really good look on the milk shelves and you’ll see it lurking in a corner near the cream.

Homemade soda bread by the fire

Homemade jam – this is a fabulous five minute jam recipe I found from a link on a friend’s Facebook page and adapted slightly. Mine is blackberry (bumper crop this year!) but you could use any berry you want.

1 cup blackberries

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp warm water

1 tbsp chia seeds

Blend (in a blender) and pour into something (yogurt container? Glass?). Put in fridge for an hour. Hey presto – delicious jam! The chia seeds jellify and that’s what binds the jam. You have to keep this jam in the fridge and eat it within a couple of weeks, since it’s not cooked. It will freeze well. I was introduced to chia years ago by my friend Christi from El Salvador. It’s available in supermarkets and health food stores.

Posted on October 27, 2013October 28, 2013
11 Comments

Unknown Souls

Unmarked graves in a section of a Protestant churchyard

Dotted across the countryside around us, and throughout Ireland, are the loneliest places on earth. These are the cillíní – the children’s graveyards. A cill (kill) is a monk’s cell or church site, cillín (killeen) is the diminutive and cillíní (killeenee) is the plural: small churches. Ironically, the cillíní despite their names were usually non-church sites. They were burial grounds reserved for unbaptised children (those who died before they could be baptised or were perhaps born out of wedlock), pregnant women (because they were carrying unbaptised children), unrepentant murderers, suicides, shipwreck victims and strangers – anyone, in short, who was not ‘saved’ or whose baptismal status was ambiguous or unknown. They were used into the twentieth century. Some cillíní were also used for mass burials during the time of the famine.

This burial ground was used as a mass grave during the famine

This week we attended a fascinating talk on cillíní by William Casey, a local historian. As he explained it, the teachings of the Catholic Church on where unbaptised babies go after death had evolved from a position of ‘they go to hell’ (Augustine, 4th century) to a more moderate invention of the concept of Limbo (Thomas Aquinas, 13th century) – an in-between place where these lost souls would dwell eternally, never to suffer but never to reach heaven.

An 11th century round tower watches over the wandering souls

An 11th century round tower watches over a graveyard; a recent plaque commemorates lost souls

This ‘placelessness’ extended to their burial: cillini were normally situated away from the what the church considered ‘consecrated ground.’ Locations often contain poignant echoes of other trapped or wandering souls: boundaries, for example, of parishes or townlands were chosen. Sometimes cillíní are found in ring forts. Known in Ireland as ‘fairy forts’ these ancient sites were believed to be the domain of the sí, the fairy folk who also inhabited the world in between earth and heaven. The association of the ring forts with the fairies guaranteed their security – if you interfered with a ring fort bad luck would dog you from that day on. Protestant churchyards were also used, or areas within or near abandoned or ruined church sites. Perhaps, as William put it, these choices reveal an attempt by parents to ensure their children were buried in holy ground, while still adhering to the strict rules of the Catholic Church

Pause a while

Maybe the saddest thing we learned from William’s talk was that tiny children who had died before baptism were buried at night, by lantern light, by the father and male relatives. Women had no role to play and the mother was not present. The grave was placed east-west, alongside other babies who had been buried in the same way and marked, if at all, with a small uninscribed stone. Over time many cillíní melted into the surrounding landscape and are now impossible to find. Others have been restored so that these lost souls will not be forgotten. Here, simple monuments invite us to remember. They attempt to reinstate the dignity and hope that were once robbed by the rigid beliefs of another age.

This medieval church was used as a cillin and most recently as a grotto

This ruined church was used as a children’s burial ground and most recently as a grotto

Posted on October 27, 2013October 28, 2013
6 Comments

Autumn Comes to Roaringwater

Just as the leaves begin to turn, the gales have come to tear them away and send them flying all over the Bay. Autumn is bringing angry seas with wild white horses, while the trees on our exposed acre are bending sideways. I admire the small birds who manage to find their way to our bird-table in the face of it all: we have just been visited by a whole flock of ravenous Goldfinches who hang on to the wildly swaying feeders in a determined frenzy to fatten themselves up for the coming winter and squabble noisily with any Great-tits, Chaffinches or Robins who try to get in on the act.

In Ballydehob (our local community) it’s time for the annual Thrashing. This event always takes place just before Hallowe’en, a festival which nowadays overlays the old Celtic Samhain (1 November) – when the souls of the departed are remembered. Here it’s a good time to bring in the threshing machine and lay up sacks of grain in the barn. It’s also a reason to hold a fair and show off vintage cars and tractors, to make butter, to watch performing dogs, to gamble on mouse racing – or just to chat over a cup of tea.

Byway in Ballydehob

Don’t miss it!

The Thrashing

Mouse Bookie

We look forward to the turning seasons: what we see from Nead an Iolair changes constantly, is never dull, and can’t be taken for granted. Skies can be steel grey – or still as gloriously blue as they were in the summer; and our sunsets can be even more beautiful.

Posted on October 21, 2013October 21, 2013
6 Comments

The Laughing Boy

Birthplace of a Folk Hero

T’was on an August morning, all in the dawning hours,
I went to take the warming air, all in the Mouth of Flowers,
And there I saw a maiden, and mournful was her cry,
‘Ah what will mend my broken heart, I’ve lost my Laughing Boy’

Let’s face it: our travels today were a pilgrimage. We went out in search of a hero and we found shrines, monuments, places of devotion and folktales. It all started last week, which was ‘Rebel Week’ in Cork County and Skibbereen was one of the centres of activity. We were attracted by a flyer for a ‘Tribute to Michael Collins’ being held in the Eldon Hotel – a venue which we now know features in the story of the man: it claims to be the place where he ate his last meal. The ‘Tribute’ proved a bit of a damp squib as the advertised speaker didn’t turn up, but as compensation we were shown a 1973 British film made and zealously narrated by a very ebullient Welsh actor, Kenneth Griffith: Hang Up Your Brightest Colours. This film extravagantly documents the life of Michael Collins and the Irish struggle for freedom in the early twentieth century, and was considered ‘incendiary’ in a time when The Troubles were boiling over; consequently its showing was banned for twenty years. We determined to visit some of the significant locations that featured in the film and which are not too far away from Nead an Iolair.

Master of Oration

West Cork is Collins’ country: he was born in Sam’s Cross, near Clonakilty – the youngest of eight children – in October 1890. His father Michael had married Marianne O’Brien (23) when he was 60. Already the folklore kicks in: Michael the elder was the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore gifted with powers of divination. On his deathbed he predicted that our hero – then aged 6 – would one day “…be a great man. He’ll do great work for Ireland…” Also, there’s a touch of mystery about Collins’ birth: the records state he was born on 16 October whereas on his tombstone the date is given as 12 October.

The Collins grave in Rosscarbery

In the burial ground in Rosscarbery we found the family grave. There is a modest entry on the headstone for young Michael, recording that he died on 22 August 1922 (he’s actually buried in Dublin). That’s about all that’s modest about the Collins story. He was known as The Big Fella, as much because of his reputation and charisma as for his physique.

You can’t miss his birthplace – it’s signposted for miles around the area of Woodfield – but the family farmhouse isn’t there! It was burnt to the ground by the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (and not by the Black and Tans, which is often claimed). However, the site has been preserved as an essential waymark of the Michael Collins pilgrim trail.

Memorial at Sam’s Cross

There is also another, larger monument to Michael a little way up the road at Sam’s Cross – this is in fact next door to the house where his mother was born – and opposite his cousin Jeremiah’s pub – The Four Alls (this is one of several places where Collins is supposed to have taken his last drink).

Four Alls pub – Cousin Jeremiah’s

For anyone who doesn’t know I had better just say that Michael Collins – soldier, freedom fighter and politician – was one of the key figures in the long Irish struggle for Independence – a conflict that was won, after a fashion, in December 1921 when the irish Free State was set up. Collins signed the Treaty in his then role as ‘Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army’ and (legend has it) pronounced that he was also signing his own death warrant (the great folk heroes usually foretold their own death). The conditions of the Treaty, and the exclusion of some of the northern counties from the new state caused such dissension that a civil war ensued, and Michael Collins fell as a victim to that war as he toured through his home county of Cork on 22 August 1922.

The Eldon, Skibbereen

His convoy left the Eldon Hotel, Skibbereen, in the early afternoon for Cork city and was ambushed at Béal na Bláth, on a minor road between Clonakilty and Macroom. During the skirmish Michael Collins was shot in the head and died instantly. He was the only casualty of that confrontation.

Béal na Bláth

Béal na Bláth may mean ‘Gap of the Blossoms’ but there is some debate as to its correct translation: ‘Mouth of the Ford of the Buttermilk’ is one suggestion. Brendan Behan, in his folk ballad on the death of Michael Collins (the first stanza of which starts off this post), goes for ‘Mouth of Flowers’. We began our pilgrimage here on a wet Sunday morning. The place had a sombre atmosphere and the monument that we found – although unmistakably Messianic – is grim. Crowds come to this site, especially on the anniversary of the assassination. A white stone marks the actual spot where he fell: the fine details seem all important.

But – sifting through these details when I was trying to assemble this piece – I realise that there is so much that is apocryphal or contradictory in the various accounts, not just of his death but with many aspects of his life. And it’s the stories that will win out in the end. Michael Collins is a real national hero – quite rightly – but he’s on his way to becoming a folk hero – something different. He could be a Saint (he did after all perform a miracle in bringing together so many different factions and feelings to found the beginnings of modern Ireland) but to me he is more likely to end up in the ranks of the great Hero Warriors of Irish mythology such as Cu Chulainn, Medb or Finn McCool – or even the Gods. I wish I could be around to hear his sagas told in a few hundred years from now.

The Fate of a Folk Hero…

Posted on October 20, 2013December 12, 2021
24 Comments

Monica Sheridan’s Christmas Cake

When my mother made Christmas cake she always used Monica Sheridan’s recipe. Mum had an old cookbook stuffed with pieces of paper, cuttings and recipe cards and out of this jumble came marvellous concoctions to feed her appreciative family. As everyone did in those days she iced the Christmas cake with almond paste and royal icing and decorated the top with winter scenes and figurines.

I have searched in vain on the internet for Monica Sheridan’s famous Christmas Cake recipe and I have noticed that many readers who wander into Roaringwater Journal have googled ‘Monica Sheridan’. I suspect, therefore, that others may be looking for this recipe as well so I have decided to reproduce it below.

Monica’s measurements are all in ounces (that’s the same in Ireland, Britain and North America) but I have added the conversion to grams for modern cooks. I tried doing a conversion to cup measures for our Canadian and American readers, but the exercise defeated me. If anyone out there has the exact equivalents, I’d love to have them.

Last year was my first time ever making Christmas cake. Robert and I each made one using Delia Smith’s recipe. This time I will try Monica’s. After all, In her book she relates that when she first published this recipe (her mother’s) in the Irish Times she “…got thousands of letters from people, all over the world, who had made the cake with great success…” Not sure if I feel encouraged or intimidated by that – perhaps I will feature the results in a future post. Meanwhile, I include some images from last year’s efforts, to get you in the mood to go out and buy glacé cherries and angelica.

Have you got a favourite Christmas cake recipe, dear blog reader? Any tips and hints for the novice baker? Any Christmas cake memories to share?

MONICA SHERIDAN’S CHRISTMAS CAKE RECIPE

(from My Irish Cook Book)

Ingredients

6oz/175gm glacé cherries

12oz/350gm seedless raisins

12oz/350gm sultanas

6oz/175gm currants

4oz/110gm mixed candied peel

2oz/50gm finely chopped angelica

6oz/175gm chopped walnuts

12oz/350gm butter

12oz/350gm sugar

7 eggs

12oz/350gm flour

1tsp salt

1tsp mixed spice (optional)

Method

Prepare the Fruit (some hours before making the cake)

Turn on the oven to 240F/120C.

Halve the cherries. Put all the fruits and the nuts into a casserole dish. Mix them well together with your hands so that all the different species are well distributed. Cover loosely with baking parchment or foil and put into the warm oven. Toss once or twice until the fruit is well heated through. This heating makes the fruit sticky and prevents it from falling to the bottom of the cake. It also plumps the fruit and makes it juicier. Never roll fruit in flour and never wash it.

When the fruit is heated through and is sticky, take it out of the oven and let it get quite cold. Warm fruit added to a cake mixture would melt its way down to the bottom before the mixture had set in the oven.

Prepare the Cake Tin

Use a high-sided 10” cake tin and grease or oil it well. Now line it, sides and bottom with two thicknesses of greaseproof or parchment paper and grease the paper.

Make the Cake

Heat the oven to 300F/150C

Cream the butter and sugar together until white and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, with a teaspoon of flour for each egg. This prevents the eggs from curdling the mixture. Beat well between each egg.

Sift the flour with the salt and fold into the egg mixture. Lastly, fold in the fruit and nuts which you have separated by running your fingers through them.

Pour the mixture into the lined cake tin. It shouldn’t come up to more than 2” from the top of the tin. Trim the lining paper level with the top of the tin. Rest an inverted tin plate, or a lid, over the tin.

Put the cake in the oven. After 1 hour, reduce the heat to 280F/135C and continue to bake for another 5 hours, or 6 hours in all.

If you think the cake is baking too fast, keep gradually reducing the heat. This cake should be golden rather than brown on top. Do not remove from the tin until cold.

The secret of success with this cake is the plumping of the fruit and the slow baking.

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