BALLYLONGFORD FESTIVAL

The infamous Bogadeers

A DAY AND A NIGHT OF IT !

Once again this year the little town of Ballylongford drew Tony (my brother) and myself into its Kerry bosom for the Brendan Kennelly Summer Festival. The ‘Summer’ in the title may be misleading however , we entered Bally via Saleen Pier and Lislaughtin Abbey as the heavens opened !

On every side the thunder threatens
All-good men, artists, knaves and cretins.
Where shall we go when it pours?
- Mid-Summer Blues-Kennelly

We stayed at the Castleview B&B out beyond Carrickafoyle castle on Carrig island, run by Patricia and Garrett Dee who extended their usual warm and friendly welcome .They told us despite the unseasonal weather they have never been busier, all credit to their establishment, which retains a homely and personal atmosphere.
Having deposited our bags at Castleview we got a hackney back to Bally for the festivities. The disappointment this time is that for the second year in a row the man himself failed to show. Brendan’s absence from the festival was the elephant in the room over the four days,and numbers were greatly down on previous years. The question must be asked can this event continue without some input from its local literary hero,I think it doubtful. We shared the B&B with a young Italian couple who had sought out Bally on the basis of reading Kennelly’s poems at college, their disappointment that Brendan did not show face throughout the festival was huge.

You come to me with such avid eyes
I wonder what you expect to find.
When you turn my pages
-Book-Kennelly

On Saturday night we followed the Bogadeers from the National School through almost every pub in Ballylongford (there are seven in all). This intrepid band of singers ,musicians and poets performed lively and humorous pieces at every stop. It would be hard to single out one performance from the evening but the re-enactment of a John B story by Paddy McEligot,basically about a ghostly hurling match played between the headstones of a cemetery was one of the funniest pieces I have seen. Paddy lashed out the drama in high octane mode, using a large snooker table to great effect as he ran around the four corners of the grave-yard !
Later Tony took the microphone in Kennellys and gave a fine rendition of Neidin and after some coaxing I sang Raglan Road. Needless to say we brought the house down! At the end of the night our hackney had evidently called it a night and we were left stranded. Allen Kennelly the proprietor and brother to Brendan very kindly came to our rescue and drove us back to Castleview.
Earlier we had listened to two very engaging lectures. Dr. John McDonough ,lecturer in English at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick,spoke on the theme of heroes in Kennellys poetry, while Bill Cullen regaled us with anecdotes and life-lessons from his own humble beginnings growing up in the inner city tenements of Dublin in the 1940‘s.Cullen went on to become a very wealthy man heading up Renault in Ireland and penning a best selling memoir of his life , It‘s A Long Way From Penny Apples.

The learning goes on forever,
A pigeon dozing in the ivy
Is sending out bulletins
I am trying to decipher.
The Learning-Kennelly

Of course our trip was only partially fuelled by an interest in the the B.K. factor,our roots run deep in Ballylongford with our father, Patrick hailing from Sallowglen just outside the town. We both remember Summer holidays spent there, with Auntie Cathy and Uncle Dennis, and Grandad Shea whom I remember at the end of his days confined to bed. Mother would bring us down on the bus in the early years and later by car as our fortunes improved. Tony’s memories of Sallowglen are a lot more vivid than my own, and he would have been more of an age with our cousins Patsy and Margaret. We also had an Auntie Margaret who had a houseful of cousins, none of whom I’d remember. Dennis was the Lord of Sallowglen and Cathy his devoted wife organised everything around him. When we arrived ,her familiar greeting delivered in her sing-song Bandon accent was “Ye’re as welcome as the flowers in May”. She kept an immaculately clean house and kept the floors sparkling with copious amounts of Dettol, the smell of which I will forever associate with that place. She ,like many other women of that time ,
lived her days around the comings and goings of the men in the house…from the nocturnal pub ramblings of Dennis to the care of Grandad in the bed. The old man was a source of fascination to this city child, as he wore his cap in bed and also smoked a pipe with a hinged silver lid ! He kept a large enamel chamber pot under the bed and rapped on the floor with his stick when he needed attention!
The most vivid memory of those childhood excursions to the country was the donkey and cart drive to the creamery with Uncle Dennis. This was high adventure to a child brought up in the urban confines of the North Circular Road ! Often the donkey would stop en route for no apparent reason and would have to be cajoled back into movement by my uncle. A lough of water on the passage would be enough to scatter the asses brain and bring proceedings to a halt. Another vivid memory was the long wait at night for the return of the Warrior King from the pub. As he had to cross fields and negotiate ditches it was Cathys nightly worry that the staggering Dennis might come to some harm! She needn’t have worried, he went on to outlive her by several years, ironically quitting the booze after her own demise.

Nothing remains,my dear,and nothing alters.
The end of the eagle’s flight leads back to the same
Dull,intrepid journey through the known wind passages
Although he flies to different places…
Nothing Remains,Nothing Alters-Kennelly

On the Sunday morning we went out to Sallowglen and visited Auntie Margaret. Our cousin Rose was also there and insisted on making us tea. Margaret celebrated her 81st birthday last Sunday and looks well and is mentally bright as a button, she spoke to Tony about his childhood visits to Sallowglen and how mother would take him down to the Strand. Cousin Patsy lives across the road with his wife Cathy-May, but as we were caught for time(the bus outing was pending),we didn’t visit on this occasion.
The highlight of last years visit to Bally was the mystery bus tour which brought us to exotic locations such as Knocknogoshel and magical Lyreacrompane,not forgetting a musical interlude at John B’s in Listowel.This year true to the weekends theme of heroes and legends our first stop was at the monument commemorating the killings at the valley of Knocanure,where Gabriel Fitzmaurice gave a short backround to the events of 12 May 1921 when three young men were shot dead by a group of Black and Tans travelling out from Listowel to Athea. The event was remembered in true Irish style in a ballad…

Oh, Walsh and Lyons and Dalton brave, although your hearts are clay,
Yet in your stead we have true men yet to guard the gap today,
While grass is found on Ireland's ground your memory will endure,
So God guard and keep the place you sleep and the Valley of Knockanure
The Valley of Kockanure-Unknown

Our next stop was at the local church which had some interesting works of art, although the building itself was uninspiring and most definitely did not impress Tony !The Stations of the Cross were tapestries which reminded me of the simple line drawings from the Good News New Testament, there was also a wooden Madonna sculpture by Oisin Kelly.
By this time tummies were a rumble on the Bally bus so just in the nick of time we turned in to Kearney’s bakery just outside the village of Ballyhahill, at Tenekilla.The bakery was started 15 years ago by two sisters who were there to meet us at the door and give us a guided tour of the facility. Before entering the bakery we had to wear hats for hygiene purposes which made not a pretty sight !The girls took us through the whole baking process from start to finish, showing us the impressive technology that goes into modern bread and pastry making. After the tour it was hell for leather to the tea rooms overhead the factory where we were royally treated to their delicious produce and tea and coffee. The icing on the cake was a performance by Mrs. Kearney who threw a black shawl over her shoulders and told yarn after yarn in the seanchai tradition. Our delightful interlude at Kearneys refreshed us for the road and on to our next stop Boyces Gardens at Mountrenchard near Foynes. The Gardens were developed from a barren site over the last 20 years by Phyl and Dick Boyce, and even though it was raining heavily ,the one acre site couldn’t fail but impress with a wide variety of shrubs and flowers. Co-incidentally Tony had been given a copy of Phyl Boyces gardening book by a mutual friend just a few weeks ago !
Our bus tour ended in Shannahans pub at Foynes with more music,song and drama.Despite awful weather this was another hugely enjoyable outing with the people of Bally and beyond.

We drove across the mountains and the bog,
Magenta hypnotic in the fields.
To our left,a glacial lake black with cold
Dropped like a cracked abandoned shield
You said,seeing a river,it was old:
The oldest river twists and turns at ease,
A proven legend casually re-told.
Killybegs-Kennelly

This has turned into an epic blog so I had better rest it here. Our visit to Ballylongford stirs all kinds of memories and reflections, thoughts of family origins, thoughts on mortality, the importance of blood ties and the power and beauty of local traditions. Its easy to see where Brendan Kennelly nurtured his rich poetic vision even though it took the stimulus of the big city to give it enduring voice and impetus. We too leave the rural heartland and return to an urban lifestyle enriched and given new meaning by all the ties that still in so many ways bind us to the land and its legacy.

On this quiet afternoon
When the shadows of branches
Make trembling sculpture
On a cracked wall
And a gull’s cries
Recall the eyes
Of dying children,
I know enough to know
Most things worth knowing
Are beyond knowledge.
Beyond Knowledge-Kennelly

Gerard O'Shea