Kerry On To Dingle

Day Seventeen continued: June 19th Part 2

Dingle is way out the Dingle Peninsula.  It is a musical place, with traditional music in nearly every pub nearly every night.  We had hoped for fabulous views along our drive but the area was covered to a very low altitude, say three feet, with a dense fog.

We took a route up and over Conor Pass.  I don't know whether it was scarier because of the fog or made less scary by the fog, but it was a one lane road precariously attached to  a cliff.

We had to back down to a pullout on the inside of curves when confronted with oncoming traffic.  Those uphill of us were too perilously close to the edge already; they could not pull over further without going over the brink. I think I was more relaxed with driving in India than in Ireland.

Dingle is a very colorful town with many pubs, interesting shops, handmade ice cream and tony expensive restaurants.  Of the four hundred or so B and B's that we could have chosen we just randomly picked Marian House which was only a short walk from its quiet neighborhood into the loud town and was exceedingly inexpensive.

At first Steve thought perhaps our host Brendan, a man in his sixties with only two teeth in his lower front jaw, had experienced some brain trauma in his life because he searched long and hard for words to complete his sentences.  But then in a long conversation after he served us a full Irish breakfast we found out he had grown up way out on this peninsula, spoken nothing but Gaelic at home, and had only learned the English language in school.  A fisherman for decades, he had had his own boat and employees. He regaled us with tales of long trips at sea.

He told us his hip went out in middle age and the hardships of fishing became too much.  He sold his boat and began a much easier bed and breakfast business.  He really went overboard in the morning with his offering of a huge amount of food and then a little more.  I was impressed that he did all the work of the inn by himself.  I think it is a very good business for a talkative sweet person to stave off loneliness, feel useful, and stay connected.

 Here are a few views of Dingle.

Our quiet block.











Downtown


We had arrived here on a Friday and on Friday nights all the pubs have professional musicians playing.  It seemed that every pub had performers in groups of two. Tonight we settled into a pub with a button accordion player and a guitarist.  The accordionist  was very good, of course.  He tended to throw in complete stops into most of his songs; only charging back into the song when we had noticed and wondered.  Unfortunately he also amplified his accordion and it was painfully loud.  We were just about to leave to find a different pub when tables were cleared and set-dancers took their places.

This was a real treat.  Only at Lark Camp, a world music celebration held yearly in Mendocino, California, had I ever seen the dancing and the music together as they were meant to be.  Traditionally the dancing has always been done in tight spaces like a kitchen where a table has been moved aside.  It is composed therefore of only four couples making very tight twirls and steps and figures.  The dancers bang out a rhythm with their feet, or at least one foot.  This really fed the accordionist and vice versa.

Dominic and company in a set dance of great precision, like a 

Celtic knot.

After the set dancers left that night Steve and I decided to go home too.  Outside we encountered Dominic, one of the dancers.  As we walked by I thanked him and said that it was a really rare thing to have the music and the dance together in the United States   He asked us about that and talked about his own experience with having been a National Folk Theater dance troupe performer since he was about eight.  He had been teased as gay for years and it was hard to stick with it, but at a certain point he realized he was in the perfect place to be with girls when that became of interest.  He told us that it used to be that musicians were only hired to accompany dances.  There was no interest in traditional music just for the music, and you could only get a gig when there was a planned dance.

He talked about how just fifteen years ago there was more of an emphasis on keeping music in your family, or even to yourself, and not playing it outside of intimate contexts.  This has all changed and there are many young people who are exposed to the music in encouraging ways—especially in Dingle where there is a strong need for musicians to entertain the growing tourist audiences.

We probably stood at the curb outside the bar talking to Dominic for the better part of an hour on subjects ranging from the spread of Irish traditional music around the world to the joys and tribulations of parenthood until he finally excused himself at about midnight, and we all headed off for our respective beds.