Archive News
Aran retreat a spiritual journey into Celtic past
Date Published: {J}
She’s not a hermit, and she’s not a mystic, but Deirdre Ní Chinnéide is on a spiritual journey – one that links directly with Ireland’s ancient past and a time when Ireland’s Christianity belonged to the Celtic rather than Roman Catholic tradition.
Deirdre, who lives on Inis Mór, runs a spiritual hostel on the island for “people who are taking time out from the ‘busyness’ of life to be creative and to meet fellow journeyers. It’s for people of all religions and no religions”, she says.
For the past two years she and others have been doing residential retreats there, incorporating yoga, music, movement and sacred arts.
Galway based Go West tours have now begun promoting these retreats under the auspices of its company Celtic Footstep, which organises “Christian, Cultural and Spiritual journeys of Ireland”.
Inis Mór has long been regarded as a sacred place, both in pre-Christian and Christian times and Dublin born Deirdre found herself drawn to the island from an early age.
She trained as a teacher and worked as a school principal, during which time she studied psychotherapy, feeling it would help her pupils maximise their potential.
After specialising in the area of Trauma and Recovery she worked throughout Ireland, and then in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, helping people who had been raped and traumatised during the bitter conflict in former Yugoslavia.
During that time, Inis Mór offered a haven from the death and destruction she witnessed, explains Deirdre, whose clear voice and use of her hands to stress her points feel strangely familiar on our first meeting. And well they might, as she is a sister to Nationwide presenter, Mary Kennedy, who joined the rest of the family on the island recently, helping Deirdre to redecorate her house/ hostel.
They are a close bunch, says Deirdre and they have supported her in a journey which saw her give up a secure job teaching for a freelance life centred on spirituality and music. Many people might think she is mad, but this is not a “New Age thing” for Deirdre – it’s grounded in the island and in her music.
“I’m open to the fact that there’s more to life than material things,” she says.
Deirdre’s biggest musical project to date has been the CD, Celtic Passage, a mix of music, song and chant in Irish and English, which was released in 2007.
She spent six months on the island writing Celtic Passage, which was inspired by her experiences in the Balkans as she needed to respond creatively to the death and destruction she had witnessed there.
“I’d always been singing but this was my first time writing music. Celtic Passage goes on a journey of the heart, returning to a place of peace within ourselves.”
Celtic Passage was performed in the Balkans shortly after its composition, and she was amazed by the way people understood the emotion, if not the words.
When Deirdre sang it in Glenstal Abbey, one of those who heard it recommended her to US record label Sounds True, who released the CD in America and Ireland. It won Celtic album of the Year in the US in 2007.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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