St. Patrick's Festival - Storytelling

Of course, on Wednesday, it was St. Patrick's Day! And what with the pandemic raging harder than ever, of course it was all online this year - at least they had more time to prepare than last year! And they did us proud, with a week's worth of festivities - most available on the festival website, and for free. I hadn't had time to see everything I wanted to, but luckily, it's still there to watch.

Gotta say, I love the snake logo. ;-) They really went to town, there's so much there.. storytelling by Eddie Lenihan is something I made a beeline for, today - he's the first storyteller I ever saw. And he didn't disappoint. Three videos, about 15 minutes each, were provided for the festival - but when you click through to watch on YouTube, I'm delighted to see plenty more of his videos! Will check those out at some point.

Anyway, today I watched these three. All were shot in an atmospheric little room at the Old Ground Hotel, white-plastered, dotted with armour, a large fireplace with large, white candles scattered on it, and a carved wooden chair for the seanchaí. He mentions, in one video, that he's been at this for 43 years - sure enough, I remember his tv appearances when I was a child, and do you know, he hasn't changed much! With his enormous, fuzzy beard, a pair of round glasses peering out over the top - perhaps a bit greyer, but he's still the same one I listened to, years ago.

He has a lovely, natural, old-fashioned style - but I'm glad captions are automatically enabled. He can be soft-spoken, and perhaps the accent is a bit thick, if you're not used to it. Also, it's peppered with the odd phrase in Irish, which is translated in the captions. But try to direct most of your attention to watching him - the three Irish stories are told in his usual, animated, excitable way. It's an absolute delight to watch - highly recommended.

Afterwards, having yet more time with nothing on tv, I had another scroll through the website - and my eye was caught by a series of videos in the Abair series. As explained when you click through, this is the verb "to say", or "to sing" - and they've used this as a springboard for a set of videos, part storytelling, part sean-nós (old style) singing. I watched the first - Táimse im' Chodladh (I'm asleep), which deals with the notion of sleep and dreams. Never fear - the singing is in Irish, the storytelling isn't.

This was shot in 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin - preserved as a museum of what a Georgian townhouse was like, with one room preserved as it would have looked as a tenement; Dublin was notorious, at the beginning of the 20th century, for having some of the worst slums in Europe. Anyway, this storytelling lacks Eddie Lenihan's vigour - but it's still well told, and I think I recognise the storyteller, Nuala Hayes, who comes dressed in costume, so she fits into the tenement set. She tells two in this video, each accompanied by a song, and in between, they sit around in a circle with the presenter, and chat about storytelling.

With plenty more in this series, I think I'll have enough to keep me busy for the weekend..