Dónal Donohoe

Many years had passed since I had been in county Mayo, I was back in Ireland to attend my brother’s wedding in Roscommon and the next day got a bus from Elphin to Foxford from where I intended to retrace my steps from memory and find my old friend who had recently moved back from the U.S. to a farm there left to him by his uncle. He would travel down from Dublin at weekends as a young man to help his uncle with various chores around the farm and sometimes I would join him. The farm was nestled on a bend of the river Moy with the end of the Ox Mountains visible to the north and the majestic Nephen mountain dominating the vista to the west. The highlight of the weekend was usually the dance at the Pontoon ballroom situated on the narrow strip of land that separates Loch Conn and Loch Cullin, on starlit nights during our summer visits we would sometimes sit on the rocks at the shore of Loch Cullin after the dance and talk until late into the night.

I had not seen my friend for over ten years and it was even longer since I had been back to the farm, but with the image of Nephin in my mind’s eye I was sure that I could find my way back to the farmhouse using it as a marker. So setting off on foot on the road south out of Foxford I kept the great mountain to my right and hoped that I would reach my destination before evening came and the light faded. After about three miles the road climbed a long hill then descended again down an equally long slope to a bridge over the river Moy. It was just as I remembered it and if I could now find the turn and the Norman tower I knew I would be almost home and dry. I crossed the river, found the turn and after a short distance I saw the Norman tower in a field on the right, a little further on a narrow road turned off up a hill on the opposite side. I continued on my way eager to reach my journeys end.

After walking for some time I saw nothing that looked familiar or that I could recognize, I did not remember it being such a long distance from the Norman tower to the farm and with each step the feeling grew that something was amiss. There were no turns on the road and I continued along it seeing no other option, I sang an old song to help pass the journey. As the song ended I came to a place where there was a turn to the left after which the road continued on over a humpback bridge, on the corner there was a small quaint cottage. I stopped for a while and searched my memory but had no recollection of a humpback bridge.

I walked the narrow pathway from the gate through a small lush country garden and knocked on the door of the cottage. A young woman with a pleasant smile answered, I explained my predicament and inquired after my friend. She knew who I was talking about and said that I should take the turn to the left and I would find the place. It seems that I should have taken the turn opposite the Norman tower but had instead continued on almost to the village of Bohola and had come around full circle and would now be approaching the place from the opposite direction to what I had originally intended. It was late in the afternoon as I walked the remaining half a mile or so and then there it was, some of the surrounding spruce trees had been felled and those remaining had been trimmed, but the house looked just the same. I greeted my friend and he boiled some water to make coffee.

Winter was approaching fast, I was in a foreign country, couldn’t speak the language and needed somewhere to live. I had already met Richard by that time, originally from London we had played together a few times and it was he who brought me along, having lived there himself for about two years, to that place on Vesterbrogade close to Copenhagen city center to see if he could get me a room there too. He showed me his own room which was furnished exactly like the other hundred or so rooms for rent there, a bed, wardrobe, table and chair. I was introduced to the landlord, paid a deposit and moved in right away. Five stories high I lived on the top floor and Richard reckoned it was one of the more luxurious rooms there, seeing as how it had an ashtray. With a fifteen minute walk to the city center, ten minutes to my favourite Pakistani restaurant on Viktoriagade, two minutes to the nearest of four local bakeries and five minutes to one of my regular gigs, the location if nothing else seemed right.

As you came in the door the rooms were to the right off an L-shaped corridor, on the left side was a bathroom, kitchen and a broom closet. A Norwegian couple had just moved into the first room and the man spoke a little English. They were always smiling and seemed very pleased with their new accommodation, he spoke in such glowing terms about the place that you would have thought it was the Ritz hotel he was talking about. He told me one day that they had just discovered a great place to eat with good food at reasonable prices located on Vesterbrogade on the way into town. I checked the place out but the menu was very traditional with a lot of red meat and I decided to stick to the samosas, allou tikkis and dal turka in the Pakistani restaurant.

My room was in the middle and the two rooms at the far end of the corridor were occupied by single men who just came and went and didn’t say much. A couple lived in the room to the right of mine which was the biggest on the floor, he was fifty years old, bald with greying sideburns, she was twenty one and considerably over weight. Unlike the other people who lived there, they had set up home there, cooking regularly in the kitchen where they kept their pots and pans and other utensils in a cupboard secured by a large padlock. Their room had three windows, two budgerigars, an aquarium with various types of fish and at least two dozen exotic looking plants along with a sofa, bed, table and chairs etc. Everyday a friend of theirs would call by and they would sit there drinking beer for the afternoon.

One day when summer had come around again I came home and their door was open along with their windows because of the heat and they were sitting there as usual with their friend drinking beer, I said hello as I passed by on my way to my room. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door, it was the woman and she asked me if I would like to join them for a beer. I joined them and although we spoke very little of each others language we soon struck up a conversation of sorts. They asked where I was from, I told them I was from Ireland, they had already guessed that I was a musician having seen me come and go with my guitar. They told me that they could sometimes hear me playing and I asked if it was too loud or if it disturbed them, they replied it was not a problem and that the music sounded ‘very nice’. I also learned that the highlight of their week was a trip to a large nearby park called Søndermarken located at the end of Vesterbrogade on the way out of town, where they would bet at the pigeon racing that took place there every Saturday. They said it was great fun and really exciting and that I should try it too. I told them I might check it out sometime.

An elderly man somewhere in his sixties with a head of short cropped grey hair, finely chiselled features on his weather worn face and friendly eyes that still sparkled lived in the room to the left of mine. Slender of build he was usually dressed in a worn crumpled suit that had seen better days and an open neck shirt, he never wore a tie. He spoke no English but would always greet me with his toothy smile whenever we would meet in the hall, his surname might have been Hansen. Occasionally I heard him listening to the radio in his room, twice I noticed him making tea in the kitchen and once I saw him take a mop from the broom closet and wash the floor in the hall, but mostly he just came and went like the rest of us. Although I lived there for about a year I never really got to know Mr. Hansen, if that was his name, where he was from, what he had worked at or if he had any family and I don’t know what ever happened to him. But I remember lying there in my bed and hearing him through the wall coughing all night long.

It was Christmas eve and the night was frosty as I made my way back across the city having done the deal. I was eighteen years old and had just bought a new guitar, a decent one this time and not like the last one which fell apart on me after two years. This guitar was almost new, had a nice tone and stayed in tune when you played it up along the neck and the new guitar strings that I had purchased earlier in the day enhanced the sound even more. I spent the rest of the night with friends playing for them just about every tune I knew at the time on my new instrument. On Christmas day as soon as I got a chance I slipped off to played the guitar and after a while wrote a tune. Over the next few days I played the new tune many times and even managed to write some lyrics for it, so it was now a song with one verse.

Although I tried to finish the song over the following weeks and months I never managed to get beyond that first verse, but I liked the tune and thought that someday somewhere down the line I would finish it. There matters lay until twenty years later when I had just returned to Ireland and was living in an old farmhouse in county Wicklow. I had started to write songs in Irish and one night sitting in front of the open fire I got an idea for a song and started to write some lyrics. When I thought about a melody for the lyrics for some reason the tune I had written twenty years previous came to my head. So keeping the guitar arrangement as originally written I set the new lyrics to it and they fitted like a glove. The song is called ‘An t-Slí Go Cill Mhantáin’ and is the second track on my second album ‘Ceol ’s Rann’.

Some songs have a history.

The new CD ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ hits the radio stations this week and so I am hoping that it might receive a few spins amid the thousands of other musicians who are trying to do the same.

Although the Irish language has been in decline for some time now it is really amazing just how many musicians not only sing in Irish, but write songs in Irish too. Long may it continue for it would be a sad day when it’s beauty and lilting sound were lost for ever.

Though my own command and grasp of the language is quite limited, indeed some would say little more than the ‘cúpla focal’, these songs mean something to me and help me maintain a connection to what, if history had been just a little different, would have been my mother tongue.

In an age when many Irish people are reluctant to use their own language even occasionally or in a bilingual context, I hope that these songs can stand as my meagre contribution to keeping it alive.

Autumn comes around again and yesterday the wood burning stove was lit for the first time to keep the house warm through the night. The laurel trees that I cut down to logs last year are now seasoned and ready to burn. The long winter nights dreaded by so many are in some ways perfect for playing and writing new music.

The new album ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ has just been released and will be on the shelves of all good music shops in the near future, at least in a perfect world that is how it should happen. Alas there are not too many music shops good or bad around any more and like most other musicians I must resort to cyberspace for such matters. To this end a new website has been launched today which I think is more attractive and easier to use than the old one.

I will be dropping by from time to time with updates and news and anything else concerning the music that I think might be of interest to you. So try the links, listen to the music, keep in touch and if you have any comments please send them to me.