Music is an adventure. It entices us, inspires us and takes us to places we couldn’t otherwise go. Dreams often come when we play or hear music. Sometimes we get little wispy daydreams, and sometimes a song can take us on a journey to somewhere we have never been before, or can even offer us a moment’s glance inside the mind of another. Songs of the sea have always been a particular favourite of mine. There is something about the sea that calls us like a primal drum. It has a calming influence on us all, rolling and rocking us into soothing sleepy dreams, of far away magical places.
There was once a strain of story called the Eachtra. These were voyages to amazing places, far away over the sea. There’s the voyage of Bran, which brings the hero to Tír na nÓg, the land of youth where nobody ever grows old. After a little while he returned to see how Ireland was faring. The people greeted him as he sailed in, but nobody knew him, though they had heard of him in old stories. One of his men stepped ashore, and his body instantly crumbled to dust. Bran stayed in his boat and had the scribes transcribe his story before sailing back out to sea, never to be seen again. Oisín was another man who went to Tír na nÓg, and I often dream of going there myself some day. The voyage of Ulysses was another fine magical journey that has inspired all sorts of art after it, including James Joyce’s book of the same name. Even the Coen Brothers’ movie ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?’ was loosely based on the Voyage of Ulysses. I have always loved those old stories, and one of my personal favourites was about my namesake St. Brendan, who discovered America long before Christopher Columbus even existed. My favourite part of that tale was when they slept on an island one night, and lit a fire in the morning to cook their breakfast on, and then the island started to move so they quickly jumped into their boats and watched the island swim away…
The Brendan Voyage is a slightly different class of an adventure called an Immram, and who better to feature at this year’s Immrama Festival of Travel Writing in Lismore this weekend than Tim Severin, the man who set off one day in a little boat to prove that the Brendan Voyage was true. Shaun Davey was then inspired by Severin’s voyage, to write a wonderful orchestral suite with the great Liam O’Flynn on the uileann pipes.
And now I must leave you to your own dreams of music and sea, and I’ll leave you with this picture of the Asgard II in Dungarvan. She now lies at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay by the way, but that’s a tale for another day.
If you have an event which you would like to have mentioned or reviewed for this column, please contact Ormy on 086 3634005 or info@sounds.ie.
Ormy is a musician who plays regularly all around the country, both as a solo performer and as part of the popular Cork-based band “The Darktown Strutters”. By day he teaches guitar, runs a busy guitar repair business in Lismore, and actively promotes live music all around the South East. See www.sounds.ie for more information.
(Article from Dungarvan Observer, 9 June 2010)
