Because today, August 4th marks the 12th anniversary of the death of Con Houlihan I thought it would be fitting to include the following piece he wrote in The Kerryman in 1974 about plans being hatched by himself and a little group of his friends.
These plans were in the making just over a decade after the death of Con’s friend, Patrick O’Keeffe or Patrick Keeffe – as he and the general population of the area referred to him.
The month of August, in fact, plays a significant part in the stories of Con Houlihan, Mike Kenny and of Patrick O’Keeffe – to a lesser extent.
Both Con and Mike Kenny died in August. Con on August 4th 2012 and Mike on August 12th 2011.
And Mike’s sculpture of the great fiddle master was finally unveiled on the edge of the green in Scartaglen on July 29th 1983 on the edge of the August bank holiday weekend féile there.
Interestingly, in his 1974 ‘Kerryman’ article, Con set out to write of the plans to commemorate the gifted life and turbulent times of his friend Patrick.
Thankfully, he went on to embellish the article with memories of some of the great days he spent in Patrick’s company – memories which will bring you back in time and place you with a front seat view of how they lived their lives.
I’m not sure what impact, if any, the plans by Con and his friends in Castle Island in the early 1970s had on the eventual unveiling in Scart in 1983 – but the fiddle playing genius was eventually honoured and that’s all that matters now.
I’d never get an award as a typist anyway and I hate having to type copy stuff from old documents. I can fly through stuff coming out of my own head but copying just keeps on tripping me up.
However, while working on Con’s article, I walked every step of the way with him as he told the story of their days down here and I was sorry when we parted. That was and is his gift and it’s a gift that’s still giving.
May God rest them all.
The following is Con’s testament to the genius of his friend, the great fiddle master Patrick Keeffe:
A Memorial to Great Genius
Con Houlihan (and friends) take the memory of Patrick Keeffe off the long finger.
“It is now over ten years since Patrick Keeffe, the great fiddle player, passed away from this world.
No memorial to him has yet been erected. The main reason comes from our habit of putting things on the long finger – and Irish long fingers tend to be very long indeed. There is another reason: Some years ago a few of us mooted the idea of a memorial; the idea took root and grew and suddenly there was talk of a committee and sub-committees; the simple project we had in mind was obviously about to be smothered in grandiose proposals – and to complicate matters further there was a budding controversy about what kind of memorial it should be and where it should be located.
Cordal Plans in the Marian Year
It all reminded us of what happened in Cordal in the Marian Year. Then the good people of that sub-parish came together to make plans about building a shrine to Our Lady; they failed to agree about the site and out of the resulting schism came two shrines – and but for the grace of God there would have been several more. And so now a few of us have decided to go ahead on our own.
Our plan is very simple and the cost will be very modest – and anybody that wishes to be associated with the project will be more than welcome. We hope to get Seamus Murphy, the great Cork stone carver, to make a plaque similar to the one that commemorated Francis Ledwidge in Slane.
And we think that the best place for it is on the wall of Castle Island Convent near the bridge on the Cork road.
Patrick Kavanagh and Water
Patrick Kavanagh was right when he wrote: “O commemorate me where there is water.” And Patrick Keeffe would understand – water is the music of nature.
Many of the young generation who never knew Patrick ask us about him; they wonder if he was as great in reality as in legend. It is a natural query; we are often disappointed when we meet our heroes in the flesh. But about his ability as a musician there need be no doubt; it may be suspected that his friends and admirers were perhaps a little prejudiced in their judgement – but Ireland’s leading critic called him “the greatest folk musician in western Europe.” And western Europe is a fairly big place. I was working far from our common home when I read that pronouncement; I posted the cutting on to Patrick – and the moment he got it he left his humble abode in Gleanntan and walked the mountains to Scartaglen.
We’re Famous at Last
When he arrived at Lyons’ his great friend Jack, God rest him, was behind the bar and Patrick said: “I have news for you – we’re famous at last.”
The greatest reward Patrick ever wished for was neither money nor indeed fame in the vulgar sense, but a few words of praise from someone who understood. Towards cups and medals and grand titles he had an amused indifference; he knew that you cannot classify artists as if they were teams in the football league. On a famous occasion he took his indifference a bit far. He was invited to judge the senior fiddle competition at an aeriocht in North Kerry. Money on the bushes was even scarcer then than now, and he went.
The local doctor, a great lover of folk music, took him to lunch and entertained him not wisely but too well.
Competition Under Way
The competition eventually got under way and Patrick seated himself in the farthest corner of the platform. The afternoon was warm and soon Patrick’s head was resting on his hands and he was sound asleep. The fiddlers were the centre of attention as they fingered and boed and tapped their feet and did their best to impress the great man. If anyone occasionally glanced towards the adjudicator, they were deeply impressed by his air of great concentration. At last the final competitor gave a final flourish on the strings and the secretary moved into the depths of the stage to consult the adjudicator. The sudden silence had aroused Patrick – and after a suitable interval for deep contemplation he delivered his verdict: “They were all good.”
That oft told story illustrates more than his attitude towards music; it is an example of a kind of humour peculiar to those days.
Keeping Your Sanity
Times then were very hard and about the best way to keep your sanity was not to take the world too seriously. If Freud or Jung or Adler had known that world, they would have revised their systems of psychology to allow for the Gleanntan dimension. That humour took two forms: sometimes it intimated that the world in its essence is only a joke (Jean Paul Sartre went to great lengths to say what Tadhg Buckley of Gougane Barra said in a few words: “The world is only a bluebag; knock a squeeze out of it while you can”); at other times it took the form of the mock heroic – the elevating of something simple into the realm of the pretentious or the dramatic. A generation ago there was only one motor car in Gleanntan and especially in winter ‘when blood is nipt and ways be foul’ it played a very important part in maintaining the link with Castle Island. It was a common sight to see a huddle of the mountainy men around the fire in Julia Fitzgerald’s pub waiting for their pilot.
‘We Were in Julia’s Waiting….’
Patrick started many a story with: “We were in Julia’s waiting for the Gleanntan ferry…” But like all people with a great sense of humour he was a very serious man. The marvellous mastery of the fiddle had not been acquired without long and diligent practice. There are no shortcuts in art – and those innocent people who believe in ‘born geniuses’ should read Van Gogh’s letters or look at the manuscripts of Gerald Manley Hopkins. But technique only is not enough – there must be a great soul to articulate. And ‘soul’ in this sense means an intuition of the profound life of your world, an ability to receive, as D.H. Lawrence said, the messages that come from the depths of the earth.
When you know Gleanntan
Patrick Keeffe knew Gleanntan as surely as Thomas Hardy knew Dorset or as Guy de Maupassant knew Normandy. And when you know Gleanntan you know Ireland and you know the world. And what made Patrick’s music so great was its deep roots. The ‘real’ Ireland has hardly been yet explored in art; in literature there are a few fragments; in painting there is scarcely anything; what is most moving because most profound is almost all in music. When Patrick played an air you felt that you were hearing the essential voice of the world you knew around you; it was all there – the loneliness and the glory and the intimations you get from bog and field and water and sky, the intimations that torment you because you cannot articulate them yourself.
Importance of the Artist
That is why the artist is so important – we all hunger to understand, and he enables us now and then to strip away the inessential and to glimpse the local and the contemporary as rich and strange. And even in modern Ireland, jaundiced and mercenary though it may be, there is still a respect for the artist, a subconscious awareness of his importance. Patrick’s funeral was remarkable. It was grey and piercingly cold weather, the time of year when winter is fighting off the spring, but from all over Munster and beyond care a great and assorted concourse of Dáil deputies and senators, business men, musicians and music lovers, people from all the walks and runs and stumbles of life. It was moving and it was heartening – it made you proud that Ireland was still a civilised country.
A Session in Tom McCarthy’s
And there was no sadness about his death – he died as peace-fully and as fittingly as the leaf in autumn falls from the tree. The last day we gave together was a strangely right climax to a long and all-too-short friendship.
There had been a session at Tom McCarthy’s in Castleisland the night before. Andy Gallagher and Johnny Spillane and myself had been recording a great gathering of players and singers; Patrick had been there but because he could hardly ever give of his best in a big crowd we didn’t record him. Instead he slept the night in Tom’s and on the morrow we went to Knocknagoshel, and in the kitchen of Dan Conny O’Connor’s pub (God rest that grand man) we settled down gently to business. It was spring, but as Coleridge said “the spring comes slowly up this way” and even though the fields were greening it as damp and cold outside and it was good to be in that hospitable kitchen with the turf fire glowing in the range and the various pots and saucepans giving out their grand smells.
Patrick’s Glass on the Hob
Patrick sat with his glass on the hob near him, as happy as a duck in a pond, and casually but expertly tuned the fiddle. His own (‘the wife as he used to call it) was missing, believed lost. We had borrowed a beautiful instrument from Canon Francis Roycroft (and God be good to him too) and after a few essays with the bow Patrick pronounced his delight – “Good little cully; you’re giving me your milk – and ’tis the grand milk.” That day he played off and on for hours – reels, jigs and slides and hornpipes and airs, music that would keep you from going to your own wedding. He stopped only when the tape had run out.
Andy and Johnny and myself never met him again. But it was a marvelous farewell.
Sometimes one believes that fate plays a part in our affairs – and that sometimes it gives us a wry smile.”
You can contact The Maine Valley Post on… Anyone in The Maine Valley Post catchment area who would like to send us news and captioned photographs for inclusion can send them to: jreidy@mainevalleypost.com Queries about advertising and any other matters regarding The Maine Valley Post can also be sent to that address or just ring: 087 23 59 467.
