On The Town Catherine FoleyThe voice of Delia Murphy seemed to echo through the halls of the National Library when guests to the opening of the If I Were A Blackbird exhibition this week joined in with the singer's great-granddaughter, Madeline Hawke, from Canberra, Australia, when she sang The Spinning Wheel.
"Merrily, cheerily, noisily, whirring/ Swings the wheel, spins the wheel while the foot's stirring/ Sprightly and lightly and airily ringing/ Sounds the sweet voice of the young maiden singing."
The exhibition focuses on the lives of Delia Murphy and her husband, the diplomat, author and lecturer, Thomas J Kiernan, and commemorates 60 years of Irish diplomatic representation in Australia.
"Both led full and extraordinary lives. Delia Murphy is probably the better known of the two, given her career as a recording artist and performer," said Aongus Ó hAonghusa, director of the National Library of Ireland.
The Dáil's Ceann Comhairle, Dr Rory O'Hanlon TD, told how Kiernan was the Irish high commissioner in London for 10 years, director of broadcasting at Radio Éireann from 1935 until 1941, and then Irish ambassador to the Vatican.
"He enjoyed a career of great distinction, serving as ambassador in a number of countries, concluding with a period as ambassador to the USA," added O'Hanlon. Kiernan was also the first Irish ambassador to Australia.
"We went to Rome in 1941 at the height of the war. We went to Foynes. There was a blackout. They rowed us out in the dark to the seaplane . . . I don't know how they managed it with four young children," recalled the couple's youngest daughter, Dr Orla Browne.
Among the guests at the opening were Delia Murphy's niece and nephew, writers Carmen and Leo Cullen, and her grand- daughter, historian Carol Kiernan, who was instrumental in organising the exhibition, both here in Ireland and, from next month, at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
Nicholas Carolan, of the Irish Traditional Music Archive; Máire Mac Conghail, board member of the National Library; singer and television presenter Fil Campbell; and Delia Murphy's biographer, Aidan O'Hara, were also present.
The domed entrance hall of the library was filled again with song when Murphy's great-grandson, Brendan Hawke, and then Shannon Mullin (aged 11), from Cloghans in Co Mayo, sang two separate versions of another favourite from the great traditional singer's repertoire, The Moonshiner.
If I Were A Blackbird continues at the National Library of Ireland until Sat, Mar 3
Full stomach required for aromatic drama
There would be delicious smells, appetising food and a chocolate cake at the end. The new play, Two for Dinner for Two, was about to open and guests on opening night had been advised to eat before the performance.
The aromatic drama, devised by Ciarán Taylor with the BDNC Theatre Company in collaboration with Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble, and with original music by Jane O'Leary, "looks at a real domestic situation", said Taylor.
"Three courses have to be cooked and eaten, a chocolate cake is made. We are going to do a lot of cooking. Your personality comes out when you are trying to cook and co-operate with someone."
"As the drama unfolds, knives are thrown, food is flying, and the live music mirrors what's going on," said Selina O'Reilly, the company's administrator.
Strange noises were already beginning to emerge from the "kitchen" on stage, as soprano Tine Verbeke and clarinettist Bernie Balfe, of the Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble, began to warm up before the performance. Composer O'Leary explained that some of the music was "dissonant and some is bizarre". The music derives from the "sounds of the cooking and chopping the ingredients and the whispering", she said.
Friends on their way to see the play, performed by Ruth Lehane and Karl Quinn, included Joseph Curtin, a researcher at the Institute of European Affairs, and landscape architect Richard Butler. Also in attendance were secondary-school teacher Melanie Carroll and community worker Caitriona Kelly, daughter of the late John Kelly RHA, who died earlier this year and who was one of the founding members of Project Arts Centre. Others included Gerry Godley, of the Improvised Music Company, which organises the regular live jazz in JJ Smyth's on Dublin's Aungier Street every Sunday night; Holly Maples, newly appointed acting facilitator for St Patrick's Festival; John Meany, of Carrick-on-Suir, who is one of the first group to be studying for the newly established MA in directing for theatre at UCD, and Raymond Keane, of Barabbas Theatre Company.
Two for Dinner for Two runs at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, until Sat, Jan 20
Solo explorer reunited with relatives
Pierse O'Brien (aged seven), from Tralee, Co Kerry, puffed his little chest out and, in a clear, ringing voice, declared his relationship to Tom Crean, the great Antarctic explorer. "I'm his great-grandson," said the boy, and although the lights were dimming in the Olympia Theatre, young O'Brien stood his ground as he explained why Crean was famous: "He explored the Antarctic."
It was a night to be proud. The Crean grandsons and great-grandchildren were in the audience of the Olympia Theatre for the opening night of the award-winning one-man play, Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, written and performed by Aidan Dooley.
Grandsons Enda O'Brien and Brendan O'Brien were there to relive the story of Crean's mammoth solo trek over 36 miles through the snowy wastes of the Antarctic to save his comrades.
"My mother was very like my grandfather in nature. She was quiet and so was Tom," said Enda O'Brien. "They grew up in a time when whatever knocks life threw at you, you just picked yourself up and got on with it. When we were growing up, we never appreciated all he had achieved." The play, he added, "puts a frog in your throat because it brings to life some of the stuff he went through. I can't understand how he survived".
Among those at the first night this week were arts consultant Tony Ó Dálaigh; comedy writer and director Arthur Mathews; I, Keano director Terry Byrne; Helen O'Carroll, curator of the Kerry County Museum in Tralee, Co Kerry; Paul Callaghan, of the Tom Crean Society; Aidan Dooley's parents, James and Ellen Dooley, from Galway; and his wife and fellow actor, Miriam Dooley.
Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer is on today at 3pm and 8pm in the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, and opens at the Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork, on Mon, running until next Sat, Jan 20
Flights of the Irish scholars
The powerful image of three families filing on to a boat in Rathmullen, Co Donegal, in 1607, bound for Rome, was brought vividly to life at the launch of this year's Cumann Merriman Winter School programme. This year the theme will be the 400th anniversary of that historic day when the Flight of the Earls began.
"This was a catastrophic event, which led to the Ulster Plantation in 1613," said Liam Ó Dochartaigh, director of international education at the University of Limerick and director of the Cumann Merriman Winter School.
The three-day event has become "the main annual forum for speakers of Irish to meet and mix and hear from scholars of Irish studies", added Ó Dochartaigh.
Taking place in Westport, Co Mayo, lectures will be given on aspects of the epic journey of the earls and their families by a range of speakers, including Dr Diarmuid Ó Doibhlin, Prof Micheál Mac Craith and Dr Michelle O'Riordain.
Poet Liam Ó Muirthile will discuss and read work by poets from the 1560-1630 era.
"Tá dignit do-chreidte ag baint leo," he said, commenting on the dignity of the poetry of this era. "There's a great sense of an order, an intellectual order coming to an end, and of an intellectual language. There's a great cynicism about Bardic poets, that they would have sold their mother for a bit of parchment. I think we have a very unresolved relationship with the Bardic poets, which needs to be addressed."
Others at the launch of the school's programme this week at Foras na Gaeilge in Dublin included biographers Liam Mac an Iomaire and Diarmuid Breathnach, writer and historian Brian Mac Aongusa, director of TG4's Soiscéal Pháraic Maggie Breathnach, and a former chair of Cumann Merriman, Dr Eoghan Ó hAnluain.
The 39th Winter School of Cumann Merriman will run from Fri, Jan 26 to Sun, Jan 28 in Westport, Co Mayo. For further details, telephone 086-3820671,
e-mail eolas@merriman.ie or go to www.merriman.ie