People on Clare Island happy to face the music

With the music playing and the sun beating down, it might have been the Caribbean - but it was Clare Island, Co Mayo.

With the music playing and the sun beating down, it might have been the Caribbean - but it was Clare Island, Co Mayo.

The fourth annual Féile Cheoil an Oileáin attracted a large influx of musicians, poets and singers over the weekend.

On Saturday night, box players Billy Gallagher and Michael McNamara jigged and reeled in the company of P.J. Hernan from Sligo and Seamus Heneghan, a regular seisiún player in Westport.

"I stretched muscles that I never knew I had," said Ms Jane O'Toole, a féile organiser.

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Earlier at the grand Coirm Cheoil, her husband, Patrick, had offered his version of Muinish, a seanós song about a drowning off Muinish, a small Connemara island. He is the 2002 Connacht champion of seanós singing. Ms Mary McCabe, the national school principal for the past 25 years, said the féile had become a favourite weekend for locals.

"Each year there are musical workshops held during the féile. I feel it is most important for the island's youth to be afforded every opportunity to learn about their heritage and a fragile culture that could be so easily lost."