Yet another year's marathon session for hopeful singles finished recently in Co Clare as the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival ended its five-weekend run, writes Eibhir Mulqueen.
It was preceded in August by the Merriman Summer School, an altogether more, well, august event whose learned deliberations are perhaps more in tune with Lisdoonvarna's reputation as a town with legendary healing waters. Indeed, the organisers regularly host their own restorative deliberations at the Spa Wells Centre dance hall at Sulphur Hill.
The town has Ireland's only functioning spa. Over the centuries discerning visitors have immersed themselves in the sulphur-rich waters at the Victorian Spa Wells Health Centre as a remedy for arthritis and rheumatism. Guy's Directory of Munster(1893) informs us that the sulphur spring proves "singularly efficacious" for gout, rheumatism, hepatitis, consumption, dyspepsia "and scorbutic affections". By this account, no other spa in Europe other than Bad Weilbach in Germany has lithium in its sulphur spring: "To this probable constituent is attributed the striking effects of the water," Francis Guy adds.
The more bracing option is to drink the waters - and having done so many years ago, I can attest to their foulness. The tradition of "imbibing noxious-smelling fluids", in the words of the late Sean J. White, author and broadcaster, arose in the Middle Ages as a tonic for a variety of ailments.
The Lisdoonvarna waters also have a reputation as a hangover cure, a useful remedy to have at hand during the matchmaking festival when copious amounts of alcohol are consumed to ease the flight of Cupid's arrow.
Also easing the process are the matchmakers, who boast no set of criteria for entry to the profession except a talent for acting as a go-between. Perhaps this is why politics or horse trading appear to be entry professions. Lisdoonvarna's chief matchmakers are Jim White, hotelier and former Fine Gael TD for Donegal, and Willie Daly, whose other pursuits include breeding and dealing in horses, and pony trekking. Daly also claims lineage as a matchmaker from his father and grandfather, both of whom dabbled in the art.
There are strong traditional links between the baths and matchmaking. Daly says farmers would go to drink and bath in the waters in the autumn after the harvest. Bachelors' thoughts would turn to finding a partner, and - no less than when making a deal over the sale of a horse - a middle-man's skills were required.
Failte Ireland's predecessor, the Irish Tourist Association (ITA), hinted at the hedonistic atmosphere produced by this combination made for when, in its survey of 1942, it described the town as having dances "several nights weekly" and as an attraction "not only for the sufferers from rheumatism etc, but also for the young and seekers of pleasure".
It was a far cry from the earlier tradition of treating the visit to Lisdoonvarna as kind of pilgrimage involving the rare opportunity to be able to go to Mass daily, according to Jim White, who gave a lecture to the 1985 Merriman Summer School on the history of Irish spas.
White described how the Lisdoonvarna spa was unique in Ireland for attracting farmers, as opposed to the gentry. He told how the waters from the three springs were first analysed by Dr Charles Lucas, from nearby Ballingaddy, who is traditionally associated with the discovery of the wells, and Dr Sylvester O'Halloran, one of the founders of the Royal College of Surgeons. The waters of two of the springs are high in iron and sulphur and the third is a magnesium one. The spa's pump room dates from the 1860s, when it was built by the Stacpoole family.
The advent of the West Care Railway in the 1890s brought the wells within relatively comfortable reach of the outside world. Travellers could reach Ennistymon, seven miles away, by train before completing the journey by horse and car.
The traditional accommodation for visitors was in lodges, a precursor of today's self-catering cottages, where visitors would bring their own provisions, mainly potatoes and cabbages.
The Victorian baths in Lisdoonvarna's spa have not been in use in recent years, though the waters continue to be available for those brave enough to imbibe them. Planning permission has been granted for a multi-million-euro plan to refurbish of the pump house and bathhouse,
promising new "immersion rooms", together with the construction of a new spa building containing a hydro-pool and a thermal bathing suite. An information centre and retail area would complete the development.
Developer Bernard McNamara - a son of the town - whose father, Michael, built the centre's dance hall in the 1970s, is considering the project. Related plans include the restoration of the Park Pavilion Theatre, built in 1913 as an entertainment centre for visitors, the development of the town's 30-acre park as the North Clare Sports and Amenity Park.