We rejoin Ye Vagabonds, brothers Brían and Diarmuid MacGloinn, who are currently on their ‘All Boats Rise’ tour – a slow tour rejecting the planes, trains, and automobiles for a slow-moving barge across the waterways of Ireland. They write to us after Belmont as they make their way to Ballycommon via Pollagh and Rahan…(Part one here)
Before that, here they are putting themselves through a lock near Digby Bridge, Co.Kildare along with the tune Buried my Wife & Danced on Top of Her.
There’s no doubt that this tour is intense in its own way. We’re handling a fifty-foot barge, operating locks, setting a stage complete with shelter, sound and decor, playing gigs that involve collaboration and improvisation, recording videos and tunes and, in between all of this, finding time to cook, clean and empty the weed hatch.
It could all be very overwhelming for the three of us, or even stressful, but overall it’s just too much of a joy. A combination of the fresh air, the beauty of the scenery that we glide through at a strolling pace and the stimulation of doing so many new things after eighteen months of inertia is pure bliss.
After Belmont, we made our way to Ballycommon via Pollagh and Rahan, stopping the first night outside the house of Alan Lindley, an eighth-generation lock keeper whose forebears dug the canal. The lock house has been in his family for two hundred and twenty years, but within his lifetime, great changes have taken place in the landscape around him. In his childhood, he snared rabbits, caught brown trout, gathered wild strawberries and mushrooms in the lands around his home, but he’s watched them all vanish to be replaced by intensively farmed pastureland, the runoff creating an overabundance of invasive weeds that clog up the canals where he remembers seeing nothing but water lilies and rushes.
In Ballycommon, we pulled up next to an old Guinness barge that would have been horse-drawn in its day. A grassy bank sloped gently down, and a large birch tree offered shade. We pitched up, and Erin Fornoff pulled up alongside us. Erin is a poet who lives aboard a barge herself and whose work often revolves around themes of amazement. Her performance couldn’t have been more in keeping with the feeling we all had, gathered there on the canal bank with festoon lights and eyes twinkling, enjoying music, poetry and good company in the open air. This gig counted among its many merits, the presence of small children and of dogs.
The following day Anja Murray, environmental scientist, writer and broadcaster, came aboard to chat to us about the wildlife along the canals. We had animated, lively conversations about the life cycles of damselflies, wildlife corridors and the nesting habits of grey wagtails.
We arrived in Digby bridge on the 18th and immediately knew we would have a unique gig that night with Feli Speaks and John Francis Flynn. By the time the other performers arrived, two other barges had pulled up behind us and created the impression of a kind of floating festival. The highlight of the gig was a finale in which Feli performed a poem entitled “Dear Ireland” while John and ourselves provided ambient backing. The crowd encircled us, spread out along the bank, the lock-gate, the bridge and the two barges behind. There were a few more than the thirty-five who had booked free tickets online. The garda* who arrived on his bicycle mid-gig didn’t seem worried, and neither were we. We didn’t mind that we had to cancel our gig in Rathangan due to rain. We’ll play some music with Brigid Mae Power at another spot in a few days time instead.
We relaxed for two days in the rainy afterglow of a great week, eating pizza and listening to Myles’s favourite selection of ambient music. While moored in Rathangan, we look at some google earth images of the area where several dark rings are visible in the grass of local fields, vestiges of Viking Forts which stood there until the Norman conquest. A local woman dropped us over a bag of potatoes and informed us that she had grown up in the same village as us. Next week we’ll make our way towards Carlow via the river Barrow, which should be an interesting new way to look upon our old hometown.
“Here’s a song called Blackbirds & Thrushes that we know from Séamus Ennis, but there are plenty of iterations of it in Ireland and England. This one with some added some gender swapping 
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Ye Vagabonds All Boats Rise Tour
13th August – Belmont Lock Tickets
15th August – Ballycommon w/ Erin Fornoff Tickets
18th August – Digby Bridge w/ John Francis Flynn & Feli Speaks Tickets
20th August – Rathangan w/ Brigid Mae Power Tickets
23rd August – Leighlinbridge w/ Leo O’Kelly Tickets
25th August – Clashganny Lock w/ Laura Quirke & Joshua Burnside Tickets
30th August – Enfield Harbour w/ Niamh Bury Tickets
1st September – Mullingar Tickets
5th September – Mosstown w/ The Night Before Larry Got Stretched Tickets
6th September – Cloondara w/ Cormac Begley Tickets
Website: http://yevagabonds.com/
*garda – police officer