If you haven’t been to the beautiful, windswept Achill Island in County Mayo, you may still have seen glimpses as it was one of the central locations for the film The Banshees of Inisherin. The largest of the islands off of Ireland, with a population of around 2,500, it also has a thriving traditional music scene. Isle Of The Eagle is an album of traditional and new music, stories and poetry by The Achill Sound, a collaborative community project combining music, history and folklore.
Isle Of The Eagle brings together eighteen musicians, including natives of Achill, some who have settled there and others who are regular visitors, with the voices of Achill singer and storyteller John ‘Twin’ McNamara and poet and storyteller Francie McNamara – between them ranging age from 16 to 88. Achill-born singer-songwriter and guitarist Graham Sweeney was the driving force behind the project, which he was inspired to put together when John ‘Twin’ McNamara introduced him to the Achill song that became the title for the album.
John ‘Twin’ McNamara is one of Achill’s most influential historians, folklorists and collectors of songs, poetry and stories. He was central to the relaunch of Achill’s very popular traditional music and arts summer school in 1985. The track Eagle Harp has the brilliant Achill-based harpist Laoise Kelly playing an exquisite tune behind John, who talks about the history of eagles on the island and the song’s origins. Achill was the last breeding place in Western Ireland of the white-tailed sea eagle, recorded locally as late as 1875, and the last reliable sighting of the golden eagle was on Achill’s Slievemore mountain in 1912.
The song is believed to have been written in the late 1800s by Annette Hemphill, who worked as a governess on the Pike Estate in Glendarary on Achill. The song was, unusually for the time, as local people spoke Gaelic, written in English and is about saying farewell to the island – there was significant emigration from the island then. It was collected from Jamsie Kane, Dugort by Michael O’Donnell and Eoin McNamara when collecting songs for the first Scoil Acla songbook in 1987. John ‘Twin’ McNamara recorded the song on his Oileán m’Aislingí / Island of My Dreams released last year.
Here, Isle Of The Eagle is sung by Graham Sweeney, also playing guitar, and features Laoise Kelly on harp, Kyoto born, Achill resident Lisa Fukuda on fiddle and Achill native Des Cafferkey on whistle. The plaintive arrangement captures the sadness of leaving ‘Beautiful Isle of the Eagle’, the whistle and fiddle on instrumental passage after the lyric conjuring the soaring of those sadly long extinct eagles.
Stories told by John ‘Twin’ McNamara run as a thread through the album. On Bás An Teanga – which translates as ‘death of a language’ – he explains how Gaelic was systematically suppressed on Achill. On The Two Woods/Tell Her I Am, Graham asks him if the name Achill is related to the eagles, but John says that it most likely originated as two separate words, which meant The Two Woods – behind the story are snatches from Achill resident uilleann piper John Butler playing the jig, Tell Her I Am. On 1954 Shark Fisherman, John tells of and recites a 1954 poem by Paddy Kelly about fifty shark fishermen arriving in Keem Bay, accompanied by slow, drama-laden bodhran from Kev Sheridan, an Irish multi-instrumentalist and friend of Graham’s living in Berlin.
Go N’éiri An Bóthar leat, the album’s opening track is a gorgeous tune written by Graham Sweeney (Luka Bloom said Graham was the “best new guitar player I’ve heard in years”). The title is that of a blessing in Gaelic, which translates as ‘May the road [i.e. the journey] be successful for you’. It’s an evocative, march-like tune with the guitar to the fore. Still, there is a wonderful ensemble playing featuring, again, Laoise Kelly on harp, Achill fiddler Diarmuid Gielty, German cellist Claudia Dunkelberg (who visits so often she leaves her cello in Achill) and uilleann piper Tiarnan O’Duinnchinn from Monaghan.
True Born Achill Man is a reflective poem written by Francie McNamara, who sadly died last year, in which he celebrates his love for Achill and the heartbreak that comes through emigration. It features a haunting cello accompaniment by Claudia Dunkelberg to the air Down by the Sally Gardens. Graham Sweeney recorded Francie reciting the poem overlooking Keem Bay (the beach in The Banshees of Inisherin) and said: “Francie was a real charmer and his self titled ‘True Born Achill Man’ was perfectly fitting to his character. These kind of people are few and far between nowadays. The whole reason behind The Achill Sound is to shed a light on these characters and to immortalise their voices and stories while they are still with us, along with capturing the music and culture on the island. That day we blagged our way past ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ security to give Francie a look at the set of Brendan Gleeson’s house, where Francie spent his life fishing salmon and sharks, I knew it was important to catch this poem on a recording as he started reciting it. Now that he is gone, it seems so much more important. Rest in peace Francie.”
The stories and poems are interspersed with a lovely variety of tunes and songs, shared amongst the large cast of musicians and singers. There’s a really good version of the waltz Sí Bheag Sí Mhór, led by John Butler’s uilleann pipe, with dual fiddles from Lisa Fukuda and Diarmuid Gielty, backed up by Graham Sweeney on guitar and Dublin-born, now Achill resident, Alan Hughes on bouzouki. The same group of musicians perform an equally attractive second waltz, Eleanor Plunkett, with Graham’s guitar and the fiddle’s more to the fore. A group of young players fit right in with their two set tunes – The Fair Maid of Ireland / The Monaghan Twig and The Humours of Ennistymon/The Star of Munster. The different combination of instruments played by Caoilte O’Cuanaigh on banjo/guitar, Leah McNamara on accordion, Aideen Gielty on concertina, and Nollaig McLoughlin also on concertina gives a nice balance to the range of tunes. The few well-sung and well-known songs, Skibbereen and Séan Ó Duibhir a’ Ghleanna, sung unaccompanied by Dublin musician and luthier Dermot Maguire, and a Planxty-style Raggle Taggle Gypsy sung by Graham Sweeney, similarly contribute to the album’s pleasurable mix.
The Achill Sound’s Isle Of The Eagle serves up a fascinating documentary recording, interweaving stories of Achill Island’s’ past with mostly traditional tunes and songs excellently played by various musicians from or connected with that place. The music – recorded all over the island – has a relaxed, live feel, sounding throughout. Isle Of The Eagle is an album that is very well worth acquiring and spending time with. It will transport you to the homes, school classrooms and local pub locations of Achill Islands storytellers and traditional musicians.
Isle of the Eagle is out now.
Bandcamp: https://theachillsound.bandcamp.com/album/isle-of-the-eagle-2
https://linktr.ee/theachillsound