STRANGE HOW POTENT MUSIC IS

A SONG OF ANOTHER TIME AND PLACE

Blackrock Castle, Cork.

           One never knows what will trigger memory. For Marcel Proust it was a few crumbs of cake moistened with limeflower tea. For me it’s generally music. In the early hours, when inspiration flags, I often browse YouTube, dipping into sites at random. A few bars can have old doors swinging open and people long forgotten wandering back into my brain. It happened this week…

In the ‘sixties, resorts realised that a film festival could attract visitors outside the tourist season. There was an unseemly scramble to grab the fashionable genres – gangster; horror; science fiction. After that, it was open season. In Australia, one took place in an historic graveyard. The International Moustache Film Festival of Portland, Maine, only accepts movies that were moustache-themed or starred an actor with notable facial hair.

          Since even the smallest festivals offered free accommodation to the press - how else could you get them to come? - it was possible for a journalist, in Europe alone, to live almost gratis from Tampere, Finland, in February to Pula, Croatia, in September. I dabbled in doing so on first moving to Europe. As an Australian, and therefore exotic, I was even invited to serve on a few juries – which is how I found myself in Cork, Ireland.

         Technically, the Cork Festival specialised in short films but, in that easy Irish way, the odd feature found its way into  the mix. The director, a jolly chap named Dermot Breen, had been a salesman for candy before founding the festival, which he ran in tandem with his second job as, improbably, the film censor. As one of its sponsors was brewing giant Guinness,  the event floated on a wave of its famous stout, as well as Harp Lager and Redbreast Irish whisky. There couldn’t have been too many festivals at which the jury delayed its deliberations until the bar was replenished with ice and lemon, and where cocktails were enjoyed before, after and, sometimes, during each film.

       We occasionally attended the evening feature screenings, but only after a generous and, like everything else, well-lubricated dinner. Stumbling to my seat on one such night, after the film had begun, I felt something crack under my foot. As my eyes met the glare of a friar in full homespun robes and an outsized rosary, he reeled in the latter to reveal the badly bent crucifix at its end. A mortal sin at least.

        The festival’s gala banquet took place ust outside town, in 16^th century Blackrock castle. Once again, the liquor flowed, on this occasion served by local maidens in Ye Olde Irish outfits. We sat at long tables, half-listening as the bishop blessed the meal and the mayor’s speech made us eager to start eating. Finally, Dermot stood up and announced that we were honoured to have….I forget his name, but let’s call him Seamus O’Toole…with us, and perhaps he’d favour us with a song.

        I’d just murmured to my neighbour “Who the hell is Seamus O’Toole?” when the young man across the table smiled apologetically and stood up, to great applause.

        “What would you like to hear?” he asked the crowd.

        As nobody spoke, I said “She Moved Through the Fair?”

        He looked over my head and said, more loudly, “Any suggestions?”

         I started to say “She Moved Through the Fair” again, but he meet my eyes and said, sotto voce, “I heard you the first time. I was just hoping someone would suggest something easier.”  Then, more loudly, “I’ve been asked for She Moved Through the Fair.”

        Anyone who remembers the folk song vogue of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies may know the version by Joan Baez. The Chieftains sang it too, with Sinead O’Connor. Many others also, seldom well. Its odd intervals and unconventional chords are daunting. "From its strange, almost Eastern sounding melody,” says one musicologist, “it appears to be an air of some antiquity.” I can’t explain its effect on me, but it’s unfailing; a sense of loss, of yearning, of despair.

        As I remember, Seamus O’Toole sang it well. Enough to bring a tear to my eye anyway. It always does. Perhaps to yours too.