Rural Ireland Is in the Green With Bachelors at a Matchmaking Festival

“Ireland is full of bachelors, all kinds of them,” says Mary Carroll of Buena Park. She was born in County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, and in her youth often went to the Matchmaking Festival in the town of Lisdoonvarna.

Willie Daly, from the hamlet of Ennistymon about five miles south of Lisdoonvarna, is a third-generation matchmaker by profession and agrees with Carroll’s assessment. “There are loads of fellas, 78 to every woman,” he says in a telephone interview, perhaps exaggerating slightly in his apparent enthusiasm to find suitable mates for the men.

“It’s a tragic thing,” he says. “All the men are left, because all the women have gone off to Dublin or London or America.” Daly says the “fellas” who seek his matchmaking services are educated and sensitive. Plus, he says, “Irish men are attractive at the moment.”

Whether they’re all in the mold of Liam Neeson remains to be seen. But the abundance of single men in rural Ireland and the festival, which runs from Aug. 31 to Oct. 7, make Lisdoonvarna a destination worth considering for single American women seeking a mate. Little Lisdoonvarna is a place for stepping up to the plate.

The village of 800 is usually a sleepy place, as my sister and I discovered five years ago on a spring bike trip through County Clare. It lies near the soaring cliffs of Moher and Doolin, a traditional Irish music center and port for the ferry to the isolated Aran Islands. The Burren, a region favored by hikers and naturalists, rolls away to the northeast, dotted by prehistoric stone circles and capped by a sheet of cracked, fantastically shaped limestone that doesn’t let up until Galway Bay.

The town of Lisdoonvarna grew up in the 19th century, around sulfur springs at the confluence of the Aille and Gowlaun rivers. To its purportedly healing waters and fusty Victorian hotels came those who suffered from boils, abscesses, gout and rheumatism in search of cures, not to mention tulle-shrouded females, with smelling salts in their hands.

When the turf was cut and the hay in, Lisdoonvarna was also a gathering place for local farmers. The single ones counted on matchmakers like Daly or his father or grandfather to find wives for them.

The trouble now, Daly says, is that Irish women have become very independent. “They’re sitting on a fence, not looking for men as providers,” he says. Where this will get them, no one knows. But it offers an Irish option to those American women, who have grown tired of fence-sitting, an Irish option.

Last year the festival drew almost 50,000 people, says Marcus White, proprietor of Lisdoonvarna’s Hydro Hotel, who estimates there were of two or three men to every woman. Most of them are there to listen to bands, dance, drink and party nonstop. There are’s also horse -racing, barbecues and drawings for prizes; hotels are booked solid; and on the last two weekends in September the town really rocks. “‘Tis a great place for people getting together,” says Teresa Donnellan, who runs a six-room B&B; just north of town called Slieve Elva Farmhouse. She knows of three couples who got together at her B&B.;

For matchmaker Daly, who shows up every night at a festival event to add the names of available lonely hearts to his hand-written ledger and to make introductions, it’s an exhausting time. He uses his observation skills and intuition to get couples together and estimates that he has a 20% success rate. Daly himself recently separated from his wife of 25 years. “I was off trying to make matches. It was my fault,” he says.

The matchmaker devotes himself to his job all year, along with running a pub, B&B; and stable near Ennistymon. A day seldom passes when he doesn’t receive a letter or e-mail from somebody looking for love. He says he likes letters best because they’re “intimate and sweet.,” (Hand he charges $75 for his services.)

About five years ago, his daughter, Marie, put a new spin on the family profession by organizing six-day horse treks for groups of singles along the coast and over the Burren. On the Love Trail, as she calls it, romance is in the air; her proud father says about half of the people who take Marie’s equestrian matchmaking tour find somebody they like (though the Dalys don’t guarantee wedding bells).

Last summer, Long Beach travel consultant Cheryl Ann McNulty went to County Clare to meet Daly, guided only by an article about him she read in People magazine. She wasn’t looking for a match and didn’t go to the festival. But she loves “all things Irish and colorful characters” and clearly found one in Daly, who often launches into Gaelic and remains a tireless promoter of Irish men.

“They’re good-looking , but a little shy,” he told me. “Some haven’t put their arms around a woman since their mother died and have 20 years of love stored up.”

Actually, that . When she met him at his pub, she ordered hot, as opposed to iced, tea.

“Darlin’, that’ll be the only kind of tea we’re servin’ in Ireland,” he said.

Daly told me that some of the men in his ledger “haven’t put their arms around a woman since their mother died.”

That doesn’t exactly make me want to jump off the fence, but I surely like the odds in Lisdoonvarna.

Willie Daly, Matchmaker, Ennistymon, County Clare, Ireland, Internet https://www.williedaly.com.

For festival information, Matchmaker Ireland Ltd., Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland, telephone 011-353-65-707-4005, fax 011-353-65-707-4406, https://www.matchmakerireland.com.

Slieve Elva Farmhouse, Kilmoon, Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland, tel./fax 011-353-65-707-4318.