Wetting Your Whistle in Ireland

We knew we had found the heartbeat of Irish music when the fellow behind the counter of the Traditional Music Shop interrupted his discourse on local venues to introduce the man coming through the door: “The singing postman, has his own band, plays at McDermott’s.”

You don’t have to be a Clancy Brother or a Chieftain to play in Doolin, a fishing town on the wild west coast of Ireland that has become a living museum of traditional Irish music. True, the best come here to play, but so do the aspirants, and not just from Ireland. They play for appreciative and knowledgeable fans--local and far-flung, like my wife and me--in packed pubs. If no one shows up, they play for one another.

Laurel and I had arrived in Ireland four days before, and we had been pub-hopping in search of this music, with mixed success. Back in the States, we had listened to the Chieftains and Cherish the Ladies, so we had some idea what we were looking for: the lively jigs and reels (“tunes,” we would learn to call them) that set feet to tapping and the often somber ballads (“songs”) that tell much of Ireland’s story--a story that has a lot to do with want and stoicism, plus emigration, especially to America, and repression, especially by the British.

Our quest last spring had started unsteadily on the south coast in County Waterford, where we had booked two nights at Buggy’s Glencairn Inn, which a guidebook had accurately described as the quintessential Irish bed-and-breakfast. We had chosen Buggy’s for the promise of charm and food, not proximity to good music, but we had heard there might be something doing at Madden’s Pub in Lismore, a sleepy town a few miles away. When we arrived a little after 9, Madden’s was quiet, and we were directed to try the Lismore Hotel.

The hotel bar was filling up for a 9:45 show, so we settled into a banquette with pints of Smithwick’s ale. Everyone around us was smoking, most aggressively the four teenage girls who sat at our table. (There was a good deal of smoking in all the pubs we visited but never again anything like this.) Eventually a musician showed up, uncovered a keyboard and began to bang out some nondescript if highly amplified folk-rock. Above his head a muted television played on, showing young men hurtling through some gymnastic bicycle competition.

“This is like a psychedelic experience,” Laurel said. “The TV, the loud music, the louder crowd, the smoke.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we did, but not before our clothes had absorbed enough smoke to permeate our rental car and the wardrobe at our B&B.;

The next night, after a chat with an earnest woman at the Lismore Heritage Centre, we did better, finding the Marine Bar just outside Dungarven. “Home of traditional Irish music,” read one sign on the wall, and “If music be the food of life, welcome to the kitchen.” As we arrived, a young man with a guitar and his senior partner, a raconteur with curly gray hair and an accordion, were about to begin.

“I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler, I’m a long way from home,” they sang, “and if you don’t like me, just leave me alone....” The set bounced along with traditional pub songs like “Whiskey in the Jar,” plus the occasional jig or reel.

When things began to wind down, the musicians invited a young man who had married just the day before to come forward. A cappella, he sang a pair of stirring ballads.

The evening ended at midnight. As we were leaving, a fellow drinker waved me back.

“You’ve left some money on the bar,” he said, gesturing to a few Irish punts (or pounds, each worth about $1.12) I had left behind. Lesson learned: No tipping for drinks in pubs. Tipping musicians is another issue, about which more later.

Kenmare, a town in County Kerry, was our next destination, and we heard some good music there, though still not exactly what we sought. At the two pubs we visited, what we again found were performances rather than true “sessions.” Short for “music session,” the idiom for music played in pubs implies an informality, with musicians gathering to play more for their own enjoyment than for an audience and with all comers welcome to join the playing, assuming they follow protocol.

“The Irish like to drink and talk in pubs,” Mark Wayle would tell us during the “Musical Pub Crawl” we took in Dublin on the last night of our trip. “Musicians sit in a circle, playing for themselves, really.” This “pub crawl” would have made an excellent introduction to our odyssey if we had done the trip in reverse. It is less a crawl, more a lecture and performance in rooms provided by Temple Bar pubs: We visited the Ha’penny Bridge Inn and Isolde’s Tower, though three or four stops apparently is more common. Our evening featured Larry Shaw on fiddle and bodhran (an Irish drum), along with Wayle on guitar. Both sang.

“When I was a child, singing was unaccompanied. Ireland was very poor--up until about three months ago,” Wayle said with a laugh. “So we played whatever instruments we could find. Button accordions, concertinas, whistles--all were cheap, virtually child’s toys.”

In Kenmare, on our first night we squeezed into Moeran’s Pub in the Lansdowne Arms Hotel to hear Natural Gas, a vocalist playing guitar and a fiddler offering mostly songs, some tunes, a good and lively time.

The next night, down the street at Foley’s, two young women--one played the guitar, the other played the accordion and sang--mingled Irish tunes with songs that included John Denver’s “Country Roads,” a good example of the way traditional musicians enrich their repertoires from the global village.

Then it was on to Doolin, where we arrived not by accident but by design, as so many aficionados and practitioners of traditional Irish music had before us.

Doolin is bracketed by the Cliffs of Moher (we saw 12 buses of varying sizes in the parking lot there) and the Burren, natural features that draw significant tourist attention, and is a port for ferries to the Aran Islands, so tourism in the area is not all music-based. But with two excellent music shops and three pubs routinely hosting sessions, this is the mother lode of traditional Irish tunes and songs.

In the Fisherstreet section--the “downtown” of little Doolin--are the slightly musty, altogether admirable Traditional Music Shop, where sheet music and instruments are available in addition to CDs, and the newer, less atmospheric but well-stocked Magnetic Music, “County Clare’s first traditional record company.” (Run by Germans, who also sponsor extensive annual Irish music tours of Germany and Switzerland, it’s another example of the music’s internationalism.) Gus O’Connor’s, Doolin’s best-known pub, founded in 1832, is just a few doors from the shops.

In the Traditional Music Shop--”The Original,” its sign proclaims--I asked the fellow behind the counter how Doolin had become the epicenter of Irish music.

“There just happened to be great players around here,” he said. “A lot of these guys didn’t even own cars. They never traveled. Then Micho Russell, perhaps the greatest of the locals, went to a few festivals and became known. After that, players began to move to the area.”

I asked which of the three local pubs he recommended.

“McDermott’s,” he said. “People are mad to play there. You have to be an organized group; then you get a slot. The other pubs are open sessions, where anyone can join in. But in that setting too,” he was quick to add, “some wonderful things can happen, one-time-only things.”

Laurel and I aced a good spot at McDermott’s that night by carting in stools from an adjoining room. A substantial group of players gathered: four fiddles, flute, bass, guitar, bodhran and Irish harp.

Other than a talented busker we encountered as we climbed to the lookout tower at the Cliffs of Moher, this would be the only harpist we would hear.

The harp is the most beloved of Irish instruments and a national symbol. (It appears on Ireland’s coins.) For centuries, playing the harp was a crime--for a while, punishable by death--when the occupying British were bent on extinguishing Irish culture. Naturally, this made the Irish keener than ever to play it.

As 10 o’clock approached in McDermott’s, one and then another fiddler started casually, almost as if tuning up. Then the flute and guitar joined, and suddenly the group was cooking, beginning a transporting evening dominated by jigs and reels. The patrons were packed in--heads nodding, feet tapping, hands tapping, expressions rapt. Though there seemed to be no floor space, one intrepid couple managed a bit of step dancing. Before the session was over, a man with a banjo and a woman with guitar, pint of Guinness in hand, had joined in.

We left McDermott’s about 11:30 to check out the other pubs. McGann’s (in Doolin’s Roadford section, as is McDermott’s) we rejected right away as too noisy, so we walked through the soft evening back to Fisherstreet and Gus O’Connor’s. There, sitting at a banquette under a framed sign reading “reserved for musicians,” were players with flute, accordion, guitars and mandolin. At one point, a Norwegian enthusiast joined in adroitly on the spoons.

Doolin is a compact town, walkable end to end in 10 minutes. With most tourists just passing through for a look at the scenery, it’s short on lodgings. And, in deference to the fierce weather coming in off the Atlantic, Doolin closes in on itself in winter; some shops and inns are shuttered from mid-October till Easter.

(The city of Limerick and Shannon International Airport are an hour’s drive to the southeast. Along the way is the quaint castle town of Ennis, with a range of lodgings, including the luxurious--$300 and up--Dromoland Castle. There are several inns in Doolin, including the upscale Aran View House, which has an ambitious restaurant. We ate well, enjoying a variety of fresh foods skillfully prepared.)

The following night at McDermott’s the group was smaller--flute, guitar, fiddle, bodhran.

“The fiddler is a grandmother,” offered a loquacious woman who was visiting from Dublin just to take in the music. “She teaches the zither.”

The musicians don’t get paid, she said: “They just do this because they love it. You can see it in their faces. We just buy them a pint or two, and they get a few pounds from the tip jar.”

We saw no tip jar there--though later, in Dublin, a pint glass was passed at Gogarty’s, and at the historic O’Donoghue’s on Merrion Row, a small Bewley’s Tea box, lid up, collected coins and bills.

In O’Donoghue’s we sat at the table with the musicians, including one playing the uillean pipes--our first encounter with this uniquely Irish instrument, which is exceedingly difficult to play.

“Pipers tend to be a little mad, God bless them,” Larry Shaw, the fiddler from our pub crawl, said.

Tucked into the cozy nook at the front of O’Donoghue’s, we witnessed again the traditional sessions ritual when a pint-sized redhead named Maura arrived. (She turned out to be an American.) After sitting through a few tunes--protocol insists on this waiting period--she uncased her fiddle and was invited to join in. Later came the “noble call,” when the new arrival is asked to perform something special on her own.

“Let’s hear that classical piece you do,” suggested the piper, and Maura obliged. The musicians listened with respectful attention--in the wonderful brotherhood and sisterhood that easily crosses lines of gender and nationality, of practitioner and listener, all in the thrall of traditional Irish music.

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Guidebook: Tuning Into Ireland * Getting there: Aer Lingus flies nonstop from LAX to Shannon and Dublin. Restricted round-trip fares start at $738.

While a car is not necessary in Dublin, getting to Kenmare and Doolin and enjoying the beauty of the Irish coast virtually requires one (though there are buses). Caution: Many credit card companies don’t provide insurance on car rentals in Ireland.

* Where to stay: Prices include full Irish breakfasts, typically with eggs, meat, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes and bread.

Buggy’s Glencairn Inn is a fetching, cozy 1720 house near Lismore, with doubles for about $84. Tallow, County Waterford; telephone/fax 011-353-58-56232, Internet https://www.lismore.com.

Sea Shore Farm Guest House is new and somewhat antiseptic, but has views of Kenmare Bay. Doubles $93. Tubrid, Kenmare, County Kerry; tel./fax 011-353-64-41270, https://homepage.eircom .net/~seashore.

Doonmacfelim House is a serviceable B&B; in the Fisherstreet section of Doolin, just around the corner from Gus O’Connor’s pub. Doubles are $58. Doolin, County Clare; tel. 011-353-65-707-4503, fax 011-353-65-707-4129, https://www.kingsway.ie/doonmacfelim.

No. 31, an exquisite small hotel within walking distance of St. Stephen’s Green and Temple Bar, has rooms and serves an outstanding breakfast in an 1808 Georgian townhouse and a pair of coach houses. Doubles about $168. 31 Leeson Close, Lower Leeson St., Dublin 2; tel. 011-353-1-676-5011, fax 011-353-1-676-2929, https://www.number31.ie.

* Where to eat: Buggy’s (see “Where to Stay,” above) has a limited but superbly prepared dinner menu. We were so impressed the first night that we returned. (I even reprised the duck and chicken liver pate appetizer.) Dinner about $30 per person with wine. Closed Christmas week.

In Doolin, to keep with the Irish music theme, we found creditable pub grub at Gus O’Connor’s, local tel. 707-4168, and dined more interestingly at the Ivy Cottage Restaurant, tel. 707-4991, attached to Magnetic Music. Traditional music--a CD from the shop, offered at a discount to diners--plays in the background; the menu leans to contemporary seafood.

In Kenmare, we liked the upscale, eclectic Lime Tree Restaurant on Henry Street, tel. 64-41225, https://www.limetree-restaurant.com. There’s an art gallery upstairs.

In Dublin, the Unicorn Restaurant, tel. 676-2182, is a trendy, handsome spot that spills outdoors onto Merrion Court, an alleyway off Merrion Row. It gives an Italian spin to fresh local ingredients. A tad pricey but worth it, about $95 for two with wine.

* Listening: There is no music charge in the pubs, though you’re naturally expected to buy a drink or two. Sessions typically start around 10 p.m.;some play weekend matinees.In Dublin, the Musical Pub Crawl leaves daily at 7:30 p.m. from Oliver St. John Gogarty’s in the young, trendy Temple Bar area of the city. It’s $8 per person, bookable in advance at the Dublin Tourist Office or, space available, on the spot at Gogarty’s, 57 Fleet St., local tel. 671-1822.

* For more information: Irish Tourist Board, 345 Park Ave., New York, NY 10154; tel. (800) 223-6470, https://www.ireland.travel.ie.

-- Karl Zimmermann