Search Results for 'Blake'

Maytime was traditionally considered a time for festivals, and Galway was no exception to this. In fact it used to be said that the citizens had an almost reverential attachment to the old custom of going out to Menlo for three Sundays in May to partake in the pleasure of the open air and the early summer sun. It was known as ‘Maying in Menlo’.

AS THE build up to Cúirt gathers momentum, much attention has been focused on the many writers who will be reading and discussing their work but the festival also features a new exhibition from Brian Bourke, put together especially for Cúirt and running at Salthill’s Norman Villa Gallery.

LEADING UNDERGROUND DJ Andy Blake returns to Galway where he will be spinning the decks in The Blue Note this Saturday.

WITH HIS glasses and rich black beard, Robert Sarazin Blake has the air of a rabbi. He isn’t, but it is the stories in his songs and their wise reflections which give him that aura.

Robert Sarazin Blake is in this singer/songwriter thing for the long haul. Some people become themselves, later on in life. For Blake it was rather early, having first stepped onstage at Seattle's Folk Life festival when he was 15.

Menlo Castle was the ancestral home of the Blakes. The family lived there from around 1600 to 1910. The castle was strategically positioned and was occupied for some time by the Cromwellians. The villagers of Menlo were tenants of the Blakes. ‘Maying in Menlo’ was a great Galway tradition where the Blake family opened their grounds to the public as a venue for all kinds of sports and athletics, yachting, tennis, rowing, music, and dancing. Boats from Woodquay and Long Walk brought patrons up the river; sweet vendors were working day and night preparing sugar sticks and sweet-pipes which were sold in colours of red and white at a halfpenny each; the cries of different vendors of eatables and drinks rent the air, “Cider a penny a glass, Guinness 3d a pint.” Puritans and temperance fanatics were unknown, hawkers and showmen were a plenty. The various tents extended from the river to the schoolhouse in the village. The women in the enclosure with their sunshades and mid-Victorian costumes looked beautiful, while villagers and colleens with shoulder shawls and neat pinafores were the picture of comeliness.