Search Results for 'story teller'

FINN’S DAD has just died, but so has his fish, and he loved that fish. Remember when your goldfish died? Or your dog? Or your dad? Remember that wake you went to where you did not really know the person so were kind of awkward and did not know what to say except “Sorry for your loss?”

On Monday March 4 1895, Bridget Cleary, walked up a hill to Kylenagranagh, the home of her father’s cousin Jack Dunne, who lived with his wife Kate, to sell eggs. The Dunne’s house, less than two miles from her slate-roofed labourer’s cottage at Ballyvadlea, Co Tipperary, was near an ancient circular mound of earth, or a ring fort, still known in rural Ireland as a ‘fairy fort’. Maybe it was because of the location of his house, or because of his skill as a story teller, a ‘Shanachie’, and that he had a limp, that Dunne had the reputation for being ‘an old man who is fairy-ridden’. People believed the local legend that he was once ‘chased up to his home by a man in black, and a woman in white’. He had knowledge of incantations, charms, and spells, and was sometimes consulted for a cure for animal or female sicknesses.

THE CITY may have the Galway Arts Festival, but the county is not content to be outdone, hence north west Connemara has the new Moondance Festival, while east Galway has the Tuam Arts Festival.

It’s that time of year again when libraries, bookshops, schools, community and arts centres are gearing up to celebrate the Children’s Book Festival. Now in its 19th consecutive year, the national Children's Book Festival has established itself as the biggest and best celebration of children’s books and reading in Ireland.