The Eternal Witness
Landscape, Soul and The Story of What Happened
“The birds have vanished into the sky and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”
LI PO
(Year 701-762)
Joe Heaney and Sean-nós singing: Song as Witness
I grew up in South Connemara on the west coast of Ireland. It is a Gaelic Irish speaking region. I grew up amongst granite stones. They were an ever-present witness. They were everywhere!
I remember one time seeing a video clip of folk singer Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers introducing sean-nós singer Joe Einniú (Joe Heaney) on the Newport Folk festival stage in America in 1965. There was such passion in his voice as he introduced him. As it happens, it was the same year and stage that Bob Dylan famously ‘went electric’. It was always very interesting to me how Liam Clancy introduced Joe by the Connemara landscape that Joe came from.
Sean-nós singer Joe Einniú (Joe Heaney).
From what I remember, he said, and I paraphrase, ‘Joe comes from a part of the world, the west coast of Ireland, where there was so little land between the granite stones, it is like walking on the surface of the moon’. (If anyone has the original video, I would really love to see it again!).
Joe was an extraordinary sean-nós singer. He came from my parish/ community in Carna in Connemara. He was my maternal grandmother’s first cousin. My maternal grandfather also came from a well known singing family. My grandfather’s brother was renowned Connemara singer Colm Ó Caodháin, who contributed extensively to the Irish Folklore commission repetoire in the 1940s and 1950s and their recording of folklore, songs and tradition from Irish traditional gaelic culture.
Sadly I never did get to meet either of them. Joe died in 1984.
Whenever I hear Joe Einniú sing today, on record, vinyl, or radio, I hear all those ancestors passing through him. That was his gift.
The term sean-nós (pron. Shan – ohss) means ‘in the old style’. It is a traditional Irish/Gaelic form of singing which is generally unaccompanied and its origins reach back to before the 13th century (1). The songs themselves cover all aspects of Irish life – love, nature, laments, and even humor; but most often, the songs are stories about the singer’s locality and can be about current happenings or social history. Intricate melodic embellishments and ornamentation characterize the songs. In their most traditional sense, instruments or other singers never accompany sean- nós songs. All of these characteristics draw attention to the story being told through the song(2).
Sean-Nós in Celtic Mythology
In Celtic mythology, the warrior Fionn mac Cumaill was once asked by a Druid what was the most beautiful music. ‘Is it,’ the Druid asked, ‘the waves of the sea crashing against the Cliffs of Moher? Is it the sound of the skylark rising over the Dingle Peninsula at dawn? Is it the sound of a butterfly hovering above daffodils on the Aran Isles in the springtime?’ ‘No,’ said mac Cumaill. ‘Well, what is it then?’ And Fionn Mac Cumaill answered, ‘It is the song of what happened.’
That, for me, is the spirit of sean-nós singing. When done well, the song is an invocation of the ancestors. It communicates the spirit and story of what happened.
Páraic Ó Caodháin, my Grandfather dancing sean-nós in his kitchen in Connemara, Ireland.
My grandfather was often moved to tears when he sang. He would close his eyes, connecting inward. The song he particularly loved to sing was an English song that was called ‘The Rocks of Bawn’. It always touched him deeply. I remember being transfixed when he sang. It spoke of pain and grief, a resonance of a time that had gone before. A testimony of loss and endurance, surviving on poor land, ploughing stones. The song of what happened.
Traditionally in sean-nós singing, the listeners may participate in the performance through words of encouragement and commentary. “Dia go deo leat”! (“God be with you always”) were the words I always heard shouted out, often at a particularly moving place in the song. It was a beautiful support to the singer. Sometimes a listener would hold the singer’s hand and together they would move their linked hands in a circular motion, as though ‘winding’ something up, to the rhythm of the song. Such interactions do not disturb the flow of music, it supports it. I myself have done that for singers when I was in the presence of a singer. The singer’s eyes closed immersed in the spirit of the song. The role is a supporting presence in the service of the singer connecting to the song.
Psychotherapy, Bearing Witness to Trauma
As a Psychotherapist I think of that often too in my work. The privilege of hearing stories, of providing a particular kind of attuned presence to support the connecting to the story. Trauma work is essentially about bearing witness to what happened.
When I was training to become a social worker, I went to Cape Town South Africa in 2003 and did a field placement in a Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture. I remember attending a meeting with people who had been directly impacted by the violence of apartheid. It was in relation to reparation and the support they needed in processing the trauma of that experience. I remember each of those meetings started with a song, and my goodness me, how they sang! It came out of the marrow of their bones. Visceral and full of pain and deep liberation.
It reminded me of sean-nós and bearing witness through songs. To make meaning out of the darkness. To sing it out of their bones.
Eileen Ni Shuilleabhain (me) in her childhood village of Loch Con Aortha, Connemara, Ireland.
Landscape As an Ever-living Witness
Landscape is an ever-living witness. Stone walls, holding together tiny worn-out fields. In the Irish countryside, every field had its own name and its own tale to tell. Joe spoke about learning those old songs while working in those fields. The landscape was a precious thing. It meant survival. As a child, I used to place my hand on the solidness of the granite, feel the sensation of it, and imagine everyone who ever passed that way before me. Did they place a hand on the same stone? I wondered what they made of things, what their hopes were, and what their their dreams were?
Carl Jung in his book ‘Man and his Symbols’ wrote:
“…the stone symbolized something permanent that can never be lost or dissolved, something eternal that some have compared to the mystical experience of God within one’s own soul. It symbolizes what is perhaps the simplest and deepest experience, the experience of something eternal that man can have in those moments when he feels immortal and unalterable…”
At the foot of Cnoc Mordán (Mordàn’s Mountain), Loch Con Aortha, Connemara, Ireland
Micheal O Cuaig ( a wonderful Poet and singer) was my teacher in my primary (Elementary) School. He spoke one day about the Irish poet Antoine O Raifteiri (Raftery) who lived between 1779 and 1835. Raftery wrote an epic poem in Gaelic called Seanachas an Sceatha- ‘Folklore of the hedge/bush’. This Gaelic poem recounts how the bush meets the poet and tells him all he has ever witnessed, since the beginning of time.
It was so reassuring to me to know that such a witnessing existed.
The writer Rob MacFarland speaks beautifully of ‘landscape’s ability to both pierce and ground the heart’. The landscape is always with us. That is often why we collect stones. Small precious stones are carefully picked and brought home in our pockets. We are connecting to something eternal. My childhood landscape is a monument to me, an internal symbol. Stone walls that were built in me.
Symbol and Archetype
When we think about symbols, we also think about archetypes. Archetypes are images from the depths of our psyche that have a great influence on our minds, society, and our lives. They are a form of instinct. Carl Jung wrote extensively about archetypal images. The image of a mountain, for example, which holds majesty in the landscape, symbolically speaks of the eternal. The top of the mountain was considered the home of gods and spirits. It is also an image of the journey inward. The symbol of the process of individuation, of the self.
I wrote a poem a few years ago about the mountain behind my childhood home. The mountain was called Cnoc Mordán. Mordàn’s mountain.
Mordán was known as the ‘King of all the ghosts’ in the Tuatha de Danann.
When I first learned this, after I had written the poem, I was so delighted. I can’t tell you how excited I was. It made so much sense.
The Mountain
In dreams
I still hear the wind
scorch the mountain side
peeling granite ridges bare.
Night soothes the bruises
seeps black oil-slicks
into crevices
distilling air.
I listen to an ancient breathing
buried here beneath this creaking world.
I light a bonfire on the hill
kindling made from ragged scars.
Flames fever at first than burst
fall to embers.
Heather and thistle.
Loneliness like a death
bristles underfoot.
Ghost children
play among ruins.
Family faces familiar, yet strange.
Women barefoot
wash clothes in streams.
In my dreams
I still see The Mountain.
Published in the Burning Bush Literary Journal 2016
Deepening the Senses
How might you become curious now about your own inner images?
How does your own body resonate with the landscape around you?
How do you connect with your own inner landscape? What holds particular meaning to you?
How can you become interested in the symbols that are alive within you?
My aim in the work of my Deepening the Senses programs is to support you on your own journey inward. To support you to come to know your own ‘inner mountain’ – awakening curiosity about the inner symbols and images.
That is the intention of this work. To support you to return to the inner world, to build a relationship with the inner landscape. To come home to the self.
Thank you for your lovely company here on these pages today. The first of my Macneamh (pron. Mac- Niv)/Reflection posts. I’m very grateful to you.
I will share more with you in the coming weeks and months with the aim of hopefully nourishing and stimulating thoughts and reflections that will inspire you on your own path.
Thank you for joining in this journey.
Go gently.
Grá agus beannacht,
Eileen
REFERENCES:
1. Williams, Sean (2004) ‘Melodic Ornamentationin the Connemara Sean-nos singing of Joe Heaney . New Hibernia Review. 8(1) 124-126.
2. A crash coarse in irish culture – The irish Times 22 nd November 2021