From the Plain of the Yew Tree

by John Hoban

  Yehudi Menuhin also touched me in his writings about music. I heard him perform in a solo concert in Sydney and it was out of this world. I felt like dancing.

  I came across an African proverb which sums up so much for me, If you can talk, you can sing, if you can walk, you can dance. I know people today who can’t talk, but can sing, and people who can’t walk, but can dance.

  Sometimes, people assume it’s just a matter of picking up an instrument and improvising music or as they say ‘having a jam, messing about’. That is not the case at all. There is a whole musical development that has to occur. It takes years of practice to develop technical abilities and a lifetime of practice to connect to the soul of the music.

  Over the years I have developed and made use of the gift of teaching, or passing on the music to those that want it, and I am very, very happy about four things in my music life. I am happy that:

  I have spent so long, like years, learning traditional Irish music. I will always be a learner, I hope.

  I learned the music directly from the people that played it all their lives, for the love of it.

  I learned the stories and the social context of the music and songs, in order to fully understand what I am playing and singing.

  I decided to live in music rather than just make a living from music.

  I’ve come up with four directions to living in music. Some people might say these are directions to learning and playing music. Here they are:

  Learn to play music for yourself – it’s easier said than done.

  Learn to play with others – listen to learn, learn to listen.

  Learn to play for others – from the inside out.

  Pass it on/give it away – help others in their music-making.

  Sin é. A million things can be said about the traditional, but really it’s just to play it, or sing it, and walk on, a chara (my friend). Sober and clean music, as long as I’m spared the health.

  A DAY OUT IN SLIGO

  (John Hoban)

  Buskin’ in Sligo, one long day in June,

  I stepped into a bar to have me a beer.

  This old man came in, addressed the company,

  Big Georgeen Carmody gave him his chair.

  He thanked him, sat down, gathered his senses.

  ‘Yes Sir,’ said herself, ‘what will it be?’

  The old man stayed silent, stood up so gracefully,

  just as he spoke his eye fell on me.

  ‘I am a bold tinker,

  my name it is Reilly,

  I’ve worked at my trade and it’s very well known,

  that working cold metal makes a fella grow thirsty,

  only for that I’d leave liquor alone.

  ‘So, don’t blame a fellow for taking a little.

  You know it is right for to moisten the clay.

  If you’ll believe me, I will not deceive you,

  once is enough for your whiskey to pay.’

  Slowly he opened his coat and he took out

  a brown leather purse with his wealth for the day.

  He counted the copper, reached for his measure,

  his hands shook, his eyes danced and this he did say.

  ‘Three thousand times over, I’ve tramped here from Leitrim,

  through Boyle, Keadue and Ballinamore.

  I never harmed no-one, I asked for no favours,

  I found I was welcome at everyone’s door.’

  He was humming an old jig I’d never heard.

  It sounded so lonesome, so high and so clear.

  He drained the last drop, bid me adieu,

  the song that I’ve sung has the same tune for you.

  Notes on the song:

  One fine day in Sligo town, I was having my tea break in Hargadon’s pub when the door opened slowly. In came a very tall, stately, elderly gentleman. A Traveller, or knight of the road. After he had said his piece (as written in the song), the bean an tí handed him a glass of whiskey, some copper changed hands, and as far as I could see, he looked and smiled at me, drank back his deoirín (drop) and said goodbye to us all. I could not believe it. I felt blessed. A few moments passed and then I heard a lovely jig running around inside my head, ‘The Bold Doherty from the North Country’. I feel as though Reilly sang it, and left it with me. So, this formed the music to the words he spoke. Some years later, it all came back to me, I added a few verses, and I have sang it all over the world in honour of that ‘A Day Out in Sligo’. Some other singers in America and Australia have liked the song and asked me if they could sing it. I often remember a friend in Australia, Jimmy Gregory, gone on slí na fírinne (the way of the truth), who loved to sing about Reilly in Sligo.

  ACHILL – ONE DAY WITH YOU

  (John Hoban)

  I hear the sound of the summer breeze,

  the helpless cry of a newborn lamb.

  A robin sings outside my window,

  the mist enshrouds this stony land.

  The scent of turf

  and bog oak burning.

  The rhodedendron now in bloom.

  The sea is wild,

  with brave white horses,

  here in Achill,

  one day with you.

  Cattle stop and stare at people

  as they make their way to the garden green.

  Black turf is cut and footed neatly,

  with a song and dance, I’ve heard and seen.

  This must be what it’s all about, John.

  This must be where you started from.

  A shooting star

  across a frikened pale moon.

  Here in Achill,

  one day with you.

  Notes on the song:

  This song is a real favourite of mine. It too came down from Curraun Hill, to Béal Farsad. As I looked around me, I felt a real strong sense of harmony, of being connected with nature, and, maybe for the first time, being fully and really with myself. It was wonderful. ‘This must be...’ I never knew before this that I could be with all this natural love, beauty, life. A moment of clarity, and then it rained for a week. No matter.

  Chapter 9

  VAN DIEMEN’S LAND

  I met two black swans in Queensland one day,

  they restored me to sanity, like making hay.

  I spent three days by train, across the Nullarbor Plain,

  with no tree in sight.

  I near went insane.

  (‘Knight of the Road’, John Hoban)

  I knew, as I looked out on Sydney Harbour during my first visit to Australia in 1988, that I had been there before. I felt it somewhere deep in my soul, I felt connected. I had been offered a job teaching and playing music by a community of people that had decided that the best way to learn Irish music was to bring out a ‘live one’ from Ireland. I also secured a job playing in a ballad band called Irish Mist. I kind of enjoyed singing ‘The Black Velvet Band’, ‘The Wild Rover’, and such well-known songs to audiences of young Irish immigrants and people from every corner of the world. I felt I was starting a new life, a new way. I’d reached the end of the line in March 1987. Life as I had lived it, and as I knew it, was over. Providence had another plan and it’s still working for me, thankfully, a moment at a time. It’s a long story that will have to wait for another day. Once again, my first language of music was guiding me ‘out foreign altogether’, as the old people used to say at home in Tirawley, North Mayo.

  It had always been on the cards that I would travel to foreign lands as soon as I was old enough to do so. My nomadic, homeless, wandering existence was directly linked to the loss of my parents at such a young age, and the loss of my home base. However, I must say, these were not the only contributing factors. I remember when I first heard Pete Seeger sing about Montgomery, Alabama, and the Civil Rights movement in the USA, I would have gone there if I could have. Hearing the songs of Django Reinhardt, Robert Johnson, Victor Jara, Memphis Minnie or Delia Murphy, always made me think about travelling to other places. A foreign land. I couldn’t w
ait to follow the trail of the music which was lighting up my soul and giving all life meaning, creating a sacred path to the four directions.

  I worked as a musician/teacher in Sydney, and anywhere else I put my mandocello down in Australia, for six months in ’88. I taught people, young and old, how to play Irish music. I played in ‘traps’ – public houses – with bands and with many fine musicians. I went solo, sang in folk festivals all over, played on the streets of some towns. I brought my music to hospitals, prisons, played in the open air, and gave renditions of old tunes on the Indian-Pacific train as it snaked across the Nullarbor Plain, by day and by night. I learned music and great songs from many people, ‘Bare Legged Kate’ from John Dengate, ‘Stan Tracy’s’ and ‘The Boys of Tandaragee’ from Eilis O’Connor, from Dundalk, to name a few. In fact, Eilis and I taught set dancing in Newtown Hall, a suburb of Sydney. This stood us well as we practised the dances we would later perform for ‘the wren’ or ‘the ran’ dance on St. Stephen’s Day. This was an ancient Irish custom which, I am proud to say, was revived by us in this faraway land. I remember them all, Mort, Pat ‘The Piper’ Lyons, Cath Taylor, and the stars of the show – the Banner Beauties, Mary Shannon and Teresa McNamara. They danced and played their music on St. Stephen’s day, 1991.

  When we reached Camperdown

  the spirits were high.

  The banker, the piper, the abbot close-by.

  Lawson, Behan and Shane McGowan,

  were in Phil Gannon’s pub in

  Old Sydney town.

  (‘The Wren in Oz’, John Hoban, St. Stephen’s Day, 1991)

  I met a lot of people from Latin America at the neighbourhood centre in Newtown, Sydney. There were Chileans, Brazilians and Colombians. They got together in a venue called La Peña. I loved to go there to sit, and absorb and learn from their music, language and dance. I felt a very powerful connection with music being played on guitars, charango, quenas and flutes . I felt transported to another world. In a musical sense, I felt that I was a citizen of a great, wonderous world, which was without boundaries and without ownership of anything. We were all the one, passing through, singing our way as we walked our songlines. I made friends with some Aboriginal people, and I loved the way they spoke, and the way they saw life. When they spoke about the land and dreamtime, I felt they were speaking about music. It sounded like the same thing to me. I learned a lot about their horrendous history, and felt great empathy with them, with their lives.

  I remember seeing an advertisement in the paper The Sydney Morning Herald for a Monday night gig/concert in Pacino’s nightclub in Gladesville. The artist was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I could not believe my luck. I went to the gig with another musician, Noirín Coleman, to hear this great man sing. It was an amazing event. Lasted for eight or nine hours, and he was singing for the whole time. All the people present were followers of Qawwali music. Nearly everyone, from infants to ancient people, hailed from Pakistan or India. The experience has never left me, the feeling of this deeply spiritual, inner journey of praise and love in music. I feel it was a glimpse of the beauty which lies ahead, it is probably what heaven sounds like. I don’t know. Gladesville, Sydney, one night in December ’88. Thank God for music and for life when I think of this event. I was lucky enough to see Nusrat a few more times before he passed on. I saw him perform in New York and London. I could see the two worlds of his music so clearly. I was so happy to have been part of the Pacino’s experience. He did this performance for his own people. It was infinite; it was not of this world. It was pure spirit, and I was somehow included in it. The other concerts were just that, concerts, a different world.

  I remember taking a two-day journey on board the Indian-Pacific train from Sydney to Perth. I sat next to an elderly lady, her name was Gladys Linnane. I was visiting my sister Carmel, her husband Brian, and daughters Michelle and Kiara, who lived in Perth. Gladys’s brother, Paddy, lived in Kalgoorlie, where we parted company. We sang songs in the cheap sit-up carriages along with some young kids, real hippies, who were also travelling. They were singing Neil Young and Bob Dylan songs, ‘Hurricane’, ‘All Along the Watchtower’, ‘Heart of Gold’, and ‘This is the story of Johnny Rotten, the King is dead but he’s not forgotten’! We had a scream. When the train stopped for a break, we went for a stroll in the desert. Gladys knew an awful lot about the plants, birds, and animals of the bush, and she shared her knowledge with us. She also recited poems by my favourite Australian poet, Henry Lawson:

  I’m the Mother bush that loves you,

  come to me when you are old

  (‘The Night Train’, Henry Lawson)

  I spent a lovely time spent in Western Australia. One night in Perth, I even got to hear the fourteenth Dalai Lama speaking about wisdom and compassion. It was in a rock’n’roll arena – Midnight Oil and John Cougar Mellencamp were the next gigs. I felt I had been at the Sermon on the Mount. I had a really strong feeling that I had met my teacher, my friend and my leader, I will never forget it. Saol fada (long life) to His Holiness. May peace be with all sentient beings. Peace to Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s teachings awaken a place within me, the same place where music touches me. A place of truth and compassion. When I first heard him speak in Perth 1988, I felt I knew him. I can’t explain it in words, but maybe this is what I try to do with music. Almost twenty years later, my wife, Isabela, and I, found our way to hear his teachings in his home in exile, a place called Dharamsala, Northern India.

  I developed my connection further with Tibet by playing at a concert in the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dasa (Dharamsala) on 5th March 2007 to celebrate the Tibetan uprising. I sang and played my own songs and then played a duet with the great Tibetan man, Pasang Tsering. I played the fiddle and together we sang ‘The Minstrel Boy’. A high point for me in my musical life.

  The harp he loved ne’er spoke again,

  For he tore its chords asunder.

  And said ‘no chains shall sully thee

  Thou soul of love and bravery.

  Thy songs were made for the pure and free.

  They shall never sound in slavery.’

  (Thomas Moore)

  At least one thousand Tibetan monks applauded, roared and cheered us on that evening.

  Everywhere I go I make contact with the local people, whether it’s Dundalk or Australia. I seek them out, we share music and share our stories of survival. We share our experiences, our strengths and hopes in our own way. Music is the source of life for me, so I am always finding new music through meeting new people on ‘the road to happy destiny’. I am often helped by my brothers and sisters, who are like me, recovering from the fallout of various addictions. I hope that I help them too.

  Music at this time had begun to speak to me in a new way. A clear, bell-like quality in word and sound which guided me towards a new life. A life similar to the life the Dalai Lama spoke of. A life like I had heard in various musical forms which perhaps I did not understand at first, for example, sean-nós singing, the music of Robert Johnson or Alija Bai Conti, or the poems, as Gaeilge (in Irish), of Caitlín Maude.

  There have been times when living in unchartered waters, in the vastness of life itself, that I felt scared. But I always sang and played music, and stayed close to the musical, broken, truth of the life I had been granted. I have always held the belief that further along, I will know all about it, I will have all the answers. Further along, I’ll understand why.

  I learned so much in Australia during the six months I lived there in ’88 and again in ’91. I feel so grateful to all the people I met there, and God willin’ we will meet up again someday in Nirvana, Valhalla or Doolin, County Clare, where we can sing and dance ourselves into creation.

  As I said a while back, I knew for sure – don’t ask me how – that I had lived in Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, a long time ago. I wonder what was my crime?

  THE WREN IN SYDNEY - THE RAN!

  (John Hoban)

  The wren, the wren,

  the
king of all birds.

  St. Stephen’s day,

  was caught in the furze.

  Up with the kettle,

  down with the pan, give us a dollar,

  to bury the wren!

  In the year of our Lord 1991

  in Sydney, Australia, the crack had begun.

  A band of bold heroes,

  decided one day,

  to bury the wren,

  in the old pagan way.

  The first port of call,

  was on Taverners Hill,

  the dance started up,

  led by Margaret and Bill.

  Máirtín recited,

  Eileen led the way,

  through old Sydney Town,

  on St. Stephen’s Day.

  They berthed in five dock,

  about half past three.

  A car load of mummers,

  a strange sight to see,

  The Illinois Bar,

  became Cahirciveen

  as they sang and they danced,

  decked in orange and green.

  When they reached Camperdown,

  their spirits were high,

  the banker, the abbot,

  the piper close by.

  The TV crew came,

  from Channel 9.

  Saw a horse dance a reel,

  without losing time.

  Then the two Banner Beauties,

  cut loose on the floor.

  Brushes, footwork, lipstick galore.

  Lawson, Behan and Shane McGowan,

  were in the Irishman’s pub,

  in old Camperdown.

  They bid Mr. Gannon,

  a fair dinkum adieu,

  steered for the city,

  the spraoi to renew.

  To the Mercantile Bar,

  in a place called The Rocks,

  danced Caroline, Siobhán,

  and the bould Gearóid Fox.