The recording ‘Oileán m’Aislingí (Island of my Dreams) is a compilation of eighteen songs, ten in Irish and eight in English. It includes a mix of old Achill songs, John ‘Twin’ McNamara’s own compositions, old Achill poems to which he has composed the music and some of his other favourites. All the songs, apart from ‘Teanga Bhinn ár Máthar’, were recorded between his 84th and 86th birthdays.
Reproduced here are a selection of songs from the album. These are the songs for which John composed the airs.
0ileán m’Aislingí is an Irish translation of a Percy French poem ‘In Exile’ written circa 1903. Percy French spent time in Achill between 1900-1910 and did several paintings of Achill and stayed in the Slievemore Hotel. The poem was written in London and describes him dreaming of being back in Achill the “Island of his Dreams”. This was translated to Irish in 2019 and as far as we are aware, it is the first translation to Irish of a Percy French poem.
This poem was written by the Achill/Erris poet Padraig at the beginning of the 20th Century. Daeid was the known as an ‘Táiliúir Gorm’ and he wrote this poem in praise of a woman named Nóra who gave a meal to him one day he was going to the fair. This is one of John Twin’s favourite poems and it reminds him of his sister Nóra who died at a young age.
This song was written in 1984 about Achill and the Islands of Ireland. The air was inspired by the gift of a fife from the 1882 fife and drum band to John ‘Twin’ by Martin Joe McNamara. The fife had been played by Martin’s brother Sonny.
While John ‘Twin’ was trying out the fife the air to this song came to him. At the time he was looking over across the river from his home at the ‘Joe’ brothers walking up their land to harvest the crops.
This song was also recorded on the album in Irish
Corie Dubh Linn is one of Darrell Figgis’ poems from his book of poetry called the ‘The Mount of Transfiguration’ which was written during his time in Achill, 1914-1916.
Corie Dubh Linn is a beautiful lake at the back of Croaghaun Mountain. In 1914 Figgis took part in a production of Douglas Hyde’s ‘Casadh an tSugáin’ in Achill, directed by the artist Paul Henry, who also made Achill his home. Incidentally, John Twin’s grandfather Johnny Tom Owen McNamara named one of Henry’s paintings ‘The Lake of the Tears of the Sorrowing Women’
Figgis was a prominent member of the first Dail and he chaired the committee that drew up the State’s first Constitution.
This recording combines two songs. The first part is a poem which recollects the Clew Bay drowning disaster which took place in 1894, when a boat carrying migrant workers from Achill to Scotland capsized in Clew Bay with the loss of 32 lives. The bodies of the dead were transported on the first steam train to Achill.
The second part of the song was written by John ‘Twin’ McNamara and recollects the Kirkintilloch bothy fire disaster of 1937 in which ten young Achill Island boys, who were working as migrant workers, lost their lives. Their bodies were transported to Achill by train from Dublin. This fulfilled Brian Rua Ó Cearbháin ‘s prophecy that the first and last trains to Achill would carry bodies of the dead.
This song ‘Seideadh no hAdhairce’ (Blowing of the Horn) describes the old tradition of gathering seaweed from the shore to fertilize the crops which took place in Achill in late 1800’s. Traditionally a May storm known as ‘Garbh Shíon no gCuach’ or ‘The Cuckoo Storm’ would release the seaweed from the bottom of the ocean, and it would come ashore on the tide.
In Dooagh and in other parts of Achill, people were appointed as ‘herds’ to notify people when the wrack came ashore by blowing horns. The original herds in Dooagh were Pat Callaghan and Anthony Kilcoyne and the task was handed down from generation to generation. Pat blew the wrack horn for the Leic side of the beach and Anthony for the Bruach Dubh side.
Lots were cast for the seaweed, and everybody got an equal share. The items used for casting lots were the Root (of the seaweed}, the Fruit (of the seaweed}, the Pebble, and the Bruach (clod of turf from Bruach Dubh). People who did not have a stake were only entitled to the seaweed from a part of the beach known as the Pauper’s Divide. The original horns used are still in Dooagh.
Darrell Figgis came to Achill circa 1913 and was responsible for setting up Oglaigh na hEireann in the area together with An Paorach. They appointed John Twin’s father Anthony as their first captain in Achill. Figgis wrote numerous poems about Achill, one of which is named Anach, a secluded beauty spot on the island. Local folklore has it that he was planning that Anach would be used as a landing place for arms. He was arrested in Achill in 1916 for his involvement in The Rising.
There is an old ruin of a building in Anach called the ‘Scotch House’ which was used by the fishermen employed by Alexander Hector, who owned fishery rights on Achill at the time.
Four of the fishermen are named in this short rhyme:
‘Tommy White the foreman, Cassidy the Cook, McNamara was the stoker and Mickey Eamon drawing bruachs’
There is a carving on a stone in the Scotch house “TW 1879” which indicates the time period.
This poem was the winning entry at the Feis Cheoil in 1903 and was published in An Claidheamh Solais that year. It is a motivational song for the Irish language. John put music to the song in 2008 and added a verse about Achill. It was recorded along with the teachers of Scoil Ada during the Summer school of 2008. The first public performance was at the Scoil Acla Gala Concert of that year in which he dedicated the song to his first grandchild Seán and to his son Seán who passed away in 1995. The song was subsequently recorded in Scots Gaelic by the great Scottish folk singer Kathleen MacInnes
John ‘Twin’ McNamara was born in Dooagh, Achill Island on 7th June 1935 and is one of Achill’s most important historians, folklorists and collector of songs, poetry and stories associated with Achill and its connections to significant aspects of our local and national cultural heritage.
