The Season of Samhain
AND THEN, OF COURSE, COMES OUR winter—brief, benevolently mild but with a few long dark and raw days, and a special majesty all of its own. The cream and amber rushes and dying reed grasses rustle in the winds across the barren wetlands below the Caha range. Carpets of green, spongelike mosses in the boglands turn bronze; lichens hang ghostlike in the chill mists. The light is thin and “shy,” and time creeps by slowly through to the “short dour days” of February, relieved only by the “fearsome craic” revelries of singing, dancing, and other amusements.
Despite the lack of travelers and blow-ins during this season, there’s certainly no lack of music. Everywhere you hear the flute and fiddle, the goatskin bodhrán drum and the melancholy drones of the uilleann pipes. Unlike the visitors, whose appreciation of genuine Irish music and folk songs often lacks what one might call “informed selection” (overheard from one jaded and whiskery singer: “If I get one more request for that bleedin’ ‘Danny Boy,’ there’ll be a dead body in here, and it definitely won’t be mine!’), the locals applaud ancient time-honored ballads rarely sung during the summer céilí seisuins. Bonds are tightened during these colder months, old prides restored, and a more mellow pace of life adopted once again.
Although there’s rarely snow here on Beara, those dark days and “weary wets,” relieved by the occasional low-domed sun and a sear of golden light across the black-teethed ridges, tend to keep us inside and insular. Sometimes there are passing dolphins and whales—fins, sperm, pilot, humpbacks—some almost seventy feet long—that bring us out with binoculars. A lot of the time is spent reading books we’ve been promising ourselves to read for eons (Dostoyevsky seems most appropriate during this seasons); listening to good music; inviting friends to join us for “improv” dinners (we both enjoy the unexpected flavors that can emerge through a spontaneous blending of national cuisines and flavors), and generally allowing the mood and rhythm of each day to shape our activities.
And so the days move on, slowly lightening and warming until St. Patrick’s Day races in again (although never quite so riotously self-conscious as the U.S. versions), and the whole splendid seasonal romp begins once more…on this wild and beautiful Beara.