Beyond the Blarney

The ferry causing so much suffering was bound for Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, a chain famous for its sweaters--wide braids of wool woven thickly together to keep out the chill of the North Atlantic. Even the hardy islanders admitted, once we hit land, that the crossing was "pretty rough."

The Man of Aran, our B&B, was a whitewashed, thatched-roof  cottage behind a lush garden of flowers. In the yard sat the tar-black oblong of an upside-down currach (traditional Aran canoe). It looked like something out of a movie, and it was. The house was built in the 1930s to film Man of Aran and is now run as a B&B by islander Maura Wolfe and her husband, Joe.

We had neglected to reserve bikes when booking, so we spent two hours walking along the shore road back to the main town, praying for the rain to hold off. It was beautiful--in that eerie, isolated way of islands--and we passed more seals, up on the shoals to catch the odd ray of sunlight, than we did people.

Once in town, we warmed up at the dockside American Bar and discussed our dilemma: Dusk was falling, the minibus taxis that had met our ferry that morning were now gone, and we had to be back at the B&B for dinner in an hour. A man at the end of the bar overheard us, hoisted a half-full glass--clearly not his first--and said, "I'll take ye!" He paused and reconsidered. "As soon as I've finished this pint."

The road was one lane wide, and our benefactor weaved about at frightening speeds, focusing most of his concentration on conversation. He told us he loved Yanks and was in fact a U.S. citizen himself, by dint of having done five years in our navy, in which he enlisted after getting into "a wee bit of trouble" in Philadelphia. He had planned to stay Stateside but came back to Aran for a visit, fell in love, and married--a union that lasted 30 years, until his wife got cancer two years ago. Now he drives tourists around the island in a red minibus and drinks in the American Bar.

Behind the music

County Clare is known for the undulating Cliffs of Moher, rising 754 feet from the sea, but it's also the epicenter of traditional Irish music. Clare's capital is Ennis, a tiny medieval city that had once been described to me by a drunk man in a Dublin bar. "Ennis is brilliant!" he said, smiling sloppily. "They've more pubs than people there!"

I'd timed our trip to end in Ennis at the close of the Fleadh Nua, a traditional music festival that had been the highlight of my first trip to Ireland seven years ago. I'll never forget the great musicians--from adolescent accordion players to octogenarian Gaelic singers, performing onstage and in the pubs--or the tales of seanchai (storyteller) Eddie Lenihan, a twinkle-eyed elf of wildly gesticulating limbs, a thick brogue, and crazy auburn whiskers. I learned to dance some céilí sets (the complex Irish predecessor to square dancing) and took a group lesson on how to beat my brand-new bodhran, a two-foot-wide goatskin drum. The teacher, a beefy-armed man named Mossie Griffin, showed us how to hold the bone (an eight-inch dowel with bulbous ends) and strike it back and forth across the drum skin to get the traditional treble beat. Then he tucked his drum between an arm and his ample belly and explained how he had learned to play: from drumless old men who downed a pint per song and kept the beat by rattling off scat strings of "deedle-aye-da-diddly-aye-da-doh."

Well, that was seven years ago, and I should have known better than to try to re-create a favorite old trip. Poor planning got us to Ennis one hour after the Fleadh's closing ceremonies. Luckily, Custy's came to the rescue. This tiny shop--crowded with instruments, sheet music, and recordings, the strangled strains of a flute lesson drifting from a back room--is one of Ireland's traditional-music meccas. The clerk rattled off a short list of the best sessions in local pubs as he popped in CDs to help me figure out what to buy.

That's how we ended up at Cruise's. We arrived early enough for some pub grub, and I was actually a bit disappointed that toasteds weren't on the menu. (They had grown on me.) When we heard the strains of a violin from near the door, we elbowed our way to the sidelines of the session breaking out. Anytime two or more musicians end up in a pub, you've got a session--an informal jam at a corner table, the players taking a break between each song to drain their pints.

The session was being led by a fiddler in her early 20s who was weaving melodies into jigs, reels, and slow airs aided by an impromptu band of button accordion, banjo, flute, guitar, and squeeze box. The rhythm section consisted of a 15-year-old with an "L" sticker (the learner's permit for Irish drivers) slapped onto his bodhran and a craggy guy who must have been in his 80s. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and he tapped a pair of time-bitten drumsticks, first on a block of wood, then on his half-empty glass of Guinness. Sometimes, though, the tapping just didn't do a song justice, and he'd put down the sticks and break out with a "deedle-aye-da-diddly-aye-da-doh."

I thought of Mossie, and wondered who I could see about getting the old-timer another pint. The song was ending, and his glass was almost empty.