Martin Enright – Local Legend
landing from the Skellig Hotel. “That was the start of money and then we had Fungi, who ‘made the idle rich’. But Ryan’s Daughter gave us who were earning £2 per week labouring £14 working on the film.” In 1966 Martin went to St Patrick’s College in Dublin, where he was exposed to the very best of traditional Irish music.
He said: “I had the advantage of being a cousin of Liam Óg O’Flynn and Parnell Street was my Mecca. “The Oireachtas was in Dublin in those years right up to 1974 and I never missed one. We had people like Seán de Hora and Daniel Keane from Kerry. De Hora was the best sean nós singer to come out of west Kerry.” Martin was also a regular at the Conradh na Gaeilge club, where Caitlin Maude was a member – a firebrand and a brilliant singer.
Martin said: “I never missed Slattery’s Traditional Club on a Wednesday, where Mary Bergin and the Rowsome family were prominent and Séamus Ennis and Seosamh Ó Heanaigh were there, and that was a very rich milieu.
It was in Dublin that he began his great interest in archaeology by taking a degree in that subject and Irish at night in UCD.
“I had an almost fierce distrust of history. My next-door neighbour in Dingle in the 1960s, who was 85 at the time, always said that the men who did the most to free this country were forced to leave and toil on foreign soil.
“Frank Harte used to say that the victors wrote the history books, and the victims sang the songs. I had that belief that history can be biased.” Before that, Martin had found an ogham stone on a beach near Dingle. “When I started to do archaeology I began to go on outings. George Eogan was professor of archaeology in UCD at the time.
“For me it was going to a site and finding out the story behind the site and I was discovering that we had this very rich archaeological heritage.
“We had 60,000 ring forts at one point and now we have 40,000, and we have a great concentration of ancient monuments.
“I followed it on and that is how I got to meet my wife, Joyce Raftery, in 1970 through the Archaeological Society. Joyce was also interested in music, which meant we had a lot in common.
“I was also interested in folklore, and Estyn Evans came from Belfast to give a lecture in St Pat’s and made a great impression on me as his folk life was a big thing as well as archaeology.
“I found him fascinating and I got his books. It was a disappearing world. In 1972 we went to work with Tom Fanning in Kilkenny at excavations.”
Meanwhile, as a teacher, Martin was very much influenced by Pádraig Pearse and introducing nature as a subject in school.
Martin said: “I taught children about natural history, Irish through drama and the project method was a great way of getting children to learn about their world in a practical way. “It was also important that they should know who they are, their identity, and if you don’t have the mórtas cine from your past then who are you?
“It is a defining measure of all of us. I am on a journey to know who I am, and I am still learning.”
Martin came to Sligo in 1974, the year he married his wife Joyce and got a job teaching in Carraroe Primary School.
“There were no boards of management and the parish priest was in charge.
“Sligo was much bigger than Dingle and had some wonderful scenery. “In the Carraroe school there were a lot of people with country background and the Holy Well was at the back of the school.
“I was struck by the stunning beauty of Knocknarea and Carrowmore from early on.
“I helped out with Joyce when she was doing digs and the Sligo Field Club really helped me to become immersed in archaeology. And I used archaeology in my teaching as well as we were looking out the door at Knocknarea in the school in Carraroe. It was part of every day.”
“I took the children to various sites and we did several projects with the children.
“Joyce was directing excavations at Drumcliffe from 1980 to 1986 and I helped out in the summertime, and it gave us a great insight into the subCarject.
“A Swedish team excavated rowmore in 1976 and one of them came to live in Sligo. They did some great work.”
It was in this period that Martin and Joyce began to work as tour guides for bus companies extolling the virtues of WB Yeats, a figure that also loomed large in Martin’s later life when he became president of the Yeats Society from 2015 to 2017.
He said: “We set up that service and it was called Wild Rose Tours. It was enjoyable. Joyce had been at the society in 1960 as a young girl.
“Joyce has gone on to write 10,000 words on Yeats’s Sligo relatives. She wants to bring it out as a book, about the Pollexfens and Middletons and how they no longer exist.
“Our guided tours started in 1989 and even at the present time I would be called upon to give an hour’s talk to a US college on Yeats and Sligo archaeology.”
AND YEATS was also very much influenced by the mythology, archaeology and folklore of Sligo and it shines through in many of his poems and plays. “Last November I gave a talk about the Red Hanrahan’s Song About Ireland, a stirring call to arms for Kathleen Ní Houilhan. I spent half an hour on Zoom and Douglas Hyde had a big influence on Yeats and this was the Celtic influence. Kathleen Ní Houlihan is first mentioned in a poem in 1847.”
“Red Hanrahan and The Twisting of The Rope were also significant and there was a strong connection between the two men.
“So, Yeats had been exposed to all of this before he even met up with Maud Gonne McBride.
“Yeats had already published his own collection of folk tales in the Celtic Twilight before he met Lady Gregory.”
The poet has had a big influence on Martin.
Martin said: “Without a shadow of a doubt he is the greatest poet in the English language after Shakespeare. “His later poems are more complex but that is what makes him a worldclass poet and you have to study them to appreciate them.
“He was very complicated and so gifted. I have been studying Yeats for many years and we have a wall of books on him.”
Martin became a member of the Yeats Society in the 1980s and was on the Summer School committee. He was president from 2015 to 2017. He said: “2015 was the 150th anniversary of the poet’s birth and a different committee under Susan O’Keeffe established the very successful Yeats Day, which became local, national and international. “There had been a few years where there was a build-up to this and there were 1,000 events around the world in 2015.
“From 2015-2017 was a great period. I wento to Milwaukee and did an interview on Yeats.”
“I am still involved in the tour guides and Damien Brennan does a great job in this respect. He was president of the Yeats Society just before me.”
In another sphere, Martin became involved in the 400th anniversary of the Spanish Armada shipwreck in Streedagh in 1588.
Martin was already deeply involved in Comhaltas by 1988. He said: “We had Fleadh na nGael, which was a festival for Connacht. “We resurrected the Fiddler of Dooney and published a brochure with an Armada lecture on it.
“We got sponsorship from NCF at the time and we got Ole for Fleadh na nGael.
“That was in 1988. I am still involved with it and thanks must go to Sligo Live and Sligo County Council.”
And he was also involved in a very successful Famine Commemoration along with notables like Joe McGowan in 1997.
Three monuments were put up in the town.
Martin said: “Joe McGowan was the chairman, and the project was going to cost £100,000.
“We had no money, but a few of us, through the traditional music world, knew of a Sligo man from Doocastle who did very well in England. He was Joe Kennedy.
“The Family in Bronze on Quay Street was going to cost £25,000.
“We met Joe face to face and he said he would pay for that as long as the county council would match it.
“So overnight we had £50,000 and we got a few £10,000s and we had enough money to cover the cost. “When we had these erected, and the Faoin Sceach in the Famine Graveyard looks very haunting. “New of the Faoin Sceach reached the States and it was on the cover of some school programmes in New York. Those were tough times, and it was best committee I was ever on and there was great cohesion and agreement.”
In tandem with the archaeology and history, Martin has had a huge role in traditional Irish music in Sligo. He said: “I joined the Sligo Town Branch in the 1970s.
“Joe Dowd, Catherine McConville, Carmel Gunning and Declan Bree were among the founder members. “I am chairman of the town branch and the county board.
“There is also a Fred Finn branch and they are involved in teaching. “We are more into sessions and we organise the Fiddler of Dooney and the County Fleadh with the other branch. We have a small membership between 10 and 15 as we don’t have families. I play the tin whistle.” Sligo has had some great triumphs at national level hosting Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann from 1989 to 91 and again in 2014 and 2015.
“I was chairman of Seachtain na hÉigse during the last Fleadh and I was in the cultural side of it – I was not involved in the financial side. “The Fleadh in the late 1980s and early 1990s would have been worth around £3m.
“But Sligo has become a real magnet for top-class musicians.
“We have so much talent here ourselves, but the ambience is great for Sligo as other musicians love to come here.
“It was run very well and there was no debt.”
“I was involved in Seachtain na hÉigse, which is a series of lectures, recitals and other events. There was a separate committee for Coiste na Gaeilge and we still have a Ciorcal Cómhra in Sligo.”
Martin believes we badly need to improve the Irish signage on buildings.
He said: “If the language is more visible you are inclined to be more aware of it and of course we have it in our placenames.”
“CCÉ has given me the pleasure of promoting music and seeing the next generation coming along.
“CCÉ has helped the Fleadhanna develop and grow and the competitions have given musicians the chance to develop their skills in competitions.
“The big thing that has happened in modern times is the Grúpa Cheoil, 10 to 20 kids playing together in ensemble. It has done wonders for the music.
“And we have Sligo traditional musicians on Zoom once a month here.”
“I am also very proud of the annual Riverstown Commemoration for James Morrison – this has been a great project for good. “The festival has been on the go since 1993 and it is one of the best small festivals in the country. Pauric Kearns is the chairman and he is very keen on Morrison and all types of traditional music. “I went to teach in Coolbock National School in 1991. In 1992 we had a concert to remember the fiddle players of Sligo.
“The concert was in Tubbercurry and there was a huge turnout of musicians including Andy McGann from New York.
“It went on until 4am in the morning and I did MC.
“And on that night Frankie Gavin of De Danaan and Harry Bradshaw asked me what were we going to do about James Morrison as the 100th anniversary of his birth was going to be in 1993.
“Paurice Kearns and I discussed it and we unveiled a memorial to him in May 1993 and then we had a county fleadh and the James Morrison Festival on at the same time.
“It is one of the few branches in the country that actually owns its own Teach Cheoil.
“It looks like a country cottage and inside is a beautiful floor, and we extended it a few years ago. And now we can seat 100 people in comfort. “The festival has been held on the August Bank Holiday weekend for the past number of years. I am the co-ordinator.”
Elsewhere, Martin did a very interesting DVD on Morrison, Michael Coleman and Paddy Killoran, three great fiddlers from South Sligo, in 2014 – a project that took him over to New York as well in a Micheál Ó Domhnaill production.
Martin said: “James Morrison also taught music in New York.
“I had been planning this from 2006 and I was hoping to have this film made in time for the Fleadh in Sligo in 2014.
“The idea was to make a documentary on the three fiddlers, and we would call it The Sligo Masters.
“We had four days filming in New York at their graves and interviews with some people who might have known them and some of their locations.
“It was ready for the Fleadh and we had eight days of filming in Sligo, and we filmed the homesteads of the three fiddlers and the Coleman Centre. We had archival footage and a bank of images as well.
“Ben Lennon was among the musicians that were featured and Oisin Mac Diarmada was the link man for this anthem to three great Sligo fiddlers.
“It was shown every day of the week of the Fleadh and then TG4 bought the rights to it. It was really great for the Irish in New York. “Sligo journalist and musician Harry Keaney did a nice article on it for an Irish newspaper in New York.” Closer to home Martin is involved in the local chapel choir in Ransboro Church and he lives in Kilmacowen. Martin grew up very close to nature in Dingle, so it is no surprise that he has a great passion for birds and specifically for the barnacle and brent geese, which he has been watching and recording for many years.
He said: “Kevin Flannery is a great naturalist in Ireland and Bernie Goggin was a great naturalist in Dingle.
“And when we were young in Dingle, we were very much under the influence of a man called Michael Long who could always identify rare birds, fish and plants and had a great interest in the natural world. He used to send these off to the Natural History Museum.
“When I came to Sligo, there was a man in the Field Club, Noel Murphy, who used to bring us on outings, and I became interested in the geese.” Martin’s passion for the geese has taken him to Iceland and Scotland. He said: “The author Dermot Healy, who lived near Maugherow, wrote the poem The Fool’s Errand – it is all about the geese.
“It took him five years to write that poem and I went to his house and gave him a slide show of the geese, ducks and swans.
“He has a line in the poem saying: There are people to count the geese. “Every evening at 4.30pm the barnacle geese take off and head for Inishmurray Island, which is a special, spiritual place.
“They stay overnight and come back at 10.30am in the morning. “That is 4,000 birds in flight. They form a ‘V’ in the sky and they are a magnificent sight.
“Dermot Healy used to see this happening over his house.
“The birds leave Sligo around April 7 and fly north over Scotland and up to east Greenland, and on the way back they stop off in Iceland for a rest. They come back to Sligo around late September, early October for the winter.”
“The old Irish said you could eat the barnacle goose during Lent because the goose barnacle has a small shell, and it is black and white. “People saw the geese heading out to the sea in the spring and saw them coming back in the autumn.
“And the shell made it seem half goose and half fish, so we can eat this ‘fish’ during Lent.
“This is recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century.
“The barnacle goose has a white face, and the brent goose has a black face. They like sea grass and then they graze on golf courses.
“The brent geese go off to Arctic Canada and the Solway Firth.” Martin had the best lockdown ever as the weather was wonderful, and he could go out and record from 70 to 80 species of birds each week. He said: “You would go out in the morning at 6.30am or 7am and then the summer warblers arrived in April and May, and that was just fabulous.
“Nature was making a big comeback and the weather was superb and people were noticing things more. If you had a wet May or June you could have a wipeout.
“I am busy in the winter time with these birds and the winter is always too short for me. And then you are in the music world. So that is my year – I don’t know how I also managed to teach.”
BUT THAT is the thing about Martin. Of all the Sligo Weekender’s Local Legends so far, Martin is by far the busiest. His life is crammed with creativity, passion and wonder.
He is a seeker, a learner and a doer – rare qualities in one person. Where does he get his incredible energy and gusto for so many different aspects of his really packed life? He chuckled and said he has a “great wife”.
He said: “I have a good diet. I eat well and my wife Joyce is interested in a lot of the things that I am interested in.
“We both have a passion for archaeology and music and we do have a lot of things in common, which is good. “And we talk about things late at night and we just don’t have enough time to get all the answers as life is a constant learning experience.
“Of course, thank God, I have been blessed with good health, and I read a lot.”
Thanks for the memories and education, Martin. You are truly a duine ildánach. Saol fada, a chomrádaí – agus a mhúinteoir!
“Joyce and I both have a passion for archaeology and music – we have a lot in common”