To Galway Bay with a big song in our hearts
AS you read this, around 40 people from Glossop will be heading for the village of Kinvara on Galway Bay, every one of them an ambassador for our little town – and they include my band The Curragh Sons, 20 or so from the rugby club, and assorted others.
The band have three gigs, and the rugby club play University College Galway.
The band have been playing two festivals in the village for 17 years, and umpteen gigs in between, and as for the rugby club I have organised 10 tours to Ireland with the band always in tow.
This year there is an extra special and emotional twist as the band are playing the annual Cruinniu na Mbad (the gathering of the boats), a celebration of the traditional and beautiful Galway Hookers which have plied their trade across the Bay for several hundred years.
Some of the boats have been in the same families for five generations.
I wanted to write a song for this year’s festival and recruited guitarist Paul Higham of Hadfield to help me.
As it turns out I did not have to go too far back for subject matter – as the Galway Hooker called ‘McHugh’ went down in 2009, shortly after the MacDonagh brothers, Johnny and Josie of Carna, left the calm waters of Kinvara Quay heading for Rossaveel across the unpredictable Galway Bay.
A few miles out the sea had changed and the McHugh capsized.
Johnny drowned in spite of the brave efforts of the lads aboard another hooker, Blath nah Oige, but thankfully Josie was saved.
“The Hooker McHugh set sail at nine, on a grand and mighty day, but the gannets fell in a distant swell and gave the game away...” After nearly 40 years on the road I knew the song was a bit special, but most importantly for me, after being invited onto a few radio stations in Ireland last week, I had to run the song by the surviving brother Josie and Johnny’s wife and family first, just out of courtesy, before it hit the airwaves.
Josie lives in the Gaelic speaking area of Connemara, the Gaeltacht.
No pressure then, and although I was confident he would like the song, I was oh so nervous.
It was a stormy day as I drove along the coast road to Carna, and if you believe in this sort of thing, it was surely a sign when out in the Bay I saw the gannets diving again.
Sure enough Josie loved the song and was very grateful that I had travelled all the way from Glossop, and apart from ticking me off over a couple of my Gaelic pronunciations, it was a big thumbs up and the family will all be over to the festival to hear us sing the song live.
For further details go to bandcamp.com and search for ‘Hooker McHugh’.
‘Johnny Mac was a man of the sea, and a friend to all he knew, A lover of our native tongue and a singer matched by few.
“He left behind four daughters fair, his treasured wife and lad, and a thousand cherished memories of that final Cruinni na Mbad...’