Sounds of home remembered

Famed traditional musician Máire Begley is intent on holding onto her best childhood memories of Christmas in west Kerry - and shedding the worst, she tells Siobhán Long

Christmas can be clothed in fond memories or laden with intolerable baggage. Máire Begley, the eldest of the well-known musical clan of nine, from west Kerry, knows her fair share about the extreme highs and lows of the festive season.

Cradled at the foot of Mount Brandon, her home village of Cuas is in an area of Kerry renowned for its wind and rain, and is hardly a place for the faint-hearted. And there Máire Begley is the mistress of ceremonies in her own Tinteán Ceoil, a family cottage which draws music lovers in every Monday night.

These music sessions reconnect with a time when the focus of local entertainment was on people's homes. Begley also co-hosts Kingdom Céilí every Friday night, in tandem with Mary Conroy, and they have garnered a large audience for the famed Begley/Conroy mix of banter, tall tales, feisty tunes and colourful songs.

Christmas occupies a particular place in Begley's affections.

"Christmas was a time of joy, with no pressure or panic," she recalls. "We didn't have any television when we were small. Radio had just come in, and we didn't have any Christmas ads. We were expecting visitors: aunts and uncles, so the house was cleaned up, and painted inside and out - but only a week beforehand. We'd go to Dingle a day or two before Christmas for 'bailiú na Nollag' or 'the gathering for Christmas'. We'd collect sherry and a brack, and the ingredients for a cake, and the candles of course, for the crock. They'd bring stout in an earthenware urn, and a bottle of whiskey - and jam, which was a big thing."

Begley recounts these and other memories in a new DVD, filmed over the past two Christmases in west Kerry. It recaptures the wide-eyed delights of childhood: the simplicity of tackling a horse to gather sand for the glass crocks which would hold the Christmas candles, and then decorating those crocks with Christmas paper; the anticipation of the youngest member of the family who would light the candles; the Christmas Eve meal of ling (salted fish) with potatoes and white sauce, a response to the day of fast and abstinence; the cooking of the goose with bread stuffing on Christmas Day - all informal ceremonies but each has a powerful resonance in Begley's life. Ultimately, she admits, Christmas was all about going home.

"I have a sense of longing about Christmas", she says, hesitantly, "and I know that the longing I had was for a bit of peace. My father was an alcoholic and I would wait up at Christmas, wondering what state he'd arrive home in. I would look into the crib and see a family, safe, watched over by shepherds. So I realised that what I was longing for was home. I think the whole world longs for a home. It's only in recent times that I've realised what a home is: it's inside. I was always looking outside for it, outside of myself or with someone else, that would fulfil me. I searched for that security, but I can only find that inside myself."

The Begley family had their choice of home entertainment. Máire's father Brendan played the melodeon and sang, as did all her siblings. There was never any shortage of tunes and songs either, from the neighbours who called on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day night. The family dance hall in Muiríoch might have been, according to local clerics, a den of iniquity, but to the Begleys, it was the ultimate destination on Christmas night.

"My father would put paraffin oil and lux flakes on the floor, to make it more slippery for the dancers," she recounts. "We'd have the likes of the Radiant Showband, who'd travel from Scartaglen, and they'd play from 8pm until midnight. I remember being mortified if the mistletoe was put over my head!"

The Wren on St Stephen's Day, another stalwart of the west Kerry Christmas, has been rejuvenated in urban areas in recent years, but its first home is Kerry, and more particularly in An Daingean, where it's treated with the same reverence and intensity as the All Ireland Football Championship.

"Long ago, the Wren started early, around 10 o'clock in the morning," she says. "We'd travel the parish and my brother James would drive us in the horse and cart. We'd collect money, which we'd keep for the ball night, which was 'idir an dhá Nollaig', between big and little Christmas, or Women's Christmas. That was another night of dancing and music, and I remember some of the older women would heat porter, put a drop of sugar through it and drink it."

Máire Begley is intent on retaining the best memories of her childhood Christmases, and jettisoning the worst. "There's no sense of occasion any more," she notes with regret. "It's very hard to revere anything today, or to hold on to it as something precious. "

Máire Begley's A Kerry Christmas is available on DVD from Talbot Dance Centre, Talbot Street, (01-8557008) or from local record shops in Kerry