Sliabh Luachra - "Is it a place or a state of mind?" asks Eamon Kelly, the seanchai. Both, actually. Probably one could not exist without the other. The place was there always, but it took the state of mind - nowadays, people would call this attitude - to make something of it. The attitude was a dogged determination. If you want to get a fix on where it is, this is how the author of Stone Mad for Music - the Sliabh Luachra Story, Donal Hickey, describes it: "Sliabh Luachra (literally, rushy mountain) is the wet upland region dominated by the imposing Paps mountains that straddle the infant river Blackwater along the Cork/Kerry border."
People might never have gone there were it not a refuge during the plantation of Laois/Offaly in and around 1558 when those who could, ensured that all the good land went their way and the rest went to the conqueror. Such are the spoils. Many people fled south to the poorer areas and brought the O'Connor name with them to Sliabh Luachra, where it survives in abundance to this day. Although it is not a Gaeltacht area, Sliabh Luachra became a haven of Irish heritage - song, dance, story and music - and largely because the badlands were of no use to anyone else, that tradition has continued to flourish. It survives today.
Now that Irish music has a ranking on the world stage it is only right to record the wells from which the sweet water was brought. If people like the great musicians - too numerous to mention: I'll leave it to Ciaran Mac Mathuna - hadn't kept things going in the dim and distant past, where would the tradition be now?
Eamon Kelly is a son of the area, as is Donal Hickey himself, who has had a distinguished career as a journalist, more recently for the Examiner in Cork. His reports from Kerry are read avidly by the huge Kerry diaspora in Cork. In 1997, he wrote The Mighty Healy-Rae, a biography of one of Ireland's most individual politicians and he has been editor of the Sliabh Luachra Journal, which goes all around the world since its foundation several years ago. The millennium journal is in preparation.
The book, says Hickey, has been a long time coming but has been in his head since childhood. How could it have been otherwise? He grew up in the middle of this great music and folklore tradition. He didn't just learn it, he lived it.
In Stone Mad for Music, he recounts it all, and if you have the slightest interest in the subject, I will not spoil it by telling more. Read it for yourself. It is available from Marino Books at £9.99.
One other thing to mention. The Dublin contralto, Bernadette Greevy, unfortunately seen all too rarely in Cork, will be in the city to sing a classical and popular music programme, including music by Moore, Bizet and Schubert, at St Fin Barre's Cathedral on November 27th. She will be accompanied by Denise Kelly, concert harp, and John Gibson, piano. The concert is in aid of Self Help, an Irish charity specialising in long-term famine prevention. It was founded in 1984 as a response to the Ethiopian famine. Further information is available in the evenings from Daithi O hAodha at 021-543230.