Apart from the great ecological basket-case of Fungie the Dolphin, there are a fair few colourful characters on the western end of the Dingle Peninsula, not least accordionist and sean nos singer, Seamus Begley and the Australian guitarist Steve Cooney. Certainly, the pair are big local heroes, the sheer mention of them enough to elicit a wink and a broad grin.
At a time when a lot of traditional Irish music is either dying out or becoming professionalised, Seamus Begley remains the Gaeltacht farmer and family man (three sons, one daughter), who still works beef cattle on his 110 acres - a large tract of wetland in Baile na bPoc; his sodden fields, some ploughed and reclaimed from bog, climbing up the steep slopes of the cliffs overlooking Smerwick Harbour.
The Begleys are a big musical family in these parts. The brother Breandan - another box-player and a fine singer, is now touring the United States with his outfit Beginish, and the sisters Seosaimhin and Maire both sing out the local seannos. Indeed, their grandfather started up the dance hall in nearby Muirioch, where it still stands.
Seamus Begley: "The grandfather had a brainwave to go into the old ice house - where they processed the fish - and dance a few sets in whatever decent bit of room was available. There was a few pounds to be made, and it developed into a dance hall proper from 1955, with show bands like Joe Dolan's, Tommy Drennan's, Johnny McEvoy's, Bridie Gallagher from Donegal . . ."
The 49-year-old Begley is wellknown, and well-liked in the extended parish; a huge, powerful, quick-witted clown of a man who, where someone else might arch an eyebrow, is liable to shift his thatch of hair around his skull alarmingly. In his hoarse rubble of Kerry-accented English (you often hear him seeking for an English word) he's liable to call you "a big hairy hoor" in front of all and sundry - even if he's one to talk, stripped to the waist in his own kitchen, forking pork chops out of the grill, until you had to fight them back off your plate.
His energy is almost alarming: a frisky spontaneity which he brings to his box-playing: the belting jigs with the rapid sprays of reckless ornamentation; or the sudden key change into a bitter-sweet air, sung or played on the accordion - a flavour which, if you tune into the music, comes through the minor flavour of even the oft-derided Kerry polka; a blunt instrument which he and Cooney used to electrify the set-dance nights in the Hillgrove Hotel in Dingle for many years.
But, as a farmer, Begley still sees the music as a sideline. "It comes from the old philosophy that music is for pleasure, and that the travelling musician years ago was only a ludraman [a miserable fool] who was taken in for the night, because he played music. He was looked upon as being useless, having no trade. I couldn't imagine doing nothing else but playing music, I don't feel like playing after arsing around all day, I would have to go out and do a day's work, I have more of a mind for it then.
"But there was always a box in the house, and my father used to play a few tunes when he was in good form, which was rare enough, but we'd be fighting for a seat beside him. I don't know what age I started playing, but I played in an accordion and whistle band in school, run by Caomhin O Cinneide, a great singer."
Having left school at 12, his musical skills led to playing at the ceilithe in the local halls, including his father's in Muirioch. "It was great for us, because there were no pubs in those days, not for young people, and there were ceilis seven nights a week during the summer, and we learned the Irish dances from these strangers, or Gael Linns as we called them, na scolairi. We didn't even know the Kerry set, the old fellas knew them, but my mother and father would do a set and a waltz, that was it.
"I used to sit halfway down the hall, tearing the arse out of a tiny little button accordion to have any hope of being heard with all the laughing and screaming, and the fella calling the dance, `isteach agus amach'. That was the style the old fellas had as well. There was no emphasis on grace notes - in my case, it's more like disgrace notes. Volume was the main thing, if you hadn't volume, you weren't worth listening to.
"Musically, I was a big fan of Paddy O'Brien's from Nenagh. Before Joe Burke, he would have been the big box-player, with a lovely flow, a double row B and C player - which was much smoother than the single row accordion, push and draw style. It's fine for polkas, but when you try to play reels, some reels aren't designed for it.
"I used to go up to Paddy's house and he gave me loads of tunes, and I used to play a bit like him, until I heard Joe Cooley in the early '70s on the E-flat box, and that was it, that's the instrument for me. It's brighter, and being higher up, it penetrates better. And it has a waily sound, which is gorgeous for slow airs . . ."
Begley was spotted by Lamhras O Murchu, who ran ceilithe near Ballyferriter, and in the 1970s
Begley was invited by Comhaltas Ceolteoiri Eireann to tour the United States with musicians such as Joe Burke, Mary Bergin, John Regan, Tony Smith and James Kelly.
"It was such a change to go from the bloody cow-shit, cleaning out the cows like we do every day of the week here in winter with wheelbarrows and shovels. I tell you, to spend a week without seeing a cow was a f***ing holiday, because you're married to the damn things. The sacred cow, there's something about it, if you're a farmer . . ."
As the eldest son, Begley inherited his father's farm when he married Mary, whom he met at the ceili in Muirioch. "None of the locals could understand how a secondary teacher would leave a good job above in Dublin, and come down here to work in the gutter with a mad hairy hoor and the cac bo. As a fella over the road said: `what in the name of God, girl, are you doing, giving up all that to come down here where there's nothing only shit and ainnise, or misfortune?' It had to be true love or madness, one of the two."
That gets him started on his favourite topic, complaining about farming. "It's getting worse all the time, and I'm threatening every year to give it up. The prices of calves you get at the mart is going down all the time, while everything else is going up - cars, tractors, so that there's an average of two farmers a week leaving the land. Even around here, over at the creamery, there used to be well more than 100 farmers, and now it's down to 10."
"When we were growing up, we weren't badly off either, particularly with the sideline of the hall, and there were a lot of people worse off than us. But we didn't have the costs, no car or tax and insurance, and we had our own spuds, beef, vegetable, we used to kill a pig - bacon, chicken, organic eggs, bread, all we had to buy was the flour to make the bread and the sugar and the tea, the main shopping list in those days, tae agus siucra agus plur, with my father going down below on the pony and trap. Nowadays, we're even buying milk - and we're farmers."
The music is beginning to earn a few bob to him now, thanks to the partnership with Cooney. The pair met in a local pub, when Cooney was touring with Stockton's Wing, and musically they hit it off immediately. "Steve is a loud guitar player and I'm the loudest box-player in the f***ing world. And Kerry music suits him, he likes the polka, it's the way his clock ticks, fast, fast. People round here call us `Hairy and Squarey' or `Brute and Nut' - that's what Donal Murphy, a great box player from Abbeyfeale called us. He played with Four Men and a Dog, we called them `Foreskin and a Knob'. That's what you get in the Gaeltacht - all Irish and bad language."
"The way Steve plays behind you, it lifts you, even the most stupid tune that you'd be sick and tired of playing all your life - it's like putting a turbo on a Morris Minor. And he's certainly done a lot for the polka. Playing polkas in Dublin years ago, you'd be laughed at. Amongst the competitions, polkas weren't even mentioned, because they were too simple, but not everyone can play them, and you'd need to be able to dance a set to realise what the dancers want.