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From the Plain of the Yew Tree
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A Note on the Photographs
The front and back cover photographs were taken in a café in Dublin and south of Beltra, County Mayo by Steven Weekes.
Isabela and I took all the other photographs in the book during our travels together, with the exception of the photograph of me, taken by John Galayda (Chapter 8).
A guide to the photographs at the beginning of each chapter:
Chapter 1, Swans in Loch Lannagh, Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland.
Chapter 2, Downpatrick Head, County Mayo, Ireland.
Chapter 3, The Jaguar Stone, Peruvian Andes.
Chapter 4, Nephin Mountain, Windy Gap, County Mayo, Ireland.
Chapter 5, The Sacred Valley, Peruvian Andes.
Chapter 6, Clare Island, County Mayo, Ireland.
Chapter 7, Na Bri, Brieze, County Mayo, Ireland.
Chapter 8, John Hoban.
Chapter 9, Travelling by plane, South America.
Chapter 10, ‘On the road’, Orange County, California, USA.
Chapter 11, Machu Picchu, Peru.
Epilogue, The Peruvian Andes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my editor and friend Kate Donnelly for her wonderful work. Her technical abilities coupled with great discernment made her contribution invaluable. I would also like to thank Geraldine Mitchell for her professional support to Kate in the editing process.
Míle buíchas to Éadaoin Donnelly-White and Leo Green for their powerful work on the Irish language throughout the book. Gach bua agus beannacht.
My thanks also go to:
Mattie Lennon for pointing me towards the publishers, Original Writing Limited.
Garrett Bonner and Steven Weekes from Original Writing for their top-class work.
Christy Moore for his friendship, fellowship and music.
To The Shamrogues and the Wild Geese for their support over the years and over the Atlantic.
The many musicians who encouraged and heartened me, too many to mention here.
My own family and Isabela’s family for their kindness and support.
And finally, a big thank you to my wife, Isabela, who helped and inspired me from day one.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
A new book, From the Plain of the Yew Tree has just been born. Plain of the yew tree is the literal English translation of Mayo (Muigh Eo, or Maigh Eo). While the writing of this book is a fairly recent event, the life within it has been lived, sung and walked for just over half a century. Fifty-six years to be precise. The book came together just as a song does, frst an idea, then a tune, finally taking off on a life of its own – revisiting my life in music. I wrote this book to mark my own individual path of learning and playing music, and to document a time of change in musical culture and life during my own lifetime.
The story is all about music. Not exactly how music is presented today by the mass media where music has become a commodity that must sell. It seems as if its very right to exist depends on popularity and commercial value. The story in these pages is about one person’s frst and fnal language. All through my life, music has served, and continues to serve, as a soul friend to me, a guide, a teacher, a prophet, a warrior and a means to survival in the world. Music, for me, has always been the sound of truth, the sound of love, the sound of hate and the sound of where we all are situated in creation. The story describes an individual, creative and original way to live in music through the various struggles we all encounter on life’s pathway.
I have written my story as a mixture of life memories, songs and poems. We travel from my birth in Maigh Eo, and follow my growing up there in the ’50s and ’60s. My meandering path takes us then to Dublin, London, back to Ireland in search of music and meaning, on ‘out foreign’ and fnally, back to earth again.
My writing explores in depth many aspects of music. For example, I talk about how I learned to play many different musical instruments in various styles without having received any formal tuition. I talk about how I perceive music education and how music should be ‘passed on’. This book also looks at how music affects every aspect of our lives and reaches all communities, the elderly, those suffering with addictions and people from different cultures. The story covers street music, music composition and performance. These recollections are written from my own experiences. I have learned everything I know from being ‘on the road’.
I want my story to be a true sharing of insights into the real, inner world of songs and dance, airs and graces.
This story also honours the gift of music. It pays homage to those who took the time to pass the music on with much wisdom and great kindness. I continue trying my best each day to live my life well, and to carry the message of an honest, joyful life in ceol/music to my fellow brothers and sisters.
John Hoban
14th July 2010
Castlebar
Chapter 1
TÚS MAITH LEATH NA HOIBRE A GOOD START IS HALF THE WORK
Tell me what I need to know,
I’m willing to change, I’m letting go.
I want to be like a stream
down a mountainside...
(‘On my Side’, John Hoban)
Music, songs, stories and listening have given me life and hope from birth to this day. They have mapped out the road, four directions along a strange, confusing, beautiful path. Music always made me feel that all would be well someday, that it would all work out for the better. Here’s the full story.
I believe I was born on St. Brigid’s Eve, 31st January, 1954, in County Mayo, ‘the plain of the yew tree’. The twelve o’clock Angelus bells where ringing out over the town of Castlebar. My earliest memories are, needless to say, very sketchy, but I do know that both my parents were deeply connected to music. My father, Christy, was a singer of songs, both ballads and light opera. He sang ‘The Maid of Sweet Brown Knowe’ and also starred, big time, in Lilac Time by Schubert and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. In those times, both Castlebar and Westport (my father’s home town) would have had very good church choirs and ‘musical societies’, as they were known. As a child I remember hearing the local postman humming arias from La Bohème, a house painter whistling tunes from Madame Butterfly, while carpenters and other tradesmen would be singing ‘Boulavogue’ and ‘The Croppy Boy’. The Latin Mass also featured in my everyday life – talk about an eclectic mix. My father was part of that musical setup.
My mother, Nancy Byrne, came from Newantrim Street, Castlebar. Herself and her sisters were very highly regarded dancers in the Irish tradition. At one stage, I heard, they used to give lessons in Glenhest Hall. Her only brother was a County Mayo footballer, Tommy was his name. The Byrnes hailed from East Mayo, a place called Cloonterrif near the town of Knock. Many years after my mother passed away, I went back to visit my relatives, and I felt like the prodigal son of old. I was so happy to be back there, and I was happier still to learn about the wealth of music on that side of my family. I knew very little about my mother’s family as she passed away in 1967 when I was thirteen years of age.
So, as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, or, as the Irish proverb says, Is dual dó bheith ceolmhar (it’s his nature to be musical). This book is an exploration and an explanation of my own relationship with music. The year of 1954 was a highly significant year in the history of modern music. The great Elvis Presley was giving his heart and soul in Sun Studios, Memphis, Tennessee at the time. They called it rock’n’roll and rockabilly. A sister of my father’s, Patricia, or Auntie Pat, worked as a nurse all her life. For a large slice of years she lived and worked in a hospital in New York City. I was delighted when she informed me that, as a baby, I used to wake up singing. She couldn’t remem
ber the songs I was giving but maybe it was ‘That’s Alright Mama’ or ‘John O’Dreams’. Imagine waking up singing.
The songs I heard in my infancy and childhood were hugely important to me. They informed me about both inner and outer realities – or worlds – of which I was becoming aware. I think of music as survival, life and death, a sort of scout, a guide, the truth, the dream catcher, the shield, the road to enlightenment and many more things.
One of my earliest memories as a very small child is feeling that I was actually physically connected to Dubh Loch (black lake) and Mweelrea Mountain. I remember feeling like I wanted to be the stream flowing down the mountain into the lake, and then on out to the ocean. I experienced the same feeling years later and wrote it into the song ‘On My Side’ (quoted at the beginning of this chapter).
All the major times and changes in my life are marked by music. All the future is pointed out by music; sometimes it comes to me in dreams. Music is the locus of my existence.
Hush little baby,
don’t you cry.
You know your daddy
was born to die.
All my trials Lord,
will soon be over.
(‘All my Trials’, Traditional)
The above song was on an old vanguard LP by Joan Baez. She also sang ‘Mary Hamilton’ and ‘Kum Ba Yah’ on the same recording. I still sing these songs. When I sing them, I am transported back to my earliest musical/life memories on Westport Road, Castlebar.
We had a really lovely back garden outside our house. It was big enough to stage a game of football, but too narrow for a game of hurling or a rock concert. As a small child, I recall a great variety of birds visiting every day. They sang a lot, and they also scrapped for the food which we gave to them. I often sat in the shade of a lilac bush, in a cot, listening to them sing their inspiring songs.
My first memory of live music, traditional Irish music, was when we visited relatives of my father’s in Leitir Broc, behind Croagh Patrick mountain. On a couple of other occasions, when I was a baby, we visited my mother’s relatives in Cloonterrif . These visits meant the world to me. I am not sure how the other people felt about this music, but my earliest memories are crystal clear. The music these people were playing felt like everything to me. It felt like life or death, sheer wonder, safety and comfort. Years later, these music-filled visits came back to help me through life’s trials.
So, my father’s singing, my mother’s singing and dancing, Uncle Dom’s fiddle music and the Byrnes, my brother and sisters’ singing, the music from the Sheaffry Hills and Carrowkennedy, the church choir, the Latin Mass, Stephen Garvey, the wireless, mother nature, the sounds from the Royal Ballroom of a Sunday night, all contributed greatly to a very rich world of music, song and dance. However, I became aware of two worlds happening at once, the inner and the outer. The inner spiritual world was real and infinite and natural to me. The outer world was a show. A showdown perhaps, a maze of little paths going in all directions. I didn’t trust it. I listened and tried to meditate so I might hear the true sound of the soul. The truth, in other words. Music did set me free but first I had to live it. I had to believe in it. I had to believe so that I could see. I had to feel the pain and the freedom of being a musicianer from day one.
There is a house in New Orleans
they call the Risin’ Sun.
It’s been the ruin
of many’s a poor boy.
God, I know I’m one.
(‘House of the Rising Sun’, Traditional)
This was the first song I learned to sing with the guitar and harmonica. I figured it out myself, and thankfully I am free, for today, from the ball and chain of slavery referred to in this great song.
I have spent my whole life living in music, walking my own songline into creation.
CASTLE LANE
(John Hoban)
Castle Lane, Castlebar 1954,
the bacon house of high renown,
Christy at the door.
The nuns looked down on our backyard,
the convent was a castle.
My father met my mother there,
many years ago. Many days ago.
Christy was a bacon-hand,
he was 15-carat ‘Covey’.
Served his time in Glasgow,
his people came from Sheaffry.
He always wore a clean, white coat.
Drove a Vauxhall car.
Served the great and not so great,
in the town of Castlebar,
in the town of Castlebar.
The street had every kind of shop selling
porter, nails and hatpins. A watchmaker, a
shoemaker, a special house for ice-cream,
a bookshop selling fancy goods,
like statues of Our Lady.
The ‘Erris’ was a high class joint,
in Castle Lane’s heyday, Castle Lane’s heyday.
The big people would gather in,
to Pat Lavelle the Saddler.
They’d sit around a warm turf fire,
full of tae, full of ‘blather’.
We never knew what the stories meant,
it was all a grown-up mystery.
I heard ‘Leather’ and ‘Greyhounds’
mentioned there and ancient Irish history.
Ancient Irish history.
The children charged down the lane
to spend a little copper.
They’d buy a slab, a sailor’s chew, a
bullseye or a gobstopper.
It was a proper torture after school,
all I had was a silver tanner.
May would help us what to choose,
and I’d wish that I was thinner.
I’d wish that I was thinner.
Growing up on Castle Lane,
there was music all around me.
Pianos, cellos, violins, Pearse C and
Stephen Garvey.
My mother danced the ‘Blackbird’.
I hummed the ‘Foggy Dew’.
Christy sang light opera.
He starred in The Mikado.
He starred in The Mikado!
Every Sunday at one o’clock,
my heroes would assemble.
From the barracks would pound the F.C.A.
The street would shake and tremble.
‘Clé, Deis, Clé’, to Ludden’s house
for a feed that was truly savage.
Then they’d fight amongst themselves.
Full of bacon, spuds and cabbage.
Full of bacon, spuds and cabbage.
All has changed on Castle Lane.
We’re all now Europeans!
Men in Brussels call the shots, it makes me
want to scream. We’ve got Bistros now,
and Pound shops too, buskers playing polkas.
Unisex hair salons that have never
heard of Brylcream. Never heard of
Brylcream.
I suppose it’s all for the best,
I wish each one goodwill.
Still today I feel quite sad
when I picture it in the old days.
Castlebar is growing up.
I’m thirty years in Brisbane.
But I’m glad I saw it in its heyday,
a world called Castle Lane, a world called Castle Lane.
Notes on the song:
One fateful day in spring, I sat in a café in Castle Lane, Castlebar and started writing. I imagined what it was like in 1954, and I remembered what it was like growing up in the street in the late ’50s and through the ’60s. They say songs are made, just waiting to appear. It was like that with ‘Castle Lane, Castlebar’. The story and the tune came together, and I will always treasure the song. When I sing it, I sometimes add or subtract, depending on the form. Things have changed on Castle Lane, we’ve gone pure mental. Head shops, downtime, takea-ways and Pound shops…
Mattie Lennon, my friend from Wicklow, wrote in Ireland’s Own in 2001:
ON MY SIDE
(John Hoban)
Tell me what I need to know, I’m willing to change I’m letting go.
I want to be like a stream down a mountain side.
You give to me everything I need,
I don’t mind the pain or how I bleed.
When the day is done, you are on my side.
You are on my side since time began,
you loved me grow from child to man.
Even through the days I didn’t want to know,
how great it is to swim in the sea,
to watch the fishermen on the quay,
laugh and tell me they were on my side.
(Chorus)
I knew no other way,
nor the price I had to pay,
for clinging to the past,
with no surrender.
I was blind but now I see
the truth inside of me.
No matter how I go,
you’re on my side.
I’m grateful for the chance to know,
who I am in each friend and foe.
I see my own reflection in their eyes,
these growing pains are teaching me,
love, truth and serenity.
When the day is done,
you are on my side.
You are on my side through thick and thin.
In Asia Minor, I learned to swim,
I danced through the streets of Efes long ago,
I lit a candle in Mary’s house,
met two friends inside the Blue Mosque.
Through all these great events you are on my side.
Notes on the song:
This song came about in Turkey, Kuşadasi, in 1989. It’s all true and the start of the song reflects my first memories of sitting out on the shores of Dubh Loch, in County Mayo, probably in the late ’50s, looking at the mountains and the rivers and streams. Feeling so connected to nature and to the Creator. A great, great time. Next thing, I was on a pier in Kadiköy in Istanbul, watching a few fishermen clowning around. They invited me into their company. I didn’t know a word they were saying, but I felt we were all connected. I felt the world, everything, was on my side.
From the Plain of the Yew Tree