In another instance of the series of blogposts about our 2023 Skerries Eco Festival, Eithne O’Connell writes about the folk singing session hosted by Dónal Kearney and Sara Dennedy of the Skerries Folk Club.

On Saturday, 2 September 2023, as part of the Skerries Ecofestival, the Skerries Folk Club held a special singing session upstairs in Joe May’s pub at the harbour. The event ran from 4pm to 6pm and was hosted by two of the Club’s founders, Dónal Kearney and his wife, Sara Dennedy. In keeping with the designated special theme of the Ecofestival, which was ‘Water’, the session was entitled ‘Songs of the Sea and the Sirens’.

The Skerries Folk Club hosts a regular singing session at the same time and in the same venue on the last Sunday of each month so this extra session attracted some familiar voices as well as some newcomers. About 40-50 attended and visitors included people from the Dominican Republic, Poland and Lithuania, now living in Ireland. There were sea shanties and accounts of shipwrecks and drownings, references to ferries and seaweed, old ballads and new songs from Ireland, England and Scotland, some obscure and others very well known, at least to people ‘of a certain age’.

Anne McGough from Red Island, a Folk Club regular and fine singer, treated us to ‘The Grey Funnel Line’. Bob Laird, a great supporter, with his wife Anne, of eco initiatives in Skerries popped in for the first hour to reprise the rousing ‘Holy Ground’ before hurrying away to another festival event. The ballad was made famous internationally by Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers as well as the Dubliners in the 1960s and the chorus as always ‘made the rafters roar’. Later, Green Fingal County Council Councillor, Karen Power’s young daughter Olivia lifted our hearts with a beautiful version of ‘You are my sunshine’.

One of the session organisers and a member of Skerries Sustainable Energy Community Initiative (SSECI), Eithne O’Connell, went out on a comic limb with a ditty she had penned herself for the occasion just an hour earlier. Delivered to the tune of ‘Will you come to the bower?’, it made some serious environmental points with simple rhyming couplets.

As always, some of the real musical highlights were provided by the Folk Club organisers. Dónal sang about maritime links between Newry and Scotland alternating between Scottish Gaidhlig and English while Sara treated us to ‘Willie Taylor’. Versions of the English song about a young woman taking to the sea in the guise of a young sailor date back to the early 1700s. It’s a song full of adventure, betrayal and danger with a remarkably contemporary feminist twist and got more or less everyone present joining in for the chorus.

The Findhorn Eco Community in Scotland maintains, ‘If it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable’ and those in attendance at the singing session had plenty of watery themes to consider that afternoon while they certainly also had fun.