Show Notes
JOIN the boys as they discuss everything under the big sonic sun - From the mythological invention of music, to the instruments of the past, to the magic behind the instruments and their players . . . A meal for the ears! “NO enemy speaks slightingly of Irish Music, and no friend need fear to boast of it. It is without a rival, Its antique war-tunes, such as those of O'Byrne, O'Donnell, MacAlistrum and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like the warriors of a hundred glens meeting; and you are borne with them to battle, and they and you charge and struggle amid cries and battle-axes and stinging arrows. Did ever a wail make man's marrow quiver and fill his nostrils with the breath of the grave, like the ululu or A Muire ir Truag of Munster” - Thomas Davis ULULU, ULULU! MUSIC has a place at the core of one's imagination of the Irish 'scene' a place so central that its place within the setting can often be overlooked: A dimly lit room, pipes and pints, feet tapping, chats going, and all there for the sound produced by fiddles, bodhrans, whistles and hums.
More from Pisrógs
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Three for a Girl, Four for a Boy, Five for Silver, Six for Gold and Seven for a Secret Never to be Told.
Supping Fairies, a Ghost Cat, a Drunken Mule, Revenue Men...and a very unfortunate genet. Poitín! This episode dives into the strange and wonderful stories that grew up around Ireland’s illicit spirit. Poteen makers outwit the Revenue men, fairies drink from golden cups, its all in there boys.
The Slasher House, Banshees, Count Tornado, Highkick Jack, The IRA, Headless Horseman and Cures upon Cures upon Cures. The boys set up a confessional booth at Electric Picnic and ye blurted out your best folk stories from all around the country!
You walk on an ordinary patch of grass and suddenly become so violently hungry that you can barely make it home. The Hungry Grass, or Féar Gortach, cursed patches of ground said to bring on an overwhelming, almost fatal hunger, sometimes only moments after a person has eaten. A single crumb of bread could save you… but in some tales, people were reduced to chewing boot laces, raw meat, or whatever they could find. And the stories get stranger. We encounter hungry grass growing over graves, fairy forts and places where people supposedly died of hunger; black horses that lure travellers towards deadly lakes; witches, curses and mysterious patches of mountain ground. One tale even tells of a man so desperate with hunger that he began eating the flesh of a hare he was carrying. But where did these stories come from? The Hungry Grass preserves memories of the Great Famine, but it also goes back much further. We explore its eerie connection to the Fear Gorta, the ghostly “Man of Hunger”, and draw a comparison with the Native American traditions surrounding the Wendigo: another supernatural figure associated with famine, but also insatiable hunger, environmental collapse, and cannibalism.
If you went back in time to an Irish village or settlement the first place you should go was surprisingly, the forge.