New Hibernia Review

For as long as I lived in Templeglantine, until I went away to college, Jim lived across the road from me. Between our houses is the N21, a national route taking you from Limerick to Killarney or Tralee, a strip of road that bifurcates the parish and in my case, separated me from my neighbor. As a little girl (and like my father before me who beat the same path to Jim’s door), I had to take great care going across the road to go down to his house. It really was “down,” too—Jim’s house is below the level of the road, so you have to carefully step through the gate to enter his modest two-roomed home. In the small yard to the front, I spent summer after summer, playing squares with Jim and my sisters, jumping from corner to corner, or running carefully through the lines of vegetables in his beautifully maintained but functional garden to the side of the house, sheltered from the road by trees. It was always quiet and peaceful in there.

I suppose that, in some way, this story is not really about Jim. It is but more about what he means to me, and also what he might come to represent for others: a particular life lived locally and replete with meaning, a life illustrating a way of being where music, technology, and the natural world find a particular logic and peace. My own journeys away from and back to this village have been movements across time and space, of course—but even more so, mine has been a journey of a state of mind. While I left and eventually returned “home,” Jim remained a constant in my imagination, giving texture to this place and to my views on musical values and the meaning of tradition.

This village in which I was raised, Teampall an Ghleanntáin, or “church of the little glen,” lies in western County Limerick, between Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale. Geographically, it’s not quite in the celebrated and much- mythologized area of Sliabh Luachra, but musically, an argument might be made for its inclusion. West Limerick musicians are in the main, however, happy to keep their own nomenclature. With scarcely enough buildings to warrant calling it a village, Templeglantine consists of a church, school, parish hall, a scattering of houses, and the Devon Inn Hotel and bar. In recent years, a modest housing estate [End Page 9] has grown up. But it is still a very small place, scarcely registering for people who pass through it.

My family house is within the village limits and directly opposite Jim’s house. My grandfather, Matt Dillane, built the house in 1932 for his wife Nora and their six children. I was raised there too, many decades later. I come from a teaching family: my grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, aunt, and sister all taught in the local national school. My grandfather was the school principal, followed by my father, and then later my sister. I see this as dedication, not nepotism. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, I follow in the family business too—earning a degree, then a masters, and subsequently, a doctorate in ethnomusicology. Now I too teach—in my case, music. And to complete the circle, I live with my own young family in Templeglantine, just down the road from my nana’s birthplace on Church Road, which, as my sister Fionnuala points out, doesn’t have a church at all. Things are not always as they seem.

Templeglantine carries a strong sense of the past. The last hedge school in Ireland operated here until the beginning of the twentieth century; it was the last place to get a licensed premises, too. One wonders if those facts are related somehow. When I was four-years-old, the parish won the Glór na nGael competition for promoting the everyday uses of Irish. President Hillery presented the honor with great ceremony and the poet Michael Hartnett composed a poem for the occasion. I still remember the white dots painted on the tarmacadem where the soldiers stood during the ceremony. Those scuffed marks...