Curious Mind Grapes
Curious Mind Grapes is a podcast where we explore all the strange, wondrous, interconnected things in life. In each episode, sometimes with guests, we explore topics like psychology, health, energy medicine, science, pop culture, and so much more.
Curious Mind Grapes
Selkies & Seaweed: Exploring the Authentic Landscape of Ireland
Join us as Mary returns from her adventure with Wilde Routes Ireland, sharing her intimate experiences in the land of folklore and tradition. Mary's tales weave through the enchanting fabric of Irish folklore and traditional crafts. This episode is a heartfelt celebration of Ireland's landscapes, history, and the inviting warmth of its people.
References:
Wild Routes Ireland https://www.wildroutesireland.com/
Sleive Aughty Centre https://slieveaughtycentre.com/
The Secret of Roan Innish https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-secret-of-roan-inish/umc.cmc.12o9ywfj9ayn1dhykx00a0gal
Selkies & Mermaids: What’s the Difference? https://youtu.be/2gRz6ewo4c4
The Aran Islands https://www.aranislands.ie/
Poetry of J. M. Synge https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/j-m-synge
Irish Examiner article about Oonagh O’Dwyer https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20404065.html
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Welcome to Curious Mind Grapes with your hosts, mary and Christine. Welcome home, welcome back.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, it's good to be back.
Speaker 1:I want to hear all about your trip. I want to hear everything.
Speaker 2:It was my second time in Ireland with Wild Roots Ireland, which is an amazing tour group that's run by a woman who's native to Ireland and a man who actually grew up in the US and moved there not long after college and has been there ever since, and they're both herbalists. So that was sort of the impetus for them starting the tour company. They started working for a couple of years with rosemary gladstar, who's a world-renowned herbalist, one of the ogs, and herbalism um, modern herbalism that is, yeah, not all herbalism, because she'd be very, very old if that were the case.
Speaker 1:So is that her real name, rosemary Rosemary Gladstar? I mean, it just seems like. I know it's the perfect name right, so I want to tell me again exactly where you were in Ireland, Like, where did you journey to?
Speaker 2:So we flew into Shannon Airport and stayed in a hotel there for the first night because the tour started the next morning at nine. So we got there, settled in and had dinner in this really lovely little, not pub little not pub, it was a restaurant that was like surprisingly like elevated pub food, for lack of a better word. And that was our first night there. And then the next morning the tour bus picked us up and there were like 22 of us plus the tour guides and our bus driver, who is a fascinating man from Wales who seems to be a sponge about everything having to do with the history of the area and the flora and fauna. So he well into the trip. He started just telling us about places as we drove through them, but we were stationed in one place, which is really really nice, and then just did excursions from there, and I do like their technique of not moving you from place to place.
Speaker 1:So remind me again where exactly you were staying and where you went.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we and we stayed at this really beautiful, very rural eco farm slash retreat center in East Clare, county, clare, and it was called the Slave Autic Center, which I don't remember what that means, but they had an organic garden, a huge organic garden that supplied their kitchen, and several farm animals like sheep and llamas, which they use the fur from to weave rugs and blankets. They had a big old pig and I'm not sure what his purpose was he just seemed like a happy, huge guy, maybe he was food and then several horses, gorgeous horses that were part of equestrian therapy program. So that was fun and so that was our home base and we had our dinners and breakfasts there and every meal was exquisite. There was a small kitchen staff who made everything with extreme love. I don't know how else to put it, but everything just tasted like it was made with love and they were just so sweet and yeah, so from there we did excursions, like we went to visit a harp maker, a traditional harp maker, and got to see his process, from beginning to end, of making harps, which were a big part of the Irish culture, even though he said they didn't start there. I can't remember where they started from and he was self-taught, which was really amazing, Put a lot of thought into that, and we also had a day trip to the Aran Islands, which are just a cluster of islands off the coast of Galway I believe.
Speaker 2:We took a ferry out there and it was just like. I think it was just like an hour ride on the ferry, hour and a half really pleasant ride, and I got to visit local craftspeople there, visit a museum that had stuff on the local history, and I had mentioned to the tour guides, chris and Tara, that my father had spent six months on the Aran Islands when he was a student. He was on a Fulbright scholarship to study the poetry of Singh, who was a compatriot of WB Yeats, and his father studied both of them. But Singh apparently spent a lot of time in the Aran Islands and so Chris had told a woman in the museum about that little history and when I went to talk to her she said, oh, since your father spent time in the Aran Islands, and I realized Chris had told her. It's like, oh, that's interesting word, gets around. But yeah, she recommended I speak to one of the shopkeepers who turns out to be a poet and writer and who had written a book about Singh's poetry in Irish and English. So I spoke to him.
Speaker 2:I was also trying to see if I could find anyone who remembered my father being there, but it had been a while ago. But I figured there'd be some people. There were photographs of a shipwreck from 1960 where the whole island had gotten together and rescued the people wrecked and they're like these gorgeous black and white photos, like very much like my father's photos, and it would have been like a year or so after he was there. So, but there are several islands. That was the other thing. He may not have been on this particular island. It was called in a shore, ish being the irish word for um island. Some parts of ireland, I think even the islands pronounce it in this, so anyway. So, um, yeah, I just figured there'd be someone who's one of the people on the tour happened to run into a man who started telling her about that shipwreck. He was seven when it happened and was telling her like all the details which were still very clear in his mind, it was a big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like it really stuck in people's memories.
Speaker 2:And I forget what the particular technique was of how they brought people in. It had a particular name and method which I wasn't in on that conversation. I didn't hear it, but interestingly she works at the Mystic Museum in Connecticut, mystic, connecticut, and she said they teach about this method which was used into the 1800s in the US, and then they stopped as they had different technology. And she said it was just really random that this guy, just they, had these horse drawn carts that were just one way to get around the island, just a quaint way to do it. And as he passed by he just said to her oh, would you like to hear about the shipwreck? And she was like, yes, please, yeah, it was very strange and wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so again, I figured if this man was seven in 1960, there must be people who were cognizant. But both people that I asked if they remembered my father because he would have stood out, he would have been a Japanese person. They both said it was before their time, which I thought was interesting because they seemed quite old enough to have been around. Yeah, and so I don't know what that meant, and maybe they didn't always live on the island too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, most people lived there their whole lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but interestingly, the guy who had written the poetry book, he, yeah, he was one of the ones who said he didn't remember. But when I asked him if he had studied Singh because my father had studied Singh he said, oh well, we didn't study poetry growing up. We heard it from older people and they would just absorb it. So it was like this wonderful oral tradition and I was like, wow, that is so not like the way we learn. Yeah, but it's definitely the way we learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's definitely the way a lot of tribal communities in this country teach. There are so many parallels between our native communities in this country and in Ireland, like that could be a whole episode in itself, just the parallels and the way they teach the where they live, the things that they value and pass on from generation to generation. Um, anyway, yeah, so how beautiful, yeah hearing poetry from your elders.
Speaker 1:I mean honestly, the only poetry I ever heard someone read was probably my elementary school teachers reading something to me. You know, but even then it probably was not. It was probably shell silverstein.
Speaker 2:Nothing against him, but well, he's a little dark, um, but yeah, but I mean, but you said they were reading here people are passing it down, yes, verbally, which is so amazing and there, yeah, the tradition of storytelling is huge in Ireland. Like we had this storyteller come and tell us stories that he had gathered from people, but he's one of the last storytellers. He's like in his eighties and his family wants him to start winding down. For some reason, I know, maybe health issues. He didn't seem unhealthy. He seemed still pretty, very vigorous, but from what we were told, he's one of the last people who have been gathering stories orally, or A-U-R-A-L-Y-N-O-R-A-L, or a? U r a l y and o r a l um, yeah, which is a shame because there's something to it too, versus being written down, it's like a, it's living.
Speaker 1:Like the theme of this tour this september was living traditions yeah, I was even thinking that when you said but the poem was read to you. When I was in sixth grade, one of our teachers challenged us to memorize a poem and I still have that poem with me. I can still it's a road not taken and I just I spent weeks memorizing that poem to recite. He had like a little you know prize or something if you could do it. He made it fun poem to recite. He had like a little you know prize or something if you could do it. It was he made it fun. Yeah, but I don't know there's something special about having that with me, a poem with you, and being able to say it and recite it and know words and to keep it with you yeah, yeah and and being a storyteller.
Speaker 1:Do you know, do you know much more about that tradition like, what does it mean to be as like that he? What does it mean to be a storyteller in Ireland and to be part of that tradition?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just pass down tales that have been. They can either be new or they can be very ancient. One he talked about was, um, about the Celt, the Selkies, which are essentially mermaids, that form of seals, and so there's just legends, um, I'll say myths, not meaning that they're not true, but just that they are part of the, the lore of the culture. And, yeah, there were. We saw a lot of seals off of the coast of, in a shore, um, and so one of the tour guide that we had a tour guide one day who was showing us all the native plants, like flowers and trees and their different medicinal properties and sort of fun mythology around them and fun games that children played with them. And as we were walking by the water, at one point there were a whole bunch of seals kind of popping their little heads out. Yeah, a couple hundred feet off of shore, so we couldn't see them up close, but we could see them looking at us. And she told us that there was a family, the Keneally's, who the legend is that they're descended from a man and a sulky, that they had met. There's a way that.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you the story that the storyteller told us too, back in County Clare. He said that the story goes that the fishing was the main occupation for people on the islands, and so there was a man who was a fisherman, who was not married, and I guess all his siblings were, and he still hadn't found a woman on the island. It was a pretty small island. He was out fishing and he came across a beautiful woman sitting on the shore and she had a seal skin next to her, because they say that selkies will come onto shore once in a while and take their seal skin off and just bask in the sun. But if you can grab their skin, that you then have control over them, and so as long as he could keep her skin from her, she would be beholden to him. She would be beholden to him. So he did that, brought her back to his family and she actually was very lovely and became part of the family and they went on to have several children.
Speaker 2:But she always had a yearning for the water, always wanted to go back. Yeah, yeah, even though she really liked her life as a human, she just always missed her roots At some point. Someone was doing some work on the I guess that's roof of the house they lived in and she saw like an area where a board had come loose and her, her seal outfit was in there, like she could see it peeking out. So, when no one was looking, she climbed up, grabbed it, put it on and went back into the sea and was never seen again. But, um, there was something about I guess the children had dark hair, unlike many of the other folks on the island who are lighter.
Speaker 2:And, um, yeah, so that was the, the story, the tale, and there's actually a movie called the um secret of rowan inish and it's it's about a family, the canelies. Yeah, I thought that's interesting. It was supposed to be based on a scottish tale, um, but in the the adaptation takes place in Ireland. They use the same name as this family that claims to be descended from the Selkie. So, yeah, so that was the story he told, and he told the story based on oral tradition. It's been passed down for generations. It was supposed to have happened, um, oh, I think the 16 or 1700s, maybe 1700s, a long time ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah um, I was gonna ask you when we first like what was the theme of the trip or like the overarching purpose, but you said it was called living traditions.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You said like the herbalists were there, right, herbalism, yeah Telling. And then you talked about like the natural, I guess, like the, is it craft craft work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we made some St Bridget crosses. They're just sort of the classic straw crosses that have a crisscross pattern in the middle and then four branches and pretty ancient symbol. St Bridget is like the patron saint of Ireland. She was around forever before Christianity was brought to the island and I don't know when they made her a saint and brought her into the Christian fold, but she was given a back seat to St Patrick, who actually came in and drove out the snakes, meaning the non-Christians. As our tour guide said, there never were and never will be snakes on the island. It's just not a climate that has them. So, yeah, anyway, they apparently recently replaced St Patrick's Day with St Bridges Day, going back to the ancient tradition. That's amazing. Yeah, so we learned about weaving. We we saw some traditional weavers of um. These. They look kind of like wide belts of woven fabric that come in different colors and are used in weddings.
Speaker 2:So bride and groom wear them, um, drape them around their necks, and I don't remember the details of that, but the every family has like a different pattern, different color okay and yeah, we learned about this sort of class yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah, it's really cool, almost like tartans, right, like except it's just a little almost like a priest wears when I don't know how, I don't know what theirs are called, but those kind of just strips of cloth around your neck very thin scarf coming down just draping down, not tight or anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that was fascinating, that, um, every family kind of picks their own colors. And also, um, on the iron islands, those classic irish fishermen sweaters a white like off-white and a beautiful um patterned sweaters. We learned that those were created to identify different family members. Yeah, in case they drowned when they were out fishing. Yeah, that was their id oh, wow yeah, really I guess very necessary, but like a kind of a beautiful, beautiful way to yeah sad too it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of irish culture is kind of sad and beautiful and related to death.
Speaker 1:Accepting of it, um, I was going to ask you when you were describing the sort of your home base there, and then this just made me think of it again how did you feel when you were there? Like, what did you feel about the energy of the place? Because we talked about the scotland trip that I went on, we talked about some of the energies in these ancient lands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't really been, if they haven't gone through a way of cleansing and rectifying the things that happened. How does the energy feel now? How did it feel like?
Speaker 2:it. You know, interestingly now, that I've been to this part of ireland, the southwest area, county claire and county cork, kind of galway Now I've been a couple of times and in different places. It's just a very gentle, sweet, nurturing energy, and no one has said it outright but I'm guessing and there were horrible things that went on. There was the clearing and the starvation and all that. But somehow I think part of it is like just irish humor, like they just are, like they have that dark humor and they're kind of accepting of things. But I'm guessing there is also some kind of energy work, whether intentional or not, that's done, has been done there, um, because it just feels good, it feels like a big hug to me each time and the landscape's also gentler too.
Speaker 2:It's, um, the coasts are less rocky. I just say, um, I guess some of those outer islands are a little harsher, they're more exposed to the weather and there are a lot of abandoned homes out on the coast where young people just don't want to be. But yet it doesn't feel sad. And again, I should have talked to someone about that to find out. I will follow up with Tara who moved there, because she knows so much about the energy of the place, and it could be too. This is Southern Ireland, ireland too. It's not where, like the warring part where people just went through the troubles. I'm sure that feels very different, but I haven't spent time.
Speaker 1:That's true, and I was also even just thinking about like part of what made parts of scotland's history hard. Were, you know, like invasions, viking invasions, and think you know, was it as prevalent in this part of ireland like, were the troubles a different type of trouble? Um, were the troubles a different type of trouble?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had the internal sort of civil war going on in the 20th century. They did have Viking invasions. I found the last I learned the last time I was there that the name Finn, which seems very Irish, comes from like Finns, the Finnish people who came and invaded it isn't.
Speaker 1:Isn't red hair? Yes, go back to yeah, okay right, the red hair and and blondes, yeah and did you feel like the island and the mainland both had this calm energy in that area, in that part?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was absolutely beautiful and I had mentioned when we talked about Scotland that I found that Iona was a place that just felt like a big warm hug too. It was so different from the other islands and, yeah, inishore, which was the only island we visited, had that same vibe. It just felt cozy read my mind.
Speaker 1:That was my next question. I was going to ask you how it compared to iona yeah and yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2:it's interesting, um, the thing about iona even though it's not, I mean, I'm sure it's out there somewhere I felt I got the sense that, um, god, the goddess worship was there. I mean, that was part of the ancient tradition and they built the Catholic churches on top of the ancient sites that were goddess-focused. And Ireland, I mean, since St Bridget is their patron saint again, that kind of feminine feminine, that softer, more gentle energy was celebrated, so that could be part of it yeah, just just how, in modern culture, they're able to say, no, it's not saint patrick, we're speaking with our, our female, or obviously.
Speaker 1:So I was wondering. I was wondering what drew you to this trip and what were you, like, most excited and curious about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I had done a journey with the same group back in 2019 and they change up their themes. It's different each time. And they change up their themes. It's different each time. I had had such an exceptional experience, because it's funny like when you say, oh, I went on a tour, went with a tour group to Ireland, people are like, oh, did you visit the Guinness factory?
Speaker 1:You kissed the Barney Stone.
Speaker 2:Exactly and did you drive the Ring of Kerry? And well, you know, that's definitely something people love to do. My favorite way of traveling is to just really to get to know the place and the unique personality of it and get to talk to locals and find out what life is like for them, and that's exactly what these tours do. So when I had a chance to do it again, I just yeah, and it was different with different people. Um, I, yeah, I just felt like it feels like and it's felt like I'm going to describe this certain places that I've visited have felt like home to me, like, um, the first time I visited, visited Paris, I felt like I was home, and this part of Ireland also just feels like home to me.
Speaker 1:Like from the minute you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my great-grandfather, who I never met his family, was from County Cork. All his siblings were born there and he was the only one born in the US. But I never met him. Um, but you know, I'm sure my grandmother had some of that influence. Um, yeah, and so on some level I have roots there oh, yeah, absolutely could be part of it. But, uh, I think it's just that that energy, that beautiful energy, just feels very welcoming to me. So I couldn't wait to go back, and I will definitely go back again.
Speaker 1:I think it's so interesting that your mother had had connections to Iona Like you even have a painting from that and then your father had connections to this island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was the other thing. That was the other thing that made me think I really have to go on this tour, because they're going to the Aran Islands and I need to see if I can find anyone yeah and I am going to find his photographs. I have them somewhere, these beautiful black and white photographs that he took um the. The poet wants me to send some, so I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:I was wondering could you somehow connect with someone there and maybe by sharing those back and forth, something happened, a connection I feel like it's there, it's got to be there oh, totally, totally.
Speaker 2:You know, it's really interesting. While we were there, like going into the store that this poet owned, this young Japanese couple was coming out at the same time, like the only Japanese people on the whole island, but it's like whoa.
Speaker 1:And the my tour guide, um Chris, said oh, I wonder if those are your cousins, and I was like it could be that's funny yeah, it was really interesting, totally random a little bit of interesting synchronicity there, yeah yeah, yeah, a little like wink from the universe a little wink, a, a little wink, yep.
Speaker 2:So one of the people we visited was a repeat. Her name is Una and she is a sort of seaweed advocate, for lack of a better word. She takes people on tours down to the water near where there's a little community center where she hosts events. We and we go down to the water and she shows us the many varieties of seaweed growing in the area. Many of them I've seen in the beach near me, but I would never just grab some and eat it right off of the long island shore not cleaner than it used to be, but not like this part of Ireland was just like so pure.
Speaker 2:And she showed us each varietal and had us hold it and just noticed the different textures. And then she talked about the different medicinal, including like pharmaceutical purposes for the different seaweeds. It's amazing just the healing properties of them and, um, how they can be eaten like different uh, culinary uses as well as, um, beauty stuff. And I noticed, like since we were last there, that I've been seeing a lot more seaweed products and so people like herb and advocating for that and for the responsible harvesting because, um, definitely seaweed seaweed in some areas the world has been over harvested or raised like maybe not not farm raised, because you can't raise on the farm, but raised in areas where it's not super pure. She was saying that the seaweed in japan still has trace levels of radiation from the Fukushima meltdown.
Speaker 2:Not surprising yeah um, and I'm sure too in the Oregon and Washington state coast too, because that radiation drifted across, um, but yeah, so this stuff in Ireland and apparently on the coast of Maine is very pure too. So that was fun because she's so enthusiastic about it and also just into sort of the environmental effects or environmental changes that are affecting seaweed and all the plant life and animal life in the waters. So she talks about that too, and then, after the her talks and the sort of hands-on experience, she brings everyone back to this community center where she has a feast prepared of different foods from her organic garden and seaweed. Oh wow, dried seaweed is a topping, or seaweed salads or, um, yeah, things with seaweed integrated and it's just so good. Uh, like it's amazing it is. And after that we we visited her last time and in between last time and this time I was on a plane flying somewhere like seattle and there was an article about her and like inflate magazine oh, wow I realized, oh, people know her.
Speaker 2:And another time I was talking to a friend who's a food writer and, um, she's like a yeah, I guess, a restaurant critic, but also she does some writing for air canada. And I was telling her, oh, this woman I met in ireland I think you'd really love what she does. And when I said her, she said is that Una, oh, wow. And in talking to other people on the trip they've written up yeah, and you wouldn't know it because she's just the most humble, down-to-earth, sincere, like, really cares about the plant life and what's happening with the oceans. Yeah, so it's good to see that she's getting some press because what she's doing is great.
Speaker 2:And in the hotel where we're staying, even though the accommodations weren't super fancy, it was an eco retreat, it was still, it was lovely, but they had like the best skincare products I've ever seen in a hotel. And it turned out to be this I think it's an Irish-based seaweed-based line called Voya V-O-Y-A and it smells heavenly and everything has this really emollient kind of feel to it and it's because of the seaweed base. It's very pricey, but it's so yummy and I've never encountered anything like it, so it was fun. So seaweed was a theme Okay, seaweed and sulkies.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Curious Mind Grapes. Check out our show notes for more information about the topics we discussed today.
