Oh, Yeah! It’s Willie Week!

Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Oh, Yeah! It’s Willie Week!

August 9, 2007

By Cormac MacConnell

. . . SO again boys and girls it’s the Willie Week/And a rare sun warms the West Clare cheek. And Miltownmalbay by the sea/Is full of music, craic and glee.

With all the worlds of musics there/For one long week in Co. Clare.

Living legends singing, playing/ Music up from the chimneys straying.

. . . AND Martin Hayes with his black curls and fiddle/Sean Garvey is right in the session’s middle.

Fingers dancing with Alec Finn/In the garden behind the inn.

That’s called The Blonde’s for some strange reason/The tabernacle of this mad season.

When the traffic is stopped by jigs and reels/Mad Kerry dancers’ flying heels.

. . . BUY a bodhran, buy a flute/ Buy an antique pisspot.

Buy an English lute/ Pavement stalls near the dancing feet.

Scottish singers with Gaelic sweet/Dutchmen dancing in wooden shoes/ Swedes with banjos singing blues.

. . . THE world and the crows cramming the town/Music rising up and falling down/Music unending both night and day/In the pubs, in the streets.

. . . BY Atlantic breezes blown away/But more to follow from fiddle and box/In the week when the townsmen lose all clocks/And day is night/And night is day/And always the music’s playing away.

. . . “THERE’S Katie Smith with a banjo to sell”/“Hayes is playing in the hotel”/“Joe Burke is down there in mighty order”/“Who is that on the white recorder?”

. . . THERE’S piping

out at the Crosses

of Annagh”/“There’s

Cathal MacConnell from Fermanaagh”/“Claire Keville from Sligo is down in Friels”/“That Belgian fellow has mighty reels”/“There’s Mullins from Shannon with his good wife Nancy/“Sure you meet the world at the Willie Clancy.”

. . . HORNPIPES, workshops, jigs, slow airs/Trios playing under the stairs.

. . . MUIRIS O’Rocain surveying it all/The fiddle concert in the Milltown Hall/Radio vans recording the sounds/Hotdog salesmen making their rounds.

. . . HEINEKEN, Budweiser, Guinness and gin/CD launches without and within.

. . . MUSIC being passed from the old to the young/The Celtic spirit to the whole world flung/Tourists snapping the sessions and dancing/Out at sea small seahorses prancing/Over it all a sky duck-egg blue.

. . . IT’S all like a dream that is coming true.

. . .YOU get drunk on music/You get high with joy/Without drinking at all you feel like a boy.

. . . MUSIC has charms to calm the breast/The Willie Week is the best in the west.

. . . THE cares of today to tomorrow are shifted/Maybe by then away they’ll have drifted.

. . .ANDREW Murray sings “Brave Lord Franklin”/ ”Sweet Avondale” from Johnny Rankin/ Rick Epping magics.

. . .A SIMPLE mouth organ/The crowd playing the polkas came up from Killorglin/Cork and Kerry and Derry are here/Belfast and Dublin and Trim and Dunleer.

FROM all of the continents man and wife/Music, singing, dancing/ No disorder, no strife.

. . . JUST the joys of living and playing away/Morning and evening and night and day.

AND some come for one night and get led astray/Maybe in August they’ll at last get away.

. . . I’D write much more but I haven’t the time/There’s another session at half past nine.

. . . AND then another till the night is gone/And some other lads start at the crack of the dawn.

. . . AND this Willie Week will last three weeks more/Before all the musicmen walk out the door.

. . . “GOODBYE” they say/“Book our beds for next year.”

. . . THEY’LL be back for the madness, the craic and the cheer.

. . . AND now I will leave ye without regret/It’s officially over . . .

. . . BUT it’s not over yet!

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