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Must Readrockin the suburbs
'I haven't lost since 2011': What drives the most successful sheaf-thrower in Cahersiveen?
Rockin’ the Suburbs heads down south to a local music and arts festival.
In this brand-new series, journalist and spoken word artist Cormac Fitzgerald travels to a different town or suburb each week to cover the gigs and cultural experiences you rarely see covered by Irish media outlets.
This week’s subject: Sheaf throwing, music and arts at a local festival in Cahersiveen, Co Kerry.
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ADRIAN BRENNAN STOOD next to some scaffolding on the Fair Field in Cahersiveen, South Kerry, on a drizzly, overcast Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon, holding a pike in his hands.
Despite the weather, a few hundred people had gathered around him on the large green expanse to watch the action.
Dressed in a black and green jersey, blue jeans and work boots, the farmer from nearby Portmagee took a quick look at the scaffolding and the horizontal bar above his head.
Assessment done, he jammed the pike into a bundled sheaf of dried straw, swung his arms to build up some momentum, and tossed it cleanly over the bar above his head, to applause and cheers from the gathered crowd.
“That’s it. Not a bother, boy,” MC Tommy Gilligan said, as Brennan repositioned the sheaf for the next competitor. “Well done, Adrian, well done.”
We had all been standing in the rain for over an hour at this stage, and the crowd kept getting bigger.
On paper, the sheaf throwing event is very simple. Anyone can enter. The bar starts reasonably low, and each man (there is separate women’s competition) gets three chances to clear it. Once everyone has had a go, the bar is raised, and the last man standing wins.
There were 28 competitors to begin with, but one by one they fell away (unfortunately, some back issues meant that I couldn’t compete to humiliate myself in the name of journalism).
By the fifth round, 14 men remained. The ones who made it this far were a mixture of young men who looked like they go to the gym regularly, and older farmers who may have never been to the gym but who are built like they have been working the land since the day they left the womb.
Adrian Brennan definitely falls into the latter category. And he was the only competitor to clear the bar in Round Five, making him the champion for the 14th year in a row.
“I won it in 2008 and I lost it again in 2010. I won it again in 2011 and I haven’t lost since,” Brennan told me after the competition, as people came up to shake his hand and congratulate him. He was now donned in a green and navy Skellig Rangers GAA jumper – his home colours.
“The cup is dedicated to a very good friend of mine and he died from cancer.
“It’s the Frank O’Connell Memorial Cup, is what it is, and his brother is married to my aunt, and it means so much to him when I win the cup. I kind of have to keep it going and I’ve no choice in the matter really.”
Music, art, and everything in between
Summer in Ireland is festival season. As well as the big marquee music festivals like All Together Now and Electric Picnic, there are many smaller local events taking place on virtually every weekend between the start of May and the end of August.
Cahersiveen, a small town near the edge of the Iveragh Penninsula in south Kerry, is no exception. The Cahersiveen Music and Arts Festival (CMAF) takes place every August bank holiday weekend and is now in its 29th year.
As well as all the music taking place on a main stage and in venues around the town, there were also a large number of local and traditional events like the sheaf throwing, tractor pulling, a poc fada competition, and terrier racing, as well as children’s and adults’ busking competitions, traditional workshops, and many, many other events across a packed weekend programme.
But unlike, say, the famous (and occasionally infamous) Puck Fair in nearby Killorglin, which kicks off next Monday, Cahersiveen are happy to keep their festival mostly geared towards locals.
“It’s not just music and arts, it’s very family orientated and it is kind of seen more as a homecoming type of festival,” said Michael O’Connell, the festival chairman.
Together with Joan O’Donoghue, O’Connell makes up half of the two-person voluntary festival committee, who were tasked with the tough job of pulling the festival off this year.
We are happy with the size of the festival and we have no interest in making it any bigger. It’s for locals and for people who come back every year for their holidays. That’s the level of what we want we have no interest in getting and bigger.
Walking around the town for the weekend, O’Connell and O’Donoghue popped up everywhere. They might have been manning the gates to the main stage, sitting in the festival office, or working to solve any one of the countless micro-crises that frequently pop up during events such as these.
It must have been exhausting.
“Ah but I love this,” Michael told me, casting his eyes around the Fair Field.
“This is a very happy place for me. People are happy, look around you. How could you not want to do this?”
It takes a village
He was right to say people were happy. In the two days I spent in Cahersiveen, there was a serious buzz about the place.
Like many rural towns, Cahersiveen has faced its fair share of problems over the years. A lack of permanent employment opportunities and available accommodation has led to depopulation, as young people move away to live their lives elsewhere.
But during the festival all the pubs and restaurants were packed to the rafters and there was music and craic everywhere. From traditional tunes, to drum and bass DJs and singing sessions, to visual arts exhibitions, lots of children’s activities and more, it seemed there was something for everyone.
Forget All Together Now, for locals from the town, this was the only place to be for the August Bank Holiday. A €30 wristband (€5 for children) got you into all of the events across the weekend.
On Saturday night, Glory Days (a Bruce Springsteen tribute act) packed out the main stage and it was great to see a group of people who looked like they were in their mid-20s dancing at the barriers and singing along to all the words. The kids are alright.
On Sunday evening, the crowd was even bigger for Killarney band The Rising, who sent people wild with a mixture of folk covers of popular songs and some good old-fashioned jigs and reels.
Everywhere around the town, volunteers in yellow hi-vis jackets ran events, manned the ticket office, and directed the crowds. These are the people Michael O’Connell credited with keeping the festival going.
“We have a really great team of volunteers,” he told me.
One of team, Deirdre Cournane, helped to run the sheaf throwing on Sunday afternoon. What motivates her to volunteer?
“I just love it. I’m obviously wrecked now but I just love it and I love engaging with people,” she told me after the festival.
Cournane grew up in Cahersiveen and remembers how important the festival was to her and her friends growing up.
“We’ve just got great fond memories of the festival since we were kids,” she said of herself and other volunteers.
“These days, everything has changed with the public, people don’t really go to things any more. The way people socialise has also changed dramatically over the years
But we all have extremely fond memories of our festival throughout the years… it’s like a core memory of our childhood and we all just want to give back.
Cournane also encouraged others to volunteer.
“I’d say in general there needs to be more engagement across the board for local communities,” she said.
Just get out and give it a go. Start small and go from there. You can get so much out of it.
Another local volunteer, Aine Sheehan, said the festival was vital for the town.
“All of these events, like the tractor pulling and the sheaf throwing… it’s keeping the tradition alive,” she said.
“Because it’s not anywhere else, and it makes our festival stand out.”
Back at the sheaf throwing
Back on the Fair Field on Sunday afternoon, Seán Egan and Jason O’Connell battled it out in a tiebreaker and took home second and third place, respectively.
A total of 12 competitors took part in the women’s competition, making it a shorter affair.
First-time competitor Gaby Cashman took home the trophy after a closely fought battle with Aoife Cashman from Tipperary, another first-time competitor (and a distant relative). With Amanda Delock coming third.
“I’ve never even heard of it before. It was really fun,” Gaby told me.
“I’m surprised there wasn’t more women in it. We’ve to round up the troops now next year and get a few more.”
“I’d come back next year and try to dethrone her,” said Aoife.
In the men’s competition, there wasn’t much hope for any of the first time competitors with Adrian Brennan easily defending his title.
“The competition was as good as I’ve seen it,” a man said to Brennan as he congratulated him.
“But ’tis not good enough.”
Brennan said that he doesn’t practice at all throughout the year, and that he will keep defending the trophy until the day that someone else defeats him.
Will he be sore when that day comes?
“You can’t do much about it,” he said.
“Frank O’Connell was from Portmagee, and that’s why we’re kind of wanting to keep it down there.
Look, some day it will happen. Some fella is going to take it. But we’ll go as far as we can.
With the effort of local volunteers and the committee, there should be many years of competition left.
Cormac will be back next week with another exploration of how Ireland spends its spare time (in ways that might surprise you).
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