The power of a good ceilidh in an ever-busy world

Let The Busy World Be Hushed

Fr Jason Murphy

There used to be mass of Sunday evening at half past seven in Belturbet and, after it, a number women would walk down the town to my granny to spend a couple of hours a ceilidh with her, after which my father would leave them all home. There was Hetty Morrissey, Bridgie and Rosie Reilly from the Barrack Hill, Mary Ellen Monaghan, Bridgie Brady and Kathleen Campbell, her neighbours and there on the table was a pan baked scone, sitting on a rack under a teacloth around which the cups and saucers would be laid out.

They’d talk the whole night long and thresh everything out, their conversations week after week evaporating into thin air, ephemeral, without consequence... it was the talking that mattered. They looked forward to this gathering, Sunday after Sunday, as did May Donnelly who called of a Monday night and the nuns who called of a Tuesday, hardly a day passing without someone calling. Ceilidhing was part and parcel of their lives, it dispelled the loneliness that can be part of growing older and got them through the long winter months.

There are some who call this ‘wintering’ whereby people quieten down, lay down their tools and rest over the dark months of the year, take time to spend with friend and neighbour and strengthen their social bonds. It came naturally to all in the generations past, people who had an innate sense of ‘wintering’, having learned from those who had gone before, how it was to live. We, who are so sophisticated and advanced, have lost the essence of how to live. We are forced to live each day of the year the same as the one gone before, summer as with winter, no time for rest, no time to stop, no time to retreat inwards when the dark months of the year befall, no time to talk, no time to listen.

We wonder why then there is so much anxiety, so much talk on mental health among our younger and older folk, but we of this generation must ask the question when do our young (and indeed ourselves) get time to be, still, in the secure company of those they can look to for example of how to be? Running and racing to this and that, little time to talk and so little time to listen.

In the winter months of a generation past, we retreated indoors as a family, only essential tasks were done outside, the haybarn was full, so too the turf shed, all in preparation to rest from our labours.

People sat around and had an opportunity to talk. Single men might go to town on the 35 or 135 come the end of the day for two pints, not for the love of drink, but to meet a few at the end of the counter and talk.

For in talking there is healing, over time, an unburdening of the troubles of the day, and the worry we accumulate, in the talking evaporates into thin air, it is ephemeral, for it is the talking that really matters. Of course it is when darkness looms at this time of year that the need for talking is at its greatest and the ritual of ceilidhing was in place to ensure that people could do this. It came natural to us, no one was left out, some had a different house each night of the week to visit, others were well known for welcoming all at the table.

We hardly will ever return to that time. People are too busy - making dinners, doing homework, preparing lunches and getting children ready for bed - but we definitely need to find time in the midst of our days to quieten down, lay aside the technological devices and talk qualitatively with each other. Where once children sat in the shadows and listened to adults converse over the minutiae of life and, over time, be drawn into conversing as they made the tea. We need to facilitate the opportunities to talk, it needs to be ritualised, not something that is forced, that is alien, that happens but once in a blue moon but something that becomes part of each and every day so that we actually learn to freely converse, over time, sitting down for the dinner, lingering afterwards at the table where conversations flow easily.

As others talk so we must listen; to listen we must empty ourselves of all that occupies our minds, we must leave aside our egos, that which we feel we must say. For in listening to another we bring healing, healing of the heart and the mind, we offer a sense of belonging, of being valued. So as it was for my Granny Mackeson and her old friends of years ago. The words spoken evaporate into the thin air, they are ephemeral, it is the flow between talking and listening that truly makes the difference.