Dublin Irish Festival

 

Remember the Dublin (Ohio) Irish Festival our guide Batt Burns talked about? The one where he had performed three times? The one he said was the largest Irish Festival in the States? Well he was right.

Yesterday daughter Kelly and son-in-law Ken took us to the festival and it was incredible. I wish the Smithing Ireland gang had been there with us. I don’t know how to describe it—the scope, quality, and atmosphere of it all.

We went early Sunday morning to attend the all-Gaelic Mass. There was an English translation to the right of the Gaelic text in the bulletin, but except for the homily the priest and readers spoke in “Irish” throughout. Many tried to say the responses in Gaelic, but I gave that up early on and remained mute. No one spoke the responses on English. We estimated the crowd in the gigantic tent to be about 1000. Here’s a section of the bulletin. Study it a minute and make a guess which part of the Mass this is. (The answer will appear later in this blog.)

To get a sense of what the festival was like, you might go to http://dublinirishfestival.org/ and click around.

That crowd at Mass swelled to at least 2000 soon after for some of the incredible performances we attended—professional bands, most of them from Ireland. And this was only one of the SEVEN main stages at the festival. And only one afternoon of the three-day festival. And the acts on each stage changed every two hours.

In addition to the main stages, there were probably a dozen more smaller venues where anywhere from a dozen to a couple hundred gathered for demonstrations of Irish crafts, music making, Irish dancing, folklore, etc. And of course there were acres of booths selling food, drink, and Irish goods—some of it very good quality and authentic.

The High Kings was probably our favorite act.  They had the crowd on their feet hand clapping above their heads to the beat of the bodhran (Irishh drum) 

http://www.thehighkings.com/

There was even a tent for Irish Whiskey tasting—but all 6 (yes, six) shots were different varieties of Bushmill, no Jamison, Scotch, or Jack Daniels offered. I was surprised to learn that Bushmill is Protestant Whiskey distilled in the north while Jamison is considered Catholic Whiskey.  For $20. you could indulge in the tasting. We opted to buy one small glass of Bushmill to be shared among the four of us. It was not half as smooth as the Jamison we sampled at the Midletown Distillery.

 

We’d have had a grand time together at the Dublin Irish Festival--the 33 of us. Rosemary and I will be back next year. If you’d like to join us, mark your calendar for the first weekend in August. Come stay with us and we’ll have a blast.

Now the answer to the test question above. Did you cheat by noticing the “Amen” at the end, and thus guess it was the Lord’s Prayer? If so, you are right even though you don’t deserve an A. If, on the other hand, you tell me that you analyzed the text, comparing it to what you know of Gaelic, and straight away recognized the Our Father, you are either a great scholar or a liar.