Callan’s historic Abbey Meadow dominated the town’s Heritage Week activities this year.
A week was extended somewhat due to the richness of our local tradition and antiquities.
At a function in the fashionable Keogh’s Pub in Mill Street, Historian Philip Lynch honoured the great Callan poet, journalist and patriot John Locke.
Born in 1847 in Minauns, Locke was penning poetry from the age of 16. He joined the Fenians and his rebel spirit earned him a six-month stretch in Kilkenny Jail, after which he said goodbye to his native town and country, never to return.
He took up journalism in New York and much of his poetry recalled his youth in Callan.
Some 3000 miles from the town on the King’s River, he penned a lovely ode to the old abbey well. The well’s ‘holy bubbles’ had enchanted locals for centuries. The well had survived the ravages of King Henry the Eight and Oliver Cromwell, and Locke cried at the thought of not being able to taste its sparking waters again.
Locke is remembered too thanks to the John Locke GAA Club.
Philip Lynch recited a selection of Locke’s poems, including The Calm Avonree, which pays homage to the graceful river that flows through Callan (not as graceful now as it was in Locke’s day) and Dawn on the Irish Coast, an exile’s verse known and loved throughout the global Irish Diaspora.
The latter encapsulates the essence of what it means to be a Gael. The customers at Keogh’s forgot their drinks for a while, so enraptured were they by Philip’s dulcet tones as he re-lived the life of the great local hero through verse and song.
Not far from Locke’s beloved abbey well, which is still flowing and bubbling, another heritage event unfolded later in August.
To mark the end of summer a marathon scything session was organized in the Abbey Meadow with the support of the acclaimed Acorn Project.
The Song of the Scythe celebrated a farming practice as old as humanity itself and the use of an implement associated in popular myth with the Grim Reaper.
But the mood was far from grim in Callan. A host of volunteers couldn’t wait to try out the scythes.
Though the grass was mown recently, Kilkenny County Council arranged for a part of the meadow to be left uncut to facilitate the great cultural event.
In the shadow of the old Augustinian Church, a seasoned grass-cutter demonstrated how to use an implement whose use in agriculture dates back over 5,000 years.
Though largely overtaken by modern farm machinery, the scythe has made a happy revival in recent years due to a perception that it brings a calmness of mind and enables you to work in harmony with nature…a trendy theme nowadays with all the emphasis on saving biodiversity.
After giving a jolly but deeply informative spiff on the subject and offering careful directions, the instructor split the volunteers into pars and soon had them happily performing those sweeping arcs that came so naturally to our forebears, slicing away the grass that the council kindly left for them.
The evening sun lit up a lovely pastoral scene that called to mind a Constable or Turner painting as the scything couples made their mark.
The latter chatted and sang as they re-enacted a routine that connected them with past times and places…to an age before giant tractors and other mechanical ogres that dominate today’s farm world.
The sweaty work done, the cultural theme was taken up elsewhere in Callan.
Mopping their brows and proud of their trusty work, volunteers adjourned to a music session in Upper Bridge Street.
Rasa Nua, a band quartet from Cork entertained a capacity crowd, offering a tantalizing fusion of Jazz and Indian sounds in Fennelly’s magical courtyard.
