Then, in a corner across the room, three men, including the young one who served our drinks, scrape their wooden chairs into a circle and take up their instruments. A glowing note of fiddle leaps up like a flame, swells, and whirls us into the heart of our Irish vacation.
That night at John Benny's -- and five other evenings of warbling, thrumming, keening, slurring, throbbing, emotion-drenched music -- constituted our primary reason for this trip to Ireland, though a mob of other pleasures crowded into the one short week as well.
We wandered Dublin's broad sidewalks to scour its shops, study its characters, and taste the nation's bitter history. We walked and drove winding paths in the Wicklow Mountains, watched wind flutter the crystal lakes of Glendalough, and lighted a candle in the Church of Saints Mary and Patrick in Avoca. Then we drove across the island to the west coast, where seascapes of rearing cliffs edged with emerald pastureland unfolded, each more fantastic than the last.
The idea had been to chase Ireland's folk music to its best-known nesting places: Dublin, yes, but mostly locales in the west such as Donegal, Mayo, Doolin, Galway, and Sligo. Yet we found the island's nonmusical charms too irresistible, and our itinerary collapsed. We ran out of nights, and headed home without having reached any of those west coast sanctuaries.
Instead of a music survey, we managed a good Irish tour. Staying in Dublin, Dingle, and Ennis, we found music at a different venue every night, and at week's end, our heads also rang with the sounds collected in daytime explorations: dank echoes of the ghosts of Dublin's Kilmainham Gaol, two rushing rivers at the Meeting of the Waters, a rain-drenched wind moaning at Inch Strand in Dingle, and the lilting speech of the Irish we met in shops and tearooms and narrow lanes.
Interspersed, like a repeating chorus, was traditional Irish music, live.
