ROUNDSTONE, Ireland - In the shadow of Connemara's Twelve Bens mountains, behind 16th-century Franciscan monastery walls splashed with wild fuchsia, Malachy Kearns spends his days handcrafting one of the country's oldest instruments, the bodhran (pronounced BOW-rawn).
Kearns, who claims to be the world's only full-time bodhran maker, stretches the specially treated goatskin across the beech or birch frame, tapping, listening, adjusting, trying to educe the haunting sound of the traditional drum. Kearns says the instrument has its origins as a skin tray used for drawing turf (or peat) from the bogs, and was later used for winnowing, or separating chaff from wheat. The skins are treated in hydrated lime and other ingredients and soaked for seven to 10 days in a solution of lime sulphide to soften them and remove the hair. Sometimes they are buried in manure for a few days.
