Turlough Ó Carolan's Farewell to Turlough Ó Maoláin

Turlough Ó Carolan's Farewell to Turlough Ó Maoláin

12 September 2025, Friday

Priyatelkata and I always try to get the best out of every day or our lives but we believe it’s even more important to do so on our last day in any place we’ve been visiting because it’s on that day that the clearest memories for taking home tend to be forged. But with the sideways rain battering at the windows it wasn’t such an easy task at the end of this particular trip. We’d already seen enough wild weather for it to be permanently engraved on our minds, so today’s storminess was surplus to requirements.  I wasn’t sure I’d miss it when I eventually departed from Erin’s isle but for two weeks it had been a major feature, as had the leaking teapot which had certainly made its mark on our holiday and tablecloth.

To prevent the day becoming a damp squib we decided to revisit all the places we’d been that had lovely big windows that the sideways rain could batter to its heart’s content without us getting battered ourselves, or even moist. The big glass bit at the top of Fanad Head Lighthouse would have been the obvious first choice had it not been for the fact that it cost €12 a time to go up there and that you had to hang on to a rope to stop yourself from plummeting to your death when descending. That bit was called the lantern room but it hadn’t been graced by the presence of a lantern in over half a century. Thinking back, it may have been lantern-free for a bit more or slightly less than half a century. I wish I’d paid more attention almost a fortnight earlier when Bláthnaid was giving us her guided tour instead of just wishing I was fluent enough in the Irish language to ask her what her favourite lighthouse was.

Near the foot of Fanad Head Lighthouse sat the Fanad Head Lighthouse café where we could get a delicious drop of homemade soup with freshly baked soda bread for far less than the price of a hike up to Bláthnaid’s lantern room and there were huge windows that were battered not just by sideways rain but by spray from Atlantic breakers. At this late stage of our adventure we had agreed that the North Atlantic was the best ocean in the world and that Ireland deserved a medal from the rest of Europe for bearing the brunt of its tantrums. There was still no sign of the dolphins but who could blame them for staying at home on such a tempestuous day?

The rain stopped its battering business round about the same time that we stopped our eating, so we went for a wander on a beach we’d never been to before at Ballynabrocky (Irish: Baile na Brocaí, meaning ‘a lovely wee place but not as nice as the other beach just down the road’) and then on to the other beach just down the road but the opposite end to the stretch of it we had previously explored. There are probably more beaches than people in the West of Ireland so it wasn’t surprising that every one of them that we set foot on was deserted. Ballynabrocky Strand was gorgeous and wild, with its rippled wet sand and shallow pools freshly formed by the ebbing tide in which hungry curlews hunted for lugworms. Angry-looking waves storming in from somewhere in the direction of America were captivating to watch but soon an angry-looking bit of rain came in with them and we were jumping back into the Fiat and driving off towards Ballyhoorisky Pier. The weather followed us there, even pausing behind us a few moments as we waited for sheep to cross the road, but it didn’t put us off admiring a few old lobster pots and a marooned fishing boat which I would have said was more of a blue colour than maroon.

Hearts were becoming as heavy as the rain had been as we stopped on the clifftop to admire the sprawling splendour of Ballymastocker Strand, said to be the second best beach in the world. As if nature had just arrived to give us a good send off, it was bathed in beautiful sunshine and the sea had calmed, taking on a dreamy green-blue hue. From our vantage point, and considering our end-of-the-trip emotional state, we declared it the absolute very best beach in the world.

As we were in Rathmullan and we were soon to be leaving Ireland, this was probably the best point at which to be thinking about the Flight of the Earls (Imeacht na nIarlaí). According to my Big Book of Irish History, in September 1607 Hugh O' Neill the Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O' Donnell the First Earl of Tyrconnell, accompanied by their families and friends, sailed away from Rathmullan to mainland Europe. They were the patriarchs of the two most powerful clans in Ulster and their permanent exile was considered to symbolise the end of Gaelic Irish society and the implementation of English law.

Who’d have thought that 418 years later and almost to the day, at the Water’s Edge restaurant in Rathmullan, we would sit at our usual table by a window battered by sideways rain with our flight from Ireland on our minds. We ate our final serving of beer-battered Atlantic cod and chips and enjoyed every scrap, even though the term ‘beer-battered’ has always made me think of Saturday nights on Seacroft estate in Leeds where I once lived.

13 September 2025, Saturday

As we snapped our last-minute photographs of the mushy mystic cottage we decided that the thing we’d miss most about the place was the millipedes that lived in the thatch but sometimes ventured out into places like the bathroom floor and other equally moist places such as all of the stone walls. It had been nice staying there but not as good as other cottages we’d rented in Ireland in the past. We probably would have warmed to it more if it had warmed us. We were sure that we’d have fallen in love with it had the weather been nice enough for us to leave the front door open and even sit outside in the wild Atlantic garden with cups of tea from a pot that didn’t leak, to listen to the chorus of the birds and sheep and to admire the vivid orange and pink colours of the montbretia and fuchsia that grew almost everywhere. Those soft Atlantic moments of pleasure on our doorstep had been brief but enough to add to the sadness of our leaving.

We resisted an urge to stop in Ballyshannon to see rocking Rory Gallagher’s memorial statue partly because it was raining and partly because Priyatelkata hadn’t a clue who he was. It’s rumoured that when Jimi Hendrix was asked if he considered himself to be the greatest guitarist in the world he replied, ‘I don't know, you should ask Rory Gallagher.’ In her defence, my lovely partner could sing you any song by Johnny Hallyday (the French equivalent of Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan, Cliff Richard, Tom Jones and Daniel O’Donnell combined) and proceeded to do so as we pressed on across the soft border, taking the road that followed the southern shore of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh.

Half starved, and having failed to find a parking space in the rain-lashed but very busy town of Enniskillen, we pulled up at a gorgeous little café in Bellanaleck (Irish: Bealach na Leice, meaning ‘Edwardian music hall comedy double act’). At our carefully selected table near a window that commanded stunning views of a petrol station, we arrived at the point of having a waitress standing by us to write down on her wee notepad the items we found most appetising on the menu before we remembered we’d not a penny of British money on us. We’d skirted round this problem in Derry days earlier by paying for everything with a plastic card, but in South Fermanagh they didn’t have the technology to deal with electronic financial transactions so we were stumped. In fact, they were still getting to grips with having Ceefax on their televisions. So, still starving, we returned to our motor car to continue our journey and re-crossed the soft border back into Éire, but still heading in a Dublin direction.

And here’s an Irish language place name fun fact for you. The name Dublin comes from the Irish words dubh (meaning dark or black) and linn (meaning pool). So it literally translates as Blackpool, but there is no linguistic equivalent of Great Yarmouth in Ireland or any other country in the world.

Belturbet (Irish: Béal Tairbirt, meaning 'mouth of the isthmus' even though there was no sign of a peninsula on account of us being nowhere near the sea) was the location of our next attempt at finding something to eat. It was a nice little town and being there meant I had set foot in County Cavan for the very first time in my life, which also meant that I had set foot in every Irish county, all thirty-two of them! I had at last completed a task I had first set about more than sixty years earlier in the hope of being awarded a Blue Peter badge. On top of that, Priyatelkata and I, over the course of our four trips to Ireland, had driven the entire length of the Wild Atlantic Way. I was unaware that there had never been a children’s television programme called Pierre Bleu in Priyatelkata’s native France until we turned onto the Cavan Town bypass and she asked if we could stop the car for a few minutes. This was because it was one of the few places with sufficient mobile phone coverage to enable her to call President Emmanuel Macron to demand that she be granted membership of the Legion of Honour (Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur) toot sweet in recognition of her dedicated service in the field of wandering about in the fields and other remote parts of Ireland.

Late in the afternoon we pulled up outside Rathgillen Cabin in the village of Nobber (Irish: an Obair, meaning ‘the work’) where our Irish adventure had kicked off a fortnight earlier. This time we saw the place in daylight and Peter the proprietor was there to show us around even though we pointed out to him that we had been there just two weeks before, but he said he couldn’t remember meeting us. So we reminded him that he hadn’t met us before because at the time of arrival on our previous visit he was already tucked up in his bed on account of it being the crack of late on a Saturday night. He told us he loved animals but wouldn’t let them in the house. He had a lovely sheepdog but it wasn’t allowed inside because of the mess it would make. The same applied to his three hundred cows. Then he dashed off in a hurry because he’d never met any Bulgarians before and what we’d told him about our country had made it sound like a grand place, which it was and still is, so he had to look it up on the map to see whereabouts in the world it lay.

On a solo trip to Keogan’s bar for penultimate and ultimate pints of Guinness, I discovered that the seventeenth century blind Irish harper, composer and singer, Turlough Ó Carolan, had been born in Nobber. There was a statue of him there, just by the fire station. He’s often been described as the Beethoven of Ireland even though he was born a century earlier and was missing a completely different faculty. I could go round in circles for ever with these tentative likenesses if, for example, I were to choose to describe Alexander Scriabin, with his lack of a sense of smell, as the Russian Turlough Ó Carolan. I’d loved Ó Carolan’s music for many a year and was delighted when it eventually appeared on Spotify because it had been almost impossible to get hold of in any other format, though to this day I’ve had a suspicion that it’s a Turlough Ó Carolan tribute act that’s performing it.  

My real name is Terence Mullan but for online anonymity and pretentious reasons I go by the name of the original Irish words Turlough Ó Maoláin. Turlough means a small lake that dries up in summer and Maoláin means bald, so both are quite apt. Discovering I had the same forename as Ó Carolan round about fifteen years ago had caused me to warm to the man even more.

I once heard Ó Carolan’s Concerto being played at a wedding but couldn’t see who was playing it. Later, during a pause in the musical proceedings, I saw a woman in a long black gown who I hadn’t seen before, so I went up to her and asked, ‘Are you a harpist?’ She replied, ‘No, I’ve only had a small sherry.’

And the pints of Guinness were gorgeous, both in Keogan’s bar and at that wedding years before. The final pint of a trip always has to be perfect because I never know when I’ll be back in Ireland for the next one, so there’s a moderate possibility that it’ll be my final final pint. The old song The Parting Glass, particularly Cara Dillon’s version, always rattles round inside my head on such occasions. Very sad but very beautiful it is. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s the second best sad song in the world. I couldn’t be more certain that Ó Carolan’s Concerto has always been the perfect antidote for any mournful tune, and Ó Carolan’s Farewell would be he obvious ‘B’ Side if ever a record company was to release it as a single.

Rathgillen Cabin wasn’t at all damp so already we felt like we were a million miles away from the Wild Atlantic Way and the real Ireland. It’s only fault was that it was a bit noisy on account of the three hundred cows who were all in a party mood for much of the night. If Peter the proprietor had been a real animal lover he’d have let them inside his house and we would have slept much more soundly.

14 September 2025, Sunday

At Greenways café in the village we had an Irish breakfast (our first since our first day) served up by a wonderfully friendly waitress who wanted to know our full life story and where were we going and had we had a perfect time in Donegal and did we want tea or coffee and had the weather not put us off ever coming back to Ireland and she had an aunt who once went on holiday to Bulgaria and loved it. This was the perfect perfect way to finish the trip. Outside in the street fell east coast drizzle, the great pretender of precipitation that could never be a match for Donegal’s sideways rain. But Priyatelkata and I agreed that Ireland was the second best country in the world and we knew for absolute certain that we’d be back. Operation Glencolmcille ’27 had well and truly advanced into its planning stage.

We made it to Dublin airport without the aid, or hindrance, of motorways. At the end of this fourth Irish expedition we finally had that bit sussed, overcoming what was always the worst part of the entire event. Then we heaved a sigh and said goodbye to dear old Fionnuala the Fiat as a Hertz employee with a clipboard tut-tutted in Polish at all the crumbs in poor Fionnuala’s foot wells and drove it away to hand over to the next wave of scone worshippers.

If Carlsberg did flight delays they’d take advice from Ryanair but at least the airline’s series of lame excuses meant we had time to stand for an hour in the queue to buy a cup of coffee. On the whole the flight was perfect and when the plane’s wheels touched the runway in Sofia we had our usual gush of that nice-to-be-home feeling. Bulgarian passengers clapped their hands. Priyatelkata and I cheered and shouted ‘encore’. The young Irish woman sitting beside me sniffed and sneezed, as she had done for the entire journey.

Image:

My own photograph of my own holiday souvenirs. John Power & Son Whiskey Distillers are the proud sponsors of almost everything I do and in return I’ve always done my best to support them.

Part Ten:

You’ll be pleased to know there is no Part Ten.