PETER URPETH finds good music and plenty of Craic from Seamus Begley and Friends.

Seamus Begley

THE SECOND HALF of the opening night at the Hebridean Celtic Festival was given over to Kerry accordionist Seamus Begley with Cork guitarist Jim Murray and to this potent mix was added the slightly surreal occasional performance of dancer Patrick Hopkins.

Although as a set this was gloriously off-the-cuff stuff, ragged and ramshackle with the craic competing with the music for prominence in event, this was none the less a masterly show from Begley and co.

On the serious side, there can be very few musics so regularly and widely performed on the trad circuit that is so location-specific as that of Seamus Begley. Specialising in the polkas and slides of the south west of Eire, and most notably (but, of course, not exclusively) where Cork and Kerry rub shoulders in the Sliabh Luachra, Begley’s music has its own brogue.

On the night, the devilish rapidity of the fast jigs that hail from that corner and which go by the name of ‘slides’ was given a whip crack accented rhythm by guitarist Jim Murray, and if the old blood of Spain can be heard in the old music of Ireland, then Murray’s rich, almost Flamenco fullness of style makes the point.

At intervals, the musicians were joined on stage by the swift footed (even Lightning) Hopkins, whose dancing was nothing short of superb and who brought a real air of the real thing to the stage with him.

Hopkins, Begley informed us, is a Connemara sheep farmer who also breeds native ponies that sell for upwards of €3,000. All the better, he added, as the man can shoe himself at the same time as he shoes his ponies.

Close to the end of his set, Begley asked the audience if he’d been talking too much throughout the concert. The answer was no, a public lie in many ways, but nonetheless Begley quipped that if he had it was only to make up in advance for Van Morrison’s performance the following night, and Begley certainly brought great tunes for all and a bag of new jokes that will doubtless do the rounds until the Big Blue raises its head again on the slopes of the Castle Green.

In the incongrous and mawkish surroundings of the Town Hall, the constant wit of Begley and Murray (and Hopkins) was a welcome if borderline riotous libation, and seldom could the word shit have been so well amplified on its stage. Let’s hope they make it to the big top soon.

© Peter Urpeth, 2005