Welcome to the Rambling House

Seanachi Lifts the Latch
By Annette Bishop
 

The oral tradition of relating heroic tales and legends is just one manifestation of Irish folklore: it's a case of the past returning to raise a charming blush on the cheek of the present. Writers such as W.B. Yeats and J. M. Synge have graced folklore with their unique scripted accounts, but in Ireland there still remain custodians of this other form of ancient tradition.

Long before scholars came to write and record these tales, they were preserved in the minds, woven into the tongues of the Seanachaidhe (from the Irish meaning "lore"). Some could relate more than 300 tales learned by rote from their elders and could recite them without changing a word or an emphasis. Some of the tales took more than two hours in the telling.
One of these remaining custodians of spoken folklore is 86-year-old Eamon Kelly. "Growing up in Co. Kerry, my ears were forever cocked for the sound that came on the breeze. It wasn't the Blarney Stone but my father's house which filled me with wonder."

Indeed, it's the past which now comes alive in the embers of Eamon Kelly's Dublin fireplace.

"In those days, peat was cut from the bog and thrown onto the fire which lit the scene in our house, 'The Rambling House,' night after night. My father was a friendly person, a good talker. Neighbors and travelers were attracted like moths around a naked flame into his and my mother's kitchen," he recalled.

"Thinking back, I realize that our country kitchen had all the rude elements of the theater: the storyteller was there with his comic or tragic tale, we had music, dance, song and costume.

"My friend, our pig, who had had a ferocious amount of white in his eye at one time, hung disjointed and smoked over the fire. He and the cabbages and the potatoes were our lifesavers then. That, thank God, no more. No more pig for me," Kelly said and then laughed.

Kelly began his working life as a carpenter, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He heard many stories along the way and recounted them with exactly the same precision. He became a craft teacher and then went on to become an actor employed by the Radio Eireann Repertory Players and later the Abbey Theatre Company, performing with the finest actors of his day under all the leading Irish producers. He performed in New York, London and Moscow. 

Before reaching the heady heights of Broadway and the noted Arts Theatre of Moscow where he presented his tales, Kelly became a radio actor broadcasting his shows from above the General Post Office -- and was sometimes sent scripts by listeners. He also used to travel around Ireland in the '50s, visiting village halls and drawing large crowds. When television came on the scene, Kelly remained just as popular.

In the late 1960s, the Abbey Theatre asked Kelly if he would consider recounting his stories on stage there. He agreed and, as a result, the theater was packed for months. Each June for the following seven years, he gave a new storytelling show entitled "In My Father's Time."

Eamon Kelly the Seanchai sat at the side of the stage. As he opened each tale, the characters leaped from his imagination and the story became alive. The armchair, the fire, the kettle, the teapot, the pot suspended from the crane and the butterbox were always on the stage when Kelly performed. The table doubled as a bar or a shop counter. Even with all the props, he moved around the set without fuss or ado.

Kelly visited the Brooklyn Academy several times, recounting stories to the Irish expatriate community. "In the middle of one particular story, I mentioned the name of a town in Ireland and described the picture of emigrants at the railway station. I heard 'Divine Jesus' and a man weeping. A quick change to comedy softened the catch in his heart," Kelly related. 
He held his first big storytelling event at the Peacock Theatre in Ireland in 1975 and realized he was not only alone on the stage but had been deserted by all stage hands. Kelly was obliged to give himself several curtain calls, running on and off stage to the amusement of the audience. 

When Kelly was 76-years-old, he was asked to do a one-man show at the Abbey Theatre, the first actor requested to do so. He'd done well in London and America but was terrified of performing at Ireland's sacred stomping ground of poets and playwrights. In his current job, Kelly lectures visiting North American literature and theater students in the fine art of storytelling. 
"My journeying is over," he concluded. "If the humor takes me, I may appear in some celestial Alhambra, where angels with folded wings will sit in the stalls, applaud politely and maybe come round after and say "that was great."