| Two Takes on Batt
Batt’er Up, Burns Hits Storied Home Run Tales
By Mario Raspanti
 Sharing
stories and passing on poems, lessons and ancient traditions are the responsibilities
of a seanachie (sometimes spelled shanachie), or a storyteller
in the old Irish world. These folk tales, which have slowly been ignored
or forgotten, form the basis upon which many Irish customs and joys are
built. This year, seanachie Batt Burns, returned to share tales
and his knowledge of storytelling with students at the Milwaukee Irish
Fest Summer School, before performing at Irish Fest.
"A very neglected field. There are not many people left telling the
ancient Irish stories. Most people don't recognize the word 'seanachie,'
when I talk about storytelling," Burns said.
For him, an opportunity to tell a story is a chance to share and communicate
with others. Burns has been around storytelling his entire life, growing
up in the village of Sneem, Co. Kerry. As a youngster, he spent a lot of
time with his grandfather, Michael Clifford, who was also a seanachie.
So he listened and developed a deep appreciation for the tradition.
"Storytelling is a dying interest," said Burns. "When I was growing
up there was no electricity. Today there is radio, T.V., technology, so
there is no need for a seanachie. We've lost a lot. We've lost stories,
traditions, and most importantly the ability to listen. We don't listen
to a tale the way country people listen. We are gone from that world today.
So it is very hard for people to just listen to a voice. I think we underestimate
the power of listening and what it can do for children."
As a teacher and elementary school principal for 33 years in his hometown,
Burns told stories for his students and performed occasionally. He also
worked to change the curriculum of Irish primary schools.
"Back in the early ‘70s, big emphasis began to be placed on Environmental
Studies. I helped to pioneer 'A Locality Study' whereby a student would
first get a detailed understanding of his/her immediate environment before
going ahead and studying distant places. This involved getting to know
the height of a local mountain, the length of a local river, a little about
ancient buildings in the locality, the names of local flowers and shrubs
as well as finding about customs and traditions of the area," he explained.
"It meant going from the known to the unknown, which made a lot of educational
sense. The curriculum changed from being a subject centered to a child
centered one and this involved creating the learning situation whereby
a child would be a very active agent in his or her own education."
Burns said that many people ask him about the level of interest in storytelling
in Ireland and what was he doing about keeping the tradition alive. While
he is now busy performing full-time, Burns emphasized he still attempts
to emphasize that storytelling is a powerful medium and can be used as
a teaching tool .
He has kept a busy performing schedule, since he became a full-time
storyteller in 1994. That same year, he and his wife, Irish musician and
singer, Maura Burns, moved to the US where there was more of an interest
in genre.
"The opportunities aren't there to make a living in small Ireland. Here
you have storytelling festivals, school, and other events. I am very grateful
to this country for giving me the opportunity to do this," he said.
In addition to Milwaukee's Irish Fest, Burns has performed at the Dublin
(Ohio) Irish Festival, the Masterton Storytelling Festival in New Zealand
and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on St. Patrick's Day in
2002. He also served as the resident storyteller at Kent State University
in 1995.
"I spend an average of maybe five months a year performing. Over that
time I probably do about 100, maybe 150 shows a year. My wife and I share
the stage in about 60% of my presentations, but at Irish Fest the emphasis
is on oral tradition in my presentations," Burns said.
Although Burns and his wife moved back to Sneem in 2000, they continue
to present programs at numerous schools throughout the US on their repeated
visits.
At the Milwaukee Irish Fest Summer School this year, Burns conducted
workshops on storytelling for children and for adults. The 2005 visit was
his fifth to the Summer School, and first since 1994. He had also previously
instructed at the school from 1990 to 1992.
 "Storytelling
is the oldest tradition of our land. We have a tremendous amount of tales
that stretch very far into Ireland's past," Burns continued. "If you move
down to modern times, in the hills of Co. Kerry and Donegal in the north-west
of Ireland, the seanachie tradition was preserved in the rural areas
long after it had died out in the urban areas," Burns illustrated.
Each of his storytelling workshop involves sharing tales.
"Ideally, I have more students, but in one class, I have 10 kids, talking
with them, sharing with them, but I made a deliberate effort to get them
to tell a
story —anything. I try to convey the whole feel of Irish storytelling,
as well as techniques of such as using expressions and body language,"
he pointed out.
Burns hoped that youngsters would be turned on to storytelling so they
might read for their own pleasure. He added that participating in a workshop
implied that students learn something from it.
"In the workshop, an emphasis is placed on 'removing the barriers.'
People tend to have a lot of inhibition regarding storytelling. Most people
are telling stories every day. I don't really believe in a mystique with
storytellers and storytelling," Burns said. "I think a large percentage
of people could be great storytellers. Reading is great, but it cannot
match actual act of storytelling. If there is a teacher or librarian, I
hope that they might go back and tell a story."
Since 1993, he and Maura have been hosting tours of Ireland to help
people get a better sense of the country. The tour includes a tour of Sneem
and a party in their own home, with locals entertaining, singing, and dancing.
"We host groups from here that are interested in the culture, tradition,
music, and dance of Ireland. I serve as a guide and quite a lot of storytelling
goes on. These stories take people off the beaten track, delving deep into
Irish tradition. I am very much taken up in Ireland with these tours,"
he sighed. "The summer is literally a chock-a-block of work."
"I plan to write a book of Irish folk tales, probably 25 folk tales.
It's just a matter of finding a block of free time. Sometime this winter,
I'll begin
writing it," he guessed.
After concluding the last class at the Summer School, he shifted his
focus to the lakefront fest. He had last been a performer there in 1998,
which was sixth consecutive appearance. This year, he divided time between
five shows, two at the Children's Stage and three at the Village Pub. He
gave his last show, late in the afternoon on the final day of the festival
to a comfortably packed tent in the Village Pub.
Ever on the road, he returned to Sneem the next morning to prepare
for several upcoming tours.
Burns Takes Bat to Technology’s Onslaught
By George Houde
Irish Fest Chicago bureau
Batt Burns, an army of one, is on a mission, holding out against the
onslaught of technology – computers, the Internet, video games, iPods,
DVD players, and the vast numbers of pay television channels.
That onslaught has practically destroyed the ancient traditions of the
shanachie
(sometimes spelled seanachie), those Irish entertainers whose words
have drifted down over the centuries, preserving the myths and legends
of Ireland as Americans like to think of it. He’s out there on the campaign
as often as possible, engaged in skirmishes, ambushes and frontal attacks,
trying to save the shanachie tradition before it is burned away
by sly electronic wizardry.
"It’s a dying tradition," said Burns after a performance at Milwaukee’s
Irish Fest. "I’m holding out, one of the last bastions of it. There are
not many of us left."
His appearance in Milwaukee was a frontal engagement using jokes, stories
and poetry before an audience of more than 100 near the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Dressed in a simple black shirt and trousers accented by an ivory vest,
Burns did not look the part of a warrior, or an ancient shanachie
for that matter. He looked more like, well, the Irish educator he has been
and continues to be.
He did use some technology for his performance – an amplification system
for his rich, Co. Kerry voice. Otherwise, the sounds carrying from the
festival’s music stages and the active Sprecher pub in the tent corner
may have drowned his words. Unscripted, Burns took the stage in impromptu
stand-up fashion, reeling off funny stories and serious poetry from William
Butler Yeats.
"I didn’t know what I was going to do when I went up there," said Burns
after his performance. "I try to gauge the audience and then decide."
 He
wasn’t always a shanachie, a profession which does not have many
fringe benefits or a great future. Burns was a school teacher and principal
for more than three decades and has been an Irish studies instructor at
Wisconsin colleges such as St. Norbert’s in De Pere. Hailing from the village
of Sneem, Co. Kerry, Burns had a growing interest in the old storytelling
traditions of the shanachie, men who would travel the countryside
entertaining people with jokes and folk tales in exchange for food and
drink and perhaps a place to sleep.
"I dabbled in it early on," said Burns. "Sometimes I would recite poetry
or tell stories at parties."
Then he started telling stories in his classes and received enthusiastic
response. "I was able to prepare for the classes and experiment," said
Burns. "That’s what got me on stage."
Burns puts a little of his own history into his stage presentations,
explaining how he came to be a shanachie, since there is no formal
schooling for the craft One of his earliest performances was at a high
school in River Falls when a friend asked him to address a pupil assembly.
Burns said he agreed reluctantly because he was unprepared. But after weaving
Irish stories of fairies, leprechauns and adventures in the Emerald Isle,
Burns said he had the youngsters hooked.
"I knew it was a success when I heard one of them say, ‘I guess that
leprechaun dude was pretty cool’ to his friends," Burns recalled.
From there, he began the gypsy life, traveling from festival to festival
during the summer, spreading that particular blend of Irish humor, wisdom
and blarney that people seem to love. Sometimes his musician wife, Maura,
accompanies him, adding traditional music to the words. The week before
Milwaukee, he was in LaCrosse, which held its first Irish festival this
year.
"It’s a crazy life," said Burns, 64. "You have to watch the food. You
have to watch the liquor. This life is conducive to imbibing."
Staying healthy is important, he added, and he intended to go for a
run along the lakefront during his stay in Milwaukee, his first appearance
there in seven years.
In addition to performing on stage, Burns conducts tours in Ireland,
using his talents as a storyteller and cultural expert to give people "A
Little Bit O’Ireland," as his business cards say. Several people in the
audience came up to him later, greeting him like an old friend. Burns said
the festival scene in the United States and the Irish-American cultural
boom has helped him keep the shanachie legend alive.
"This country has afforded me an opportunity that my own country can’t,"
he said.
By the end of the night, with a full moon rising over the great lake,
Burns had the crowd silent and rapt and transported to a place where fairies
and the little people dwell and play tricks on humans. Here is the last
line of the story of Tadhg na gCisean, basket-maker:
"Tadhg na gCisean woke up and his head was on the bundle of sticks and
twigs. He wasn’t in the graveyard anymore. He wasn’t in the little house
anymore. He got up and untied the bundle and left the sticks there. He
gave up basket-making and started telling people about all that had happened
to him. And that is how Tadhg na gCisean became one of the greatest story
tellers of all Ireland."
And that is how Batt Burns became one of the greatest shanachies of
our time.
 
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