Harps In Spirit at Knockranny Woods

It was the annual O'Carolan Harpless Festival in Keadue. Harp competitions among young folk in obscurity but no public performances by harpers, nothing like Cormac DeBarra and Patrick Ball who tell wonderful stories about Turlough O'Carolan and perform his tunes. The closest we seem to get to a public harp performance here is this ...


My idea for this Bards In The Woods meet up was to encourage harper bards to perform within the Knockranny Woods car park, facing the crannog island that is said to have once been the home of a linnet bird that used to review Turlough's tunes when he tried them out there.

Unfortunately it was a wet start here.


Claire Roche brought her folk harp along but to start our event with a song or two was not wise.

All together, four people turned up and the theme of the afternoon seem to quickly drift from harps and harpers.

In the forest it was actually very dry.


Two of the group were only with us for a short time so this was quite a short banter around the woods.

Of course, this kicked off with the court cairn


where our previous visitors have become very excited ...


A bit of poetry around the huge Beech Tree.


Some concerns as these several new fragile information signs around here are starting to get vandalised.


I do not have any pics of a vandalized sign though.

As we returned to the car park, two of the group went home and three of us shared a delightful picnic around this cozy semi hidden picnic table, which was midges free !!!


We are back here for the Autumn leaf colour change time.

I hope more of you will share time here with us then as we will be at the other end of Lough Meelagh for that event.


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