Spinning Yarns and Telling Tales at Moth and Butterfly in Katies Cottage in Claddagh
While out for a walk I thought Id catch the Moth & Butterfly event in Katies Cottage in Claddagh… a newly built cottage in the traditional Irish style I didnt even know existed. The last one I was at was near the Spanish Arch…
OK, Id seen the sign as you walk out the promenade, but had not taken heed to it, as it led up a very unpromising road towards what I took to be a modern estate.
Its quite an interesting walk up it, as there is quite a mix of architecture, from modern council houses, to modern art houses, and more decorative dwellings that seem to have been a part of some scheme from times past that really catch the eye.
And just when I though I was gone wrong, there it was on my left, one of the cutest cottages ever seen, and of particular intrest to me was the fireplace, with the fireplace within the fireplace providing the draught that I was missing in mine in Ballinamuck.
While thinking of Ballinamuck and looking at the fireplace I was thinking how like the Haggard it was in Ballyduffy outside Moyne belonging to Michael Masterson. His – built from the ground up – is a work of art, and was thatched by two girls who did a fantastic job. When visiting, he showed me the Rumfield fireplace that he put in, and I got to pull a pint for him and Declan Nerney no less in the attached bar that was once a shebeen!!!
But it was not for the architecture and the museum that had me at Katie’s Cottage in Claddagh, but rather for the Moth and Butterfly storytelling night, where its stories, not poems or the likes, and is based on the Moth movement – Google it!!! – bar in a non competitive way.
My favourite story was told by an Afrikaaner girl – going by the accent – who told a story from Nigeria of how the turtle got the shell with all the cracks in it, and for the craic another chap was telling of the terminal velocity of animals, and I think I wasnt listening right because I thought he said a cat would have a better chance falling out of a twenty story building than a seven story one… yes, it was one of THOSE stories!
Ill retell the story from Nigeria about the turtle when I get the chance…
There was a very interesting talk about doing the Santiago de Compostela, an ambition of mine I havn’t got around to doing just yet. Maybe Ill do it when the mid life crisis strikes at 50! His point of setting out every morning and looking at the horizon and saying “that’s where Im going” is a great motivation to get you started and was his favourite part of the day… after which I wrote “Way to the Horizon”
I told the story – the theme was “Up in the Air” – of the missing Wedding Cake in Dooleys which was leaving the reception and my job up in the air, until it thankfully was found by the Melba’s floorstaff… and brought the night to an end before making a swift retreat and heading back to Renmore via Supermacs!!!
I must make another return to get a good tour of the cottage that is at the end of a village I didnt know existed between Claddagh and Salthill, the new houses being the replacement dwellings for the Claddagh population about whom I had written in “White Sails on the Claddagh” a couple of years back.
Reference:
Moth and Butterfly Facebook Page
Katies Cottage, Claddagh, Galway
Michael Mastersons “Murphys Cottage”, Moyne, North Longford