Lughnasa - The Bardic Return and Piercing the Veil in Connemara: Remembering Thomas Lyden

Thomas Lyden age 6 at the O'Halloran family homestead on the North Beach, Inishbofin

There's a point on the road from Galway City to Clifden where one officially comes into another realm called Connemara. It's marked by the first mountain range, and the locals have long referred to it as 'the veil'. I recall the first time I pierced the veil. It brought with it a sense of realization and connection that was not dissimilar to the formulaic scenes that have become so familiar in motion pictures when a character suffering from amnesia has his or her memory and identity restored. The onslaught of imagery and emotion is abrupt. I relived these feelings as I raced along in the early morning hours. The sun was just starting to rise as we pierced the veil. I rolled down my window to take in the salty, crisp air and to smell the turf.

piercing the veil

Way across the country where the hillside mountain glide

We buried my Father in the Streamstown cemetery looking Eastwards out to the islands sitting in the sea across the bay. As I stood there trying to comprehend the moment, I was reminded of a few lines he wrote 'in another time'...'in another place' in a poem titled
"A Paean to Clifden and the Sky Road"

Streamstown

"On the beach at Eyrephort the waves feel like they're pounding me into some kind of acceptance and forgiveness towards life. The water on the edge of the Atlantic pulls me to the hub of living and taunting me not to stay forever at the rim. 
 In the distance a farmer like a phantom mends a fence. In this place the common becomes magic. 
 On a hill I crouch into the fetal position and want to be swallowed by all this beauty. A dog howl from an island bringing me back to the here and now. 
 A heavy yearning evolves in me slowly as I meet so many people who stand so well on this ground. A place where egos don't paw the ground in some kind of pagan prance. 
 This land blesses us with its secrecy and gives itself slowly. I want to keep this sweetness within me forever and laud its power."

Thomas Lyden (29, Sept. 1949 - 8, Dec. 2015) was man whose presence was so much his own, it was said he brought his own weather system with him. Things changed when he entered a room, twisted a stone on the path or cast his laughter against the walls of the room. The Bard of Falkeeragh was the son of a midwife (known locally as a healer in leechcraft) and a stoic landowner (Errenagh) in a devout Roman Catholic household in the Wild West of Connemara in the Republic of Ireland. His charming eccentricity combined with his radiating intelligence to give him a certain power over his environment.

My Father's health slipped drastically into the ethers soon after our conversation in late November 2015. He was on his high-flyin' cloud, but he was lucid in his final weeks.  He answered questions that had burdened me for years, and let me know what he wanted me to do for him once he was wrapped up in his magic shroud as ecstasy found him. I played "Foreign Window" for him as he marveled at photos of his granddaughter Clarissa and his grandson, Adonijah. "They both take so much after my Mother's people from Bofin."  

He talked of his record collection in the condo in Dublin (every conversation eventually led to music) and wanted to see photos of my car to compare it alongside his BMW. I brought him car magazines and music magazines along with three daily papers every time I visited.  We joked about my genetic propensity for carrying around papers, books and notes under my arm just as he did.  He talked about having a Father and Son retreat back on his Mother's ancestral isle of Inishbofin, the family homestead being central to the entire mythos of this mystical island of the witch mounting a white cow in the mist.   He talked of how I should build a new place on our land there, and we could go there just to write and get our art out of us and onto a canvas.  He was adamant that I should accompany him to the Christmas Eve celebration on Grafton Street in Dublin with his friend Glen Hansard and Bono.  He would launch "the book then", he said.  

Then one Saturday, I was unable to reach him. He told me he would be having chemo. Monday morning, I called and found that he slipped and would likely pass soon. "He's talking with the angels" the voice said. In another time, in another place. He passed later on that evening in the presence of his little sister. He'd never make it to that busking session on Grafton Street, but at least he knew that his book, his Magnum Opus in fact, would indeed be coming out in the new year.

In 1932, Right Rev. Sir J. I. Wedgwood wrote that:

"It is not death, or the manner in which the death is brought about, that weighs most; it is the living of a life. For a deeply sensitive man of our own class and standing, life is often made difficult by the commonness, the coarseness, the vulgarity of much that confronts us.  A sensitive man suffers under unpleasant influences playing upon him.  But a great love for humanity, the keeping aflame within ourselves of great compassion for the suffering of others, and a strong determination to help and be an example of strength and radiant joy, all that tends to lessen difficulties caused by sensitivity and great refinement of body and temperament."

The locals called my Father the “Magic Bog Man”. He called me “Magic”.  I'm again reminded of the lyrics from one of his favorite Van Morrison albums:  "Wrapped up in your magic shroud as ecstasy surrounds you."  Dad, this time it's found you. ~ David Sheihan

saw you from a foreign window You were trying to find your way back home You were carrying your defects

Thus the spell was broken: the mist lifted, and they found themselves on the shingle between the sea and a lough on the north beach — "That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."