Honouring Manchán Magan: How Old Stories Guide Us Through An Uncertain Future

Welcome to the 10th year of the podcast! And thank you. As an entirely listener supported show, it only happens thanks to listeners like you. 

To start off the year, another form of thanks, and tribute, to a guest from 2023 who was so wonderful, as much for his brilliance as his grace. I’m talking of the late Manchán Magan, acclaimed Irish travel writer, documentary maker, radio producer, theatre performer, builder of the first straw-bale house in Ireland, regenerator of the 10 acre block it stands on, and best-selling author. Manchán died in October last year at an age not too senior to mine, just a couple of months after a diagnosis of prostate cancer. 

Beautifully, I’ve learned he and long-term partner Aisling married a few weeks before he died. Aisling described how they fell in love too, as she later posthumously accepted the Best Irish-Published Book of the Year award for Manchán's latest work ‘Ninety-Nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun)’. You can find that story here. 

Manchán and I signed off our podcast chat looking forward to meeting, given the various threads emerging at the time, including tracing more of my roots back to Ireland, and the connections between those roots and Aboriginal cultures and Country here - so a little slice of me cut away with the news too. But what a blessing to have had that yarn. Thanks Manchán for your fleeting but unforgettable presence in my life. And of course, for being so much more for so many more people all over the place. That, no doubt, will continue on. Right now, in fact. 

For here are the last 25 minutes or so of my conversation with Manchán from a couple of years ago. So much to love in just this small window.

To listen to the full episode with Manchán, and find further links, head to episode 173. Recorded with thanks to the Derby Aboriginal Media Corporation, at 6DBY deadly Derby radio in the West Kimberley, on the heels of the Aboriginal Irish festival in Fremantle WA.

Title image source.

Chapters and transcripts.

Music: The Blackbird (Irish Song Dance), by Ennis, Morrison and Muller (from Artlist).

Thanks again for listening, and for supporting The RegenNarration.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tribute And Context For Manchán
• 2:03 Otherworlds And Multidimensional Ways Of Knowing
• 4:05 Finding Belonging In Post‑Colonial Places
• 6:15 Weather Lore, Seasons, And Shared Wisdom
• 9:20 Sea Words And Ancestral Ecologies
• 13:10 Proverbs, Time, And Cultural Memory
• 16:15 Facing Uncertainty With Ancestral Oars
• 19:15 A New Paradigm And Grounds For Hope
• 23:20 Complexity, Church Legacies, And Repair
• 27:05 Hermit Dreams, Public Roles, And Limits

Transcript

AJ: 0:05

G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, featuring the stories that are changing the story for the regeneration of life on this wonder of a planet. Welcome to the tenth year of the podcast, and thanks. As an entirely listener-supported show, it only happens thanks to listeners like you. To start off the year, another form of thanks and tribute to a guest from 2023 who was so wonderful, as much for his brilliance as his grace. I'm talking about the late Manchán Magan. Acclaimed Irish travel writer, documentary maker, radio producer, theatre performer, builder of the first straw bale house in Ireland, regenerator of the 10-acre block it stands on, and best-selling author. Manchán died in October last year, at an age not too senior to mine, just a couple of months after a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Beautifully, I've learned he and long-term partner Aisling married a few weeks before he died. Aisling described how they fell in love too, as she later posthumously accepted the best Irish Published Book of the Year award for Manchán's latest work, 99 words for rain and one for sun. You can find that story linked in the show notes, along with Manchán's work. Manchán and I signed off our podcast chat looking forward to meeting, given the various threads emerging at the time, including tracing more of my routes back to Ireland and the connections between those routes and Aboriginal cultures and lands here. So a little slice of me cut away with the news too. But what a blessing to have had that yarn. Thanks, Cole Masters, for connecting us back then, and thanks Manchán for your fleeting but unforgettable presence in my life, and of course, for being so much more for so many more people all over the place. That no doubt will continue on, and right now, in fact, for here are the last 25 minutes or so of my conversation with Manchán from a couple of years ago. There was so much to love in just this short window. I'd also like to dedicate this to those experiencing fires and floods over east, and ice storms and ice violence overseas. Along, I hasten to add, with some awesome community resilience in all cases. This is dedicated too, to my eldest aunt Dorothy, whose beautiful funeral we just returned from this morning. The music you're hearing here is The Blackbird Irish Song Dance by Ennis Morrison and Muller. Seemed fitting. To listen to the full episode with Manchán and find further links, head to episode 173. Recorded with thanks to the Derby Aboriginal Media Corporation at 6 DBY Deadly Derby Radio in the West Kimberley. On the heels at the time of the Aboriginal Irish Festival in Fremantle WA. Thanks again for listening and for supporting The RegenNarration. Here's Manchán.

Manchán: 3:03

So there's so many different words and accounts that talk about the ways of expanding your knowledge, of gaining enlightenment. And beautiful ones about seeing like Lesbahn are these different glimpses that you see around your eyes that when the other world drifts into our own worlds. Because most of our consciousness is most of our story is about the multidimensionality of life. There was the real world, which most people didn't give much attention to. They were thinking about the world of the ancestors, the magic world that were constantly bleeding in and out of ours.

AJ: 3:40

Wow. Yeah. I wonder in a context like that I find myself in, and and certainly I've thought the many indigenous languages in this on this continent, there are all these layers too as well, obviously. But as an English speaker here, that I I mean I do think partly going into your work further for my Irish roots will be revealing and animating too. But I think as I'm living on this continent and I delve into and with the knowledge of indigenous folk here, I wonder if a people like me everywhere who are in situations like that, post-colonial contexts like that, that don't have their indigenous language to go back to on the land they live on. But there's a universality, right, that you've sort of alluded to throughout this conversation that we we sort of learn what we need to learn even by hearing you speak about Ireland. It sort of pertains to here and pertains to everywhere, would you say?

Manchán: 4:41

I would. Yeah, I would. I love the idea, because I, you know, uh I probably was only in introduced again to thinking this idea of indigeneity by those native elders in Canada. Yeah and realizing I'm not comfortable being indigenous, and particularly there's an organization in Ireland called Indigenous Ireland, and they were very keen that I joined them, but but I wasn't happy. But I do think I love the idea of all of us moving towards a future concept of indigenous. In other words, all of us being aware of what does it take to be absolutely rooted in a particular place and to understand the seasons and the how to revive the land, how to keep the waters pure. Um and so, like that's why I think we can look at these different cultures and see, like in Ireland, you know, we're dealing with climate change, not to the same extent as Australia, but we're seeing that there's wisdom and knowledge within even the way we used to look at climate. There were these terms like Lent in the Bo Rio V, which is this mid-spring cold snap between March and April. So you have all the crops in the ground in March, you're ready to grow, and then Lent in the Bory of V, the days of the wandering or the striped cow, uh, arrive in and just bring on this uncertainty. Or the other ungod of Scotavin the Guoch, which is it's it's actually a winterly period between May and June, again when the crops are gentle and delicate, and you have Skarovine Nguch, um, which means the little the the rough um wind of the cuckoo. Um and again, I didn't know other people had these sort of uh um, you know, myth just charming stories about the weather until I go to meet, you know, different Nungar people, with Zach Webb, particularly down south, who tells me about Jeran, you know, Geran when the new shoots appear after the harsh summer or makaroo when the herring are fat. So we we all of us, all of us are people who only survived, only got this far by observing every element of nature around us. And so this is skills that we are going to need in the future. Like I did a project two years ago for called sea tamagotchi. Remember Tamagotchi, these little Japanese toys that people used to play with? Well, I went to fishermen all along the west coast of Ireland and asked them for words to do with the sea, words to do with fishing, words to do with climate, waves, sea, and my god, the wealth and knowledge I got from them. And you know the way often we think, why did the Irish starve during the famine when they were surrounded by the sea? When they were now surrounded by seafish and fish and seaweeds. And you know, in America, some of the people who survived, they will, the ancestors, they will sort of be dismissive of their relations who were so poor. Again, that's a step of post-colonial trauma, but they will say, Oh, but they were probably ignorant. And the one thing I realized from collecting these words, many of them are recorded nowhere, these sea words, is there was no sense of ignorance. The people of the West of Ireland knew every element. Like there's a word of the sea, there's a word but means an underground reef that you or I would never know is there, unless we had an echo sound or you know, digital equipment, which we may not have in the future, you know? So a buright means there's an underground reef, and on it there's a kelp forest. And in that kelp forest it is rich and alive with um with mangachi and balachi, which are mangachi is um is um pollock and bal and balachi or balon ras. So as the fisherman said, if ever you know where a butoite is, there you are guaranteed there is dense fish in that kelp forest. At least there was in Ireland until 15 years ago until we finally polluted and overstocked or over fished our waters. But it's that type of level of information, or like there's a lovely word um murnu. Murnu means the chewing up of baby soft skin crabs and the spitting them into the sea to be used as bait to catch other shit. Or leavador. Levador means the aspect, the idea of tur setting light to little bits of birch bark or paper and throwing them on the water, and then using that to attract herring to the birch bark at night, and then having a net, you know, creating a loop net around it to catch all the fish. So all of these immensely practical bits of knowledge and bits of knowledge wisdom about the environment that are only built up over eons of years. Here, can I give you one proverb? So you know Irish is alive with proverbs, but each of the proverbs is only there to convey wisdom through the ages. From ogluin gogluin, which means from generation to generation, but the word gluin means your knee. So it's basically from your knee to knee, from your mother's knee to the baby's knee, or grandmother's knee to the grandchild's knee. And so ogluing, this phrase goes, uh it goes, Sale chi vilvour, sale umuda of on, sale chi umuda, sale undaun. So the first part, sale chi vilvor, sale umrah of on. The life of chivilvur of three whales is the life of one um umrah, of one growing ridge. So a whale was considered to live about a thousand years. They actually only live about a hundred or two hundred years, but we thought they lived three a thousand years. So the life of three whales, three thousand years, is a life of one growing ridge, is according to the proverb. And sure enough, off on Ackle Island in Ireland and up on the northwest coast, there are these growing ridges, these mounds in the landscape that archaeologists say, yes, they are three or four thousand years old. So my ancestors, the early Bronze Age settlers, would have grown emmer and eincorn and rye and barley in these fields. Okay, and you can still see the mounds of them today. But somehow, our and our people, our ancestors, remember that, remembered that those were 3,000 years old. But the second part of that phrase blows my mind. It goes, so Salechi Vilhur, Seil Omudavon is the first proof or part of it. Second part, Selechi Umuda, Sealundawan. The life of three growing ridges is the life of the world. Now, a growing ridge, according to the proverb, was three thousand years old, and according to archaeology, so three growing ridges, three trees is nine thousand. It says the life of the world is nine thousand years old, according to the proverb. And nine thousand years old is nine thousand years ago, is exactly when archaeologists and anthropologists say humans first came to Ireland, nine or ten thousand years. Somehow that knowledge was stored, and we weren't even the same people. You know, we are the we are the Bronze Age people who replaced the Neolithic people. There's tiny traces of Neolithic DNA in us, but there's no traces of the original hunter-gatherer people who were these blue-eyed, brown-skinned people who arrived here, you know, 10, 9,000, 10,000, 11,000 years ago. Somehow that knowledge was kept alive. So that's why this is so important. We are entering into an uncertain future where all of the stabilities, the certainties of light, life, the economic certainty, the health certainty that was threatened during COVID, the weather certainty, the financial is all under threat, but we happen to have these. There's a word called trauma fertile in Irish, which means the stout oars, the oars that keep you rooted through difficult times. We have that in ever in so many indigenous and old and traditional um cultures and heritages in this land. And it's not too late. That's the real beauty. It's still alive in Ireland, it's still alive in Australia. So much has been lost, but it is there if we turn to it now, respect it, and give the time and and and and respect and awe to those elders who have somehow managed to keep it alive.

AJ: 11:47

Oh, he know, having talked a lot about and written a lot about the fact that these societies that we're referring to and our and our ancestors that we're referring to, for whom society was centred on the poets and the seers and the monks and the healers and the wise women. It can appear that we're a long way off that centering of those people, of those voices, of these stories, of these words, of this language. If it was felt by people listening to this, that that feels like something that perhaps even unattainable, many people might think. Because it's such a shift, obviously, from the way our power structures in this post-colonial society happen. What are your feelings on that?

Manchán: 12:34

Yeah. So isn't it? There's there's there's different pers there's different ways of looking at the issue, isn't it? And particularly like what you what your what the regeneration is doing, what your your movement, your podcast, your system of talks are doing, are highlighting a different way of being. And as you say, it is far from the mainstream. It's far from those politicians in Dublin that I brought the elders to, who are well-meaning, in fact, in Ireland at least, but just but just you know, just uh unaware, you know. And then, you know, you're some of your leaders, both in Western Australia, but also just in Australia, who some of whom are uh well-meaning, and some of whom are just on the take and want to exploit until they destroy. So, as you say, we could get lost in the darkness of that, in the absolute greed and exploitation that's happening, but particularly the people you're meeting, that network that you're not, it's not you're not creating, but you are a web. You are sort of one of the strands in this method of uniting people from all places, you know, from Nicole Masters to Zach Bush to all of the people in Canada and in the in Australia and New Zealand that you are highlighting in your work. There's a new paradigm happening. You can feel it, you see it every day in your inbox and the people you talk to. I see it every single day. So either we get we get lost in despair because we think that world that we were brought into in the 80s and 90s, which had no hope for us and looked like nothing was going to change, you'd say then us daring to talk about a regenerated future, about people who are interested in focusing primarily on the health of the water and the soil and realizing if you do that, everything else would come from it. You know, they were they were only pie-in-the-sky ideas in the past. And now I just see everything changing. And I do see this movement of young people saying, we're not willing to accept it anymore. You see the people of, you know, the middle-aged people of my age sort of either crushed if they're too far into the system, they think they can't dare change, and they see the system crumbling all around them. They know that maybe in their lifetimes they might just get away with it, but their children and grandchildren are ruined. And then you see the young generation say, it's not too late. The wisdom is still there, the knowledge is still there. We are we are it's amazing what we've learnt in the last decade about regenerating soil, about how to grow healthily, how to grow bountiful. And the likes of you are going to enormous difficulty and unsettling your life and roaming to find these stories and bringing people together. So there's two, there's two worlds. The world is almost split into two worlds at the moment. An old world that that that is unhealthy and is not doing well, and this other one that is we're young, we're starting out, we're unsure of ourselves, but I just see the energy and the spirit in it that I think it's it's only going to grow. And like I was I was born in 1970 as an absolute dreamer and idealist. I spent my whole time probably on some sort of you know autistic or asperger scale. I couldn't really connect with the world, but I could connect with my herb garden. And when I did, I was directly in contact with these spirits, with these what I thought were guardian angels or otherworldly beings. And they were so beautiful and so all-encompassing, but I never saw any of that in the world around me. And now I'm seeing it. Now every day I'm seeing more of this. So I am hopeful because I see this energy. But if some pragmatic, realistic realist came to me and said, Look, you know, the oil, the barren, the companies, the banks aren't going to give up their money, the mining companies in Australia will never, will never, you know, will never stop. Um, it's hard for me to argue against their strong logic because it's pragmatic and it's what the past was based on. But I do believe we're going into a new future. I believe we have to.

AJ: 15:58

Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. I do feel I do feel that too. And it's interesting to hear that sense of things as a kid and and how it contrasted with what was around you. I relate to that too. I think I read somewhere that the Jesuits, when you were young, spotted an idealism in you. Yeah. And it reminded me of when a priest, when I was in primary school, I would have been all of, I don't know, nine maybe, and he pegged me for a future priest. Then at the time I was horrified by the thought, but because I didn't want to join that, you know, what I was observing there. But but later on I came to think, I came to wonder what he saw, and maybe actually he was picking up something of what I was feeling and uh and looking for. It's interesting to wonder. I never met him again, so I don't know.

Manchán: 16:44

Yeah, but you I mean he was he did, wasn't he? Because you are definitely on a mission. You were almost like you're almost like you know the desert hermit, almost like St. Patrick, although St. Patrick was oppressive, bringing there is a new way, there is a new message, seeking you know, connecting people. And like just to talk about that complexity of of the our our shared trauma of every of everyone's trauma in different ways, but also in relate to the church, like you know, we Canada, Australia, and Ireland are all dealing with the legacy of residential homes and the abuses that happen in them.

AJ: 17:15

Oh, we wouldn't.

Manchán: 17:15

And like, in some way you could get lost in the darkness of that, yeah. And yet I go you know out to Australia, I go to Balgo. The reason that I was invited in and really welcomed, well, I brought kangaroo tales, that that helped, um, in into the into the where I where I eat the artist home. But also it is because some of the um the the artists there remembered this woman called Sister Alice Dempsey, uh St. John of God's woman, who came out in the 80s, and she was the first person, so the Balgo mission, you know, was kind of an oppressive place. It was basically bringing people in from the deserts, from the Tanamon Desert, the Grand Sandy Desert, and just taking, stealing everything from everything about their culture from them. But there was this one, Sister Alice Dempsey, a young and a nun from that young nun from the south of Ireland, southeast of Ireland, and she decided, she said, No, sure, why don't you come into the church? It was one Eastern, about 82, she said, Why don't you bring your artwork and make some art for the church walls? And they they were just they were astounded that these people who were just trying to suck all their to kill all their culture out of them allowed them to do this. And then Sister Alice next say next year said, Why don't you sing some of your songs at Easter, the big celebration with Easter? And they sang their songs. So a lot of their art and their songs were actually preserved by the focus of getting these ready for the church. And we know, you know, the church can be a key important memory for for certain Aboriginal groups, as well as being a place of great trauma and oppression. So nothing is simple. Like in Ireland, we want to turn ourselves away from religion and the church and all the terrible harms it did. Um, and then we you know, then what how are we going to deal with our Irish and Aboriginal legacy? In some way, the Irish and Aboriginals really helped. I mean, the Aboriginals helped the Irish to an enormous extent. And there are these some stories of the Irish, because they were oppressed by the English, being slightly better, less oppressive in certain cases. Now, that is not there are definitely stories of trauma and a total oppression by Irish people done on Torres Strait and Aboriginal people. But the stories are so complex, and they're only going to come out is if we're in contact with each other, if we're engaging, if we're starting this rather rather at the moment, as you say, it's frozen in time. Like, although I don't know much about Australia, you can imagine there are so many Australian people living in Ireland, and particularly my girlfriend's cafe, so many of them. And I tell them about my three weeks in Australia, and they say they have never once encountered an Aboriginal person, definitely not encountered an elder, not never never heard their stories from them. So we are all frozen in just awkwardness and shock and horror about that oppressive past we've all come out of. And what it requires is it's what you're doing, it's going around linking people together, creating new narratives.

AJ: 19:50

You used the word words, was it desert hermit? You felt a bit like this yourself, haven't you? Yet I picked that up, but then see the life where you've been called into this company. How have you squared that for yourself? Not easily.

Manchán: 20:05

Like so I have, you know, that that little ten acres I bought built in Westmead was just going to be my ideal, my idl. And I, you know, little haven, but it was a straw bale house I built. And again, I'm named after a saint, Saint Monacon. Um he was originally a pagan god, he was the son of the sea god, Monon Maclear, but then the St. Patrick would have made him into Monacon, little monk. And this that name had died out for a thousand two hundred years until my, you know, because my relations were not only warriors, but they were also Gaelic scholars, so they brought back these old names from the manuscripts. Wow. But the one thing about Monacon, in the sixth century, he had a little he had a little hovel, a little shack in the wilderness, and outside he had his leeks and he had his bees and his salmon and his wild garlic, and he collected berries. So he was living living that hermit life, and that is desperately what I wanted to do. And what I did do, I had a weird life. Like as I say, I would make a TV series once a year in a foreign culture in South America or China or Africa, and then I'd go back living there for nine months, ten months on my own. Never had a partner, never wanted a partner. So only in the last few years did I fall in love with this girl in Dublin, and am I finding myself a lot more in the public eye? And I that's why I know I won't do it for very long. That's why I know I'll be set back very soon because there's so many I probably I have this little role to play at this time, but there's so many people who can do it so much better than me. I'm I'm aware of my conditioning, I'm aware of my 1970s, my small mindedness, my my misstep, my cultural insensitivities. So, and particularly when you're dealing with such complex cultural issues like the protocol with indigenous elders or Canadian um First Nations people. You know, I am misstepping the whole time, but we do it humbly, and they are so understanding and gracious of our missteps. Indeed.

AJ: 21:49

And you I mean, it's interesting then that you even stood for parliament at one stage, stood for election.

Manchán: 21:56

I did. That was the hardest thing. Again in So twenty sixteen, you know, as we know, during when those big UN stories were coming out about the the shock of climate change was really hitting people. It had there'd been the people who were aware of it on the margins always knew. But it was in every major paper, you know, 2015, 2016, right up till XR, the Extinction Rebellion 2019, and then of course COVID knocked it all off the table. But um I was working, I had started working with a regenerative farm down in um in County Clare in the west of Ireland. There were three former big wave surfers. So Ireland only was discovered as a ideal destination for big wave surfing um probably about nine years ago. And three of the prime people who were doing it, they were s they were, you know, had contacts with Billabong and with um um these other big surfing companies, um, would they you know be flown around the world to s to s to surf these big waves, and eventually they realized no, we cannot do that in our hearts. We cannot be flying just to hit on a big wave for some media for you know Red Bull to film it. So they went back to Ireland and started growing vegetables with the same passion that they were doing their you know, big wave surfing, professional surfing. And there was just you know, the wilds of Ireland where we think nothing could ever grow, they had fields and fields of vegetables. So I got very involved with them. They were called Moy Hill. And um one of them, the one with the main surfer, Fergal Smith, said, I'm gonna have to put myself up for the the election, uh, for the general election, because the stories are too urgent. We need to get these stories into government. So I offered to help him just write some speeches and write some pamphlets and things with my with my writing ability. But this was January 2016. I thought, no, I'm hiding. These stories are too important. I need to put myself up for election. I was living in the midlands of Ireland where I still live, and that was an area where the Midlands in any country, you know, new ideas don't really come into the Midlands. They tend to they tend to be sown or bear fruit first on the on the wall on the coastline, then slowly. So I the Midlands of Ireland is a slow-moving place, and there was no talk about green issues or ecological issues there. So I thought I should put myself up as a a green party candidate just to begin the discussions. And I did, and I knocked on people's doors, and it was so hard, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, just to put myself out among from so much to constantly have to be chatting, convincing people, talking to people. Um and obviously I didn't get it. I I mean I made it to the eight rounds, so I did pretty good, and I got a lot of those issues onto into the public sphere in that area. That then had I probably had I done the second and next election, that was 2016, had I done 2020, I probably would have been elected, but that would not have been good for my my mental health or my heart or anything. Yeah, I I need to hide.

AJ: 24:37

It's not your role ultimately. No.

Manchán: 24:39

But it'll be it'll be someone else's, hey. It'll be a younger person, and hopefully it'll be a woman, and they will do it far, far better than I ever would.

AJ: 24:46

Wow, that's partly what's happened in Australia. I don't know if you picked that up, the community independence movement and seven women elected through it around the country. That's right. Yeah. Transform parliament, and potentially it's nascent still. So um yeah, we'll see where it goes. It's been an absolute pleasure and privilege to speak to you. Thanks so much for joining me. I feel like we could go on, but uh I'll leave you to your day. Uh but not before, of course, we talk music, and you know this because you've kindly listened to a bit of the podcast since we met online. What music occurs to you now, or or or indeed may have you may have been reveling in for some time?

Manchán: 25:24

Yeah. Well, just to say, Anthony, like I have got so much of an insight into the cutting edge of what's happening in your country from regeneration. And so whenever I meet Australians in in Ireland who are shamefacedly saying, like, oh, I know nothing about elders, I don't know. We were just told they we just saw them, you know, on the street begging or something. I said, check out this podcast. If you want someone, you know, to get a glimpse from someone who is this custodian who's traveling the country, finding these stories, creating these town hall gatherings to share information. Some of the conversations are uncomfortable, some are too maybe you know just so awe-inspiring that we'll that they're almost too hard to envision, but you are putting those stories out there. So I I I I honour what you're doing.

AJ: 26:05

Thank you, man.

Manchán: 26:06

And like as we know, and it's happening all over all over the world. There are people summoning up these new stories. There are. But anyway, in terms of music, the music I would pick would be it's an album called The Brendan Voyage, and it's played on the Illen Pipes by Liam O Flynn. The Illen pipes are the old, they're sort of like the old war pipes, you know, the bagpipes in Scotland, but they have way more range. Like the bagpipes was a warrior, was a warrior battle and cry, you know, just to bring people into that berserker mood to go fighting. The Illen pipes are beautifully melodious and they're haunting and they're otherworldly. And in fact, the main music played on the Illen pipes is Pertnabu Kee, which is the song of the fairies. And it it is known, it brings whales, whales in uh from the sea, it lures them in towards the Atlantic shore. Beautiful again, down in um Wadandi country to hear Zach Webb talking about um their connection, the connection of those the the the Wadandi people, sea saltwater people with the whales was beautiful. But anyway, so the Illuminate has a strong connection with the with the whales, and this the Brendan Voyage, it is a muse, it's a soundtrack to a voyage that was done by an Englishman in 1982. An Englishman decided to recreate a journey by St. Brendan. St. Brendan the Navigator in the 7th century set out on his little Kurruch, his little simple canvas cowhide and wood boat, and allegedly sailed the whole way to Newfoundland, to North America. He definitely went as far as Greenland because he wrote this account and it describes him going to Iceland and then going on top of a whale and thinking the whale was an island and the whale moved around, and then seeing the great dragon fire breadth of the volcanoes in Iceland, then going further again north. So it's an amazing story. And when I was 12 in 1982, Tim Severin, this English adventurer, recreated that journey, and I it it sparked for me a sense of oh my god, these stories from long ago from our great navigator and mariner sailors in the myths are actually possibly true because he recreated it with the same conditions in a little leather boat, and so the soundtrack of his of um the film that was done about his journey in 82 was this the Brendan Voyage. It is absolutely beautiful. It was composed by Sean Davy with the muse, with the pipes of Liam O. Oh, oh, um Flynn. And when I went to Africa in 1989, I fled. I did not the hotbed of my mum of my granny's republicanism, of the small-mindedness of Ireland, which was still absolutely controlled by the church in 89. I needed to get out. And I got on the back of an ex-army truck, left from London, and went the whole way across the Sahara, across Togo, Ben and Niger, Cameroon, Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania for seven months. And the only tape I brought was that, the Brendan Voyage. And I used to play it in the back of the old Bedford, the old ex-Army British truck, and it just transported me. And it still does. Whenever I listen to Brendan Voyage, I am beyond. I am with my ancestors, but I'm also out in the sea and just beyond, beyond whatever that means, in another realm.

AJ: 29:07

Yeah. Wow, I hear you. And of all the skills you picked up over those journeys, was playing music yourself one of them?

Manchán: 29:13

No, no, unfortunately not. I am that's one of those realms that I stumble when I go into. I I can't feel myself into it. It's nice to know you're in one's limitations.

AJ: 29:26

Used to that. My card, absolute pleasure, mate. Thanks for your generosity.

Manchán: 29:31

Thank you, and thanks, as you said, for the put the insights the podcast has given. And I'm back in Australia. My books are coming out in Australia next March, and I am going to be back journeying, visiting more, connecting more. And I love the fact that yours is almost the ideal map to show me what are the most interesting places. We'll talk again, Anthony, and thank you. Big love to you.