Playing My Flute in the Pubs of Ireland
Story by Ginny Prior
The greatest gift I ever received came from my family, tucked inside a Mother’s Day card. It was airfare to Ireland, where I would join in the celebration of my dear friend’s 50th birthday. Jillian had invited three girlfriends, all of whom she felt would ring in her milestone robustly. I, for my part, was bringing a flute — something I could play in the pubs that would endear us to locals.
The flute had been more than a musical instrument to me growing up. It had been a generational link. Both my mother and grandmother were flutists — so it must have been in my blood to be able to pick it up, without sheet music, and play along to most tunes.
But I’d never played flute in another country. I’d never packed it so carefully amongst my black boots and jeans — to reassemble it before strangers on a distant shore. What would they think of a middle-aged mother walking into a pub with such chutzpah? The vision of ruddy-faced men downing pints and cheering wildly as I strutted on stage made me laugh out loud. Maybe it was time I stepped out of my predictable life and into something a little — unscripted. Didn’t Eleanor Roosevelt espouse doing something each day that made one a little uncomfortable?
I flew into Shannon three days before my friends arrived, with plenty of time to tour the countryside by bus and pop into some pubs that had music.
“Here’s a sweet spot,” I told myself as I entered a neighborhood bar in the seaside village of Salt Hill, outside Galway. I took a seat at a small wooden table and ordered a beer while I surveyed the place. A man with a tweed cap and a karaoke machine was testing his microphone near an old plank dance floor, so I took a big sip to work up the courage to approach him. “I’m a flute player from California,” I said hesitantly. “I used to be a musician. Can I play a few numbers with you?” He looked quizzically at me — God only knows what he was thinking — and then graciously agreed.
By this time, the barstools were being taken by what I surmised were mostly locals. The once quiet chatter was turning into a din — and cigarette smoke was starting to hang heavy in the air. I sat down near the man with the microphone and softly accompanied two of his selections — both American songs — I think. Then a voice from the bar shouted, “Let the American play her flute!” A smattering of inebriated affirmations followed and the man with the karaoke machine acquiesced.
This was my Andy Warhol moment. I thumbed through the beverage-stained pages of the songbook and picked Green, Green Grass of Home — a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. He cued up the song on his karaoke machine, and I closed my eyes and began to play. There was no music to fall back on, just my memory of how it sounded when Tom Jones sang it, and I put every bit of vibrato and schmaltz I could muster into that ballad.
Breathless, I held the last note on my flute for what seemed an eternity — milking the moment — then silence. I squinted through the smoke and was taken aback by what I saw. The beer I’d been nursing had multiplied — there were now several bottles at my table — all bought for me as a sign of approval. And in the next second, the silence turned into applause, and hoots, and whistles.
For the next two days, I traveled by bus across the Irish countryside, playing my flute in pubs from Galway to Dublin. In Dublin’s famed Temple Bar district, venues like the Hairy Lemon and The Auld Dubliner were playing Irish folk music late into the night. I sat in with a smattering of locals who brought fiddles and flutes and elbow pipes, punctuated by the primal beat of Bodhran drums.
Some of the songs I knew instantly, like “Dublin’s fair city…cockles and mussels, alive alive-oh”. But the ballad that brought the crowd to their feet was the heartfelt ode to the beloved River Liffey. A spry old man grabbed me, flute and all, and we danced round and round, arms linked and legs stepping high with strangers who felt like friends.
Travel is a fickle thing. You can visit a place and never feel close to its people or culture. But for a short time in Ireland, a musical instrument I’d played since childhood endeared me to strangers more than any conversation could.
