I didn't know what to say ,the relief was so viscerally felt when my escape from law school finally happened. I had been successful in my auditions and would be joining The Bunratty Singers. The later disparaging image of harp plucking coleens in velvet dresses was in the future. In 1966 it was considered a glamorous job and the provided emancipation to many a talented singer from her typewriter or other mundane humdrum job. If you wished to escape into a castle and swan around singing songs in medieval costume and full stage make up -what could be wrong with that. Nothing except for the rude awakening that it wasn't all just singing and swanning but working an eight hour shift doubling as servers slinging medieval hash in front of tourists. However underlying "the girls" culture was a genuine sense of national pride that the rigors of the job part waitress part singer had a greater significance. After all we were doing this for Ireland. We were part of a greater plan to expand the reach of tourism. I don't know how many times I died for Ireland after work imbibing a couple of glasses of mead which most Americans had the good sense to stay away from. It wasn't all idealism.
A sickly sweet concoction from fermented honey after a few hits in the dressing room could mean being laid low the next day with a bad case of the Irish flu.
In 1966 about 1800 aspirant coleens applied. I did not think I had a chance. My then fiancé Frank Daly came with me to the first interview and audition. I sang a nervous trembling vibratoed Eileen Óg The Pride of Petravore. A phalanx of Shannon Development bigwigs -the interview board -led by JG Ryan a charismatic boss and Ray Joyce a stickler. I was so nervous that I dropped my music. The pages fluttering and landing in an ungainly pile at my feet.
"This is it" I thought as I bent to pick up and rearrange the music my derrière in the air.
"I'm screwed "
Why would they hire a nervous Nellie like me when the country is full of poised sophisticated soignée songsters.
The equally nervous fiancé waited outside.
The whole misadventure played out in a conference room at the Greshem Hotel on 0'Connell Street Dublin.
"How did it go "my mother asked later when I returned to Ardee. I gave her an account of my nervous warbling, dropping the music and presenting myself as a bumbling idiot.
"Not a chance " I whined.
I was entirely gob smacked to receive a letter in the mail that I had been called back for a second interview. Maybe they thought I had some comedic possibilities . Personality versus poise.
"I'll come with you this time" said my mother.
My mother and I headed off for Dublin on the appointed day. She in her Donegal tweed coat and matching hat and I in an Irish version of the classic Chanel suit. Dressed like a grown-up who might be applying for a job in the civil service which in fact -theoretically at least -it was.
The whole business under the auspices of a semi state body run by the Irish Tourist Board. I was even more nervous the second time the prize seeming closer and yet further away.
By asking me to come back the second time they dangled the possibility of my being accepted into the Bunratty Singers ,then as exciting an escape from law school as running away with the circus.
We arrived on time to the foyer of the Gresham.
Before we alighted the stairs my mother extracted a noggin of brandy from her handbag
'Take a swig of this" she said
"Are you serious " ? What if they smell it ?
I swigged.
"She handed me a mint -chew that. "
She smiled.
Now go in and knock 'em dead.
"Maybe you 'll never sing at the Metropolitan Opera " she rationalized.
"But they need educated young women to talk intelligently to the tourists "revealing a mother's bias towards my strong points. Vaccination with the gramophone needle de rigueur in the Caine family.
"Make sure you charm them" she continued.
"Easy for you" I thought the brandy taking effect so that at least I didn't exactly stagger in but regained my equilibrium when the lightheadedness and shaking abated.
"So Miss Caine" you are back to us said the compelling JG Ryan fixing me with a gaze somewhere between flirtatious appraisal and shrewd experienced professionalism.
"And why do you want to join us"
"I love to sing" I babbled.
I was in the Gregorian Chant Festival Choir when I was in Roscrea. I immediately regretted that admission, a sure sign that I was still in naïve schoolgirl mode instead of the sophisticated worldly twenty one year-old I fancied myself.
Ah ! Youth!
"I have never been in County Clare " I said digging myself in deeper. "County Clare is a distant 120 miles from Ardee and I am so interested in connecting and living in the West of Ireland. A few eye roles were exchanged between JG and Ray. I had better present a significantly improved version of myself. I thought.
Instead verbal diarrhea took over. " Living in the Pale - frequently referred to by my father as Cromwell's Garrison"
I started in on a history lesson " I'm sure you know that Cromwell committed slaughter and mayhem in the town of Drogheda where the streets ran red with blood.
"Yes we knew that" Said the stickler Ray.
"We learned the same Irish history you did. "
On I went "I want to connect with my Western heritage -my father was born and raised in Tuam, County Galway.
I would like to learn Irish again -sing Irish traditional songs and be part of this phenomenon - Bunratty. I knew I was already over the top but stopped short of mentioning that I thought it a glamorous job wafting about in a castle every night spouting history and Celtic myths into the receptive ears of the tourist audience. Most of them did not know fact from fiction and of course there was always the descent into poetic license otherwise known as the fairy tales of Ireland. I wanted to dissolve the skepticism of those interviewers and have them see me as an earnest candidate for the job. I was going to take passion and idealism to the max and sell Ireland back to the Irish in America and beyond.
I was chosen.
I was driven there by the soon to be ex fiancé Frank Daly described by my mother as "Pure Gold" A dreadful loss as a future son -in-law. A sadness to her as she witnessed my immature sudden change of heart about getting married to the person she felt was stellar in every possible way. It was her daughter who was not yet quite so stellar.
In her wisdom she never said "I could've told you so" when I later plunged myself into a disastrous marriage, the seeming legacy, possibly attributable to the one from which I was sprung.
It was fun that at the outset there were daily rehearsals- I have always loved rehearsals. A whole new life. A new group of talented funny beautiful women. There were the original seven hired 1964. And then there were four more in 1966 of whom I was one.
I stepped out of Frank's Volkswagen and into a flat -97 on Drumgeely Hill -part of the new town at Shannon Airport. Created around the duty free zone and industrial complex of mostly American companies. Factories and businesses were given tax-free status for setting up in Ireland and giving employment in Co Clare and Co Limerick.
The Bunratty model a medieval castle restored as a museum and the subsequent banquet was part of the vision to bolster the economically straightened West of Ireland.
It succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. It is still going today as one Ireland's most important tourist destinations.
Later Knappogue Castle and Dunguaire in Co Galway were additional Castle Cousins each with a different scripted entertainment.
Always with the intent of presenting a mini slice of culture or history the process has gone on into perpetuity enacted by successive ongoing generations of comely talented Colleens. Colleens who morphed into women and transitioned back into girls. Today it is a different job with nary a Colleen in sight.
More likely to be summer employment for talented students of singing, music or harp. In the 60s it was permanent and pensionable. In our day we wondered if we stayed on beyond our sell by date would we be relegated to the linen room to do the washing or mending costumes below stairs near the drawbridge. We have had many happy reunions over the years and I don't think as yet anyone who remained has been put out to pasture rather working per diem and maintaining the same traditions which were part of the intent and vision of the founders. The vision continues to be expanded with an inspiring and exciting folk park. Ambient rich replicated houses of earlier centuries furnished and fitted authentically with textiles and occupational artifacts collectively bring on a fit of rare aul 'times nostalgia. Of course we know better and and try to shake any lapse into maudlin sentimentality.
The first time I saw Bunratty I was disappointed.
My idea of a castle was set by childhood notions and visions of a Disneyesqe princess trapped in a Gothic tower.
Maybe the grandeur of the Rhineland or a mini version of Buckingham palace.
Not some turreted fortress- this was a castle?
Well of course it was. Built along the mouth of the Shannon river with moats and drawbridges the better to observe marauders sailing up the Shannon the occupants ready to attack. Our first tour guide explained that if the marauders breached the drawbridge they were to be stopped in their tracks by boiling hot tar poured from the above strategically designed murder hole.
That put a stop to their gallop.
The history of the castle from the 1400s until the present day more than makes up for its lack of Downton Abbey scope and architectural charm.
The fourth castle built on the site is the one which still stands today was built around 1425
In the early 1500s it became the stronghold of the O'Briens -the Earls of Thomond. Later Admiral Penn father of William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania was an occupant until it fell into disrepair.