If you are near Kerry in May don’t miss the Brendan Festival.
As the advertisement promises, it is an occasion of story, scholarship and challenge. And the May weather might be the best you will enjoy in Kerry, and perhaps elsewhere, that year.
The 2024 festival included a Sunrise Swim, Morning Fitness sessions, a Treasure Hunt, the launch of an Audio Guide to the ‘Brendan Area’, a Light Procession by the Keepers of the Flame, St Brendan Perpetual Trophy Sailing Race, a climb of Mount Brandon, a seashore hike, a religious celebration, ringing St Brendan’s Bell at Brandon Creek and an evening seminar on ‘The Brendan Challenge for Today’.
The Brendan they celebrate is a local Fenit man born in 484 who began his travels by going to Wales to study under St David. On returning to Ireland he established a number of communities in the south-west of the country before setting out on a series of voyages up the coast of Scotland and out into the north Atlantic.
Popular accounts of his voyages were recorded in the 8th century ‘Voyage of St Brendan the Navigator’ and tales of his discovering a strange land to the west (America?) may have inspired Cristopher Columbus. (One records his arrival late at an island and next morning discovering he was on the back of a large whale. See photo.)
I did only part of the Mount Brandon (Brendan’s Mountain) climb and arrived at Cloghane too late for the ‘St Brendan’s Fare’, advertised as ‘a new culinary combination of freshly available seafood which would have sustained St Brendan, with a potato topping, followed by music’. (Someone pointed out there were no potatoes in Ireland in St Brendan’s day but, as they say in Kerry, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.)
What made the celebrations memorable, besides the glorious May weather and the south Kerry scenery, was the enthusiasm. Each house had a flag to mark the occasion and tourist buses defied the narrow roads.
While some events were obviously directed at tourists, it was essentially a local celebration. The West Kerry people have not forgotten their Brendan and if outsiders want to join in celebrating him, they are welcome.
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