‘A chuisle geal mo chroí, won’t you buy a box from me, and you’ll have the prayers of Dan from Connemara;
I’ll sell them cheap and low, buy a box before you go, from the poor broken-hearted farmer, Dan O’ Hara.‘
The words are sad; the song is plaintive and the singer knows the story. He knows the history of the hills and the story of the old days in Connemara. But despite the sentiments of the song which he sings so often, Máirtín Walsh, is a jovial man.
“I would never worry much; I would keep at it,” he explained. It’s a motto he follows to this day, 30 years after he developed the Dan O’Hara Heritage Centre close to Clifden, in Co. Galway.
As we celebrate Heritage Week this week (August 13-21), it is enterprises and conservation projects such as the Dan O’Hara Heritage Centre that keep the heritage of rural life alive.
Heritage centre
Walsh is reputed to have been the first farmer in Ireland to grasp the state-funded opportunities associated with agri-tourism in the early 1990s.
His venture was focused on an old and run-down stone structure on his mountain holding.
Máirtín researched the Dan O’ Hara song and story and was satisfied that he had traced the ‘broken-hearted farmer’ to the stone dwelling bordering on the foot of the Twelve Bens.
It was a story that resonated widely in rural Ireland and further afield; the story of poverty and eviction with the ship across the ocean giving the only beam of hope.
Even then in another land, it could be hardship and a demotion to the indignity of selling anything you could, even boxes of matches to passers-by, on a street corner.
It was a bleak heritage in so many ways, but Máirtín Walsh saw the potential for that often time’s black history and heritage to be moulded into a tourism success story on a west of Ireland farm.
Dan O’Hara house
So to get people to the ‘Dan O Hara’ house, you would bring the visitors up from the N59 road into the mountain; build a roadway, and find a suitable type of coach to be drawn by a high-powered tractor on a pathway indented into the stone-clad terrain.
At the same time, an audio-visual room was developed near the dwelling house coupled with a café and shop, mainly consisting of traditional garments.
His ideas and plans received widespread publicity and were seen as a ‘rock solid’ idea by the promoters of agrí-tourism; farm enterprises that would be linked to the land and earn extra income. He won national awards.
“It was all good publicity at every turn,” Máirtín said, “but I hadn’t done anything yet. The hard work lay before me but I was particularly driven to make a success of it given the amount of praise lavished on the project.”
The first year was hard with 3,000 visitors. However, in the year before the Covid-19 crisis, 65,000 people visited the Dan O’Hara Heritage Centre.
The past two years have been tough “but you have to be prepared for those things”, Máirtín Walsh added.
Enterprise
Máirtín Walsh thinks well outside the ‘box’. At one time, he went to New York, “dressed” in ragged clothes, battered shoes, and a very holed hat. In the New York winter snow, he handed out boxes of matches to passers-by while he sang Dan O’Hara.
In a huge coincidence, a man from Connemara who knew him, saw Máirtín there.
Máirtín Walsh is a student of heritage and local history but his schooling days were limited. He sees things that he might have done with more schooling but, on the other hand, he thinks that schooling can put a brake on entrepreneurship.
“If you weigh up and assess everything, and look deep into possible pitfalls, you might never start,” he said.
Another coach arrives on the street. It’s time to start uphill again to the Dan O’Hara homestead; to tell the story and sing the song again, and maybe have a look at his own cattle on the way.
‘In the year of ’64, I had acres by the score, and the grandest land you ever set a plough through;
But the landlord came you know, and he laid our old home low, and it’s here I am today, now broken-hearted.‘