Discovering The Sidhe through ‘The Dream of Fódhla’

I enjoyed a wonderful evening out at The Model Theatre, Sligo, yesterday to see the premiere of ‘The Dream of Fódhla’  a film born under the inspiration of the remarkable poet Stephen Murphy. Stephen, with an eventual team of 9 others for filming, sound and production, complete this wonderful film project kindly commissioned by the Sligo PPN. 

Most of the photos here are from Stephen Murphy’s press release of this film.

Sligo PPN is Public Participation Network based around a vision for a sustainable Sligo and this includes attention to trees and water within the county. But making a film around Stephen’s poetry seems quite unique for them. 

This makes sense to me as I am constantly discovering that storytelling expressed through an art craft reaches people much better than through layers of lectures, and bullet point style books. 

Storytelling enters the passion and spirits of us, and can brand itself for life with us. No logical memorising seems to do this? It never has for me.

The core inspiration for this work from Stephen jumps right into something I passionately believe in. 

Stephen focused on something the great Kerry philosopher John Moriarty said. “We need to reimagine Ireland through the eyes of Fódhla, the Earth Goddess of Irish mythology” 

I believe that to tell of folklore, mythology, and ancestry, we have to let go of the lives and the culture we live now and focus on trying to be viewing through the eyes of a character of the time we were presenting, even if the character never physically lived and is symbolic such as a goddess or sidhe entity.

I hear an incredible amount of folklore and myth storytelling that seems to assume the ancient past had the internet, freeways, and air transport services. Like we have today. Sure, St. Patrick got around all those 100s of places he blessed through his life, using Google Maps.  

Stephen, and the team's film is a beautiful fusion of two things. First is an enchanting tour of ancient megalithic sites, coastline, and other spaces around Co. Sligo that enchants magic on those who visit.

The other is a passionate reference to Ogham, using stunning words, imagery, photography, and music. 

For this, Stephen was inspired by the dreaded ‘The White Goddess’ book by Robert Graves.

I say ‘dreaded’ because my father’s family were passionate about Ogham prompts and divination, along with other divination crafts including astrology. But among my earliest childhood memories was the family meeting up on Sundays and raging about Graves’ book, and how it’s popularity could destroy all inherited wisdom about Ogham. This was drummed into me from a very young age never to follow the interpretations of Graves. 

Though Stephen Murphy seems to have drunk some of the Graves potion, I was warned about as a child, he and the team have still produced a remarkable work.

Through reading ‘The White Goddess’ by Robert Graves, Stephen was enchanted by a Graves interpretation of the Song of Amergin. It seems that Graves believed that the ‘Song Of Amergin' lines are a code for an Ogham lunar calendar of the trees.

To start with, this is what made my family angry and raging. They were deeply into both ogham and astrology, but seeing how Graves seemed to try to merge the two was like ripping apart their ancestral spirit and soul. 

To me, as you will have read in various Nature Folklore editions I have posted, I feel that everything Amergin and Milesians that is told in story, is totally a string of beautiful metaphors full of symbols and guiding prompts. From this we also have the philosophy of the Three Cauldrons for one. 

But the closest I think we could ever find in actually historic events is an age of tribes arriving on this island, now Ireland, that came from Iberia. 

I believe these people were the source of what became the Gaelic culture, and I have explained in other editions how I feel the ‘gael’ word evolved from earlier words describing ‘people of the trees’ to eventually become describing a sort of elite class of ‘people who wrote on materials of trees’. And Ireland became the land of scholars.  

Anyway, after Stephen Murphy became enchanted by Graves, especially his theories of Amergin’s poem, he decided to attempt to translate his own decoded version of the Song of Amergin back into Gaeilge.  

This was not entirely Graves motivated, though. I believe more powerful and more visionary that that was a dream, a sort of ‘aisling’ dream that Stephen had, I think his dream happened over more than one night, of an earth Goddess singing to him in his dreamtime. Stephen related this song in his dream to being ‘Amhrán na Crainn’, the song of the trees.

Stephen reached out to a Gaeilgeoir friend, incredible singer, Aoife Ní Shúilleabháin, to unravel what he was assembling from his dream and Amergin. Aoife sent Stephen a tune that had come through to her during her dreamtime. Her tune was the exact same air as Fódhla had been singing to Stephen within his dream.  I can believe this ‘magic’ from several similar experiences I have had in the past, and hope you have had this experience too.

At the ‘The Dream of Fódhla’ premiere at The Model Theatre in Sligo, yesterday evening, 20th of February at 7pm, PPN Sligo were remarkable hosts.

It started with a meet and chat session by the cafe with provided tea, coffee, and what seemed like home made biscuits. Before that, I was amazingly privileged to be warmly greeted by Stephen Murphy himself, unusually wearing a dashing suit, in the car park as soon as I arrived.

Several people I knew were there gathered, and several people I had never met beyond Facebook and YouTube, but they recognised me. So this kicked off as a very social event. 

Eventually, what seemed to be like a huge treasure vault door opened and we all, I think about 80 of us, poured into a stunning state of the art cinema theatre with a huge screen and a performing stage below it.

A PPN Sligo leader then provided an excellent introduction to the project followed by Stephen Murphy who served us a lovely intimate insight into this work.

Then the film rolled onto the big screen and everyone was transported beyond everything they believed. The space ship, time capsule, whatever it was took off. But the words ‘ship’ and ‘capsule’ are too confining. This was infinite.

To me, the most beautiful parts were the close up tree cinematography and the exquisite calming blending of Stephen’s poetry and Aoife’s singing. Aoife is actually in the film a lot too as ‘Fódhla’, and there is only a couple of flashes of Stephen. 

The Ogham references were not in well known Ogham order and only a few listed, and maybe confined to Grave’s 13 Ogham symbols interpretation and not the full 18, 20, and 25 symbols in other interpretations?  But that detail did not seem to matter at all.

Each tree referenced did have a ‘prompt’ word or two pop up on the screen and they were quite close to what I use within my Ogham Prompts course too.

After the premiere viewing, which was all too brief, of course, it was announced we would meet up for a ‘workshop’ after the viewing.

I think the ‘workshop’ word may have had several people running as those remaining for that were about 40 people, but that was a wonderful number for what was to follow. 

Those attending the follow up workshop, picked up a coloured piece of paper. I picked up a yellow piece as yellow is my favourite colour. We then entered an open space with tables labelled with the different colours. So I sat with fellow yellow paper holders, and what a lovely bunch of people they were. Each table had a PPN Network rep as a mediator. 

We then entered into a delightful conversation about our reactions, feelings, interpretations, favourite parts of the film, and even what it may inspire us to do. Not only were the people at our table wonderful to talk with but our mediator was excellent. In the end, the mediators stood up and shared summaries of the overall feelings from each table. 

From this, we went onto a very welcoming tapas style supper with tea and coffee. A lovely varied tapas snack range, and then some social mingling for more conversation.

Eventually I was getting tired with a 90 minute night drive ahead of me. I’m still not great at returning to driving, but through this evening I was in great form. There were about 10 people remaining chatting when I left and I drove home very inspired, calm and very happy after such a wonderful evening.  

Thank you Stephen Murphy and team who enabled Stephen’s vision into film, and PPN Sligo for commissioning this, making it possible, and hosting such a  wonderful evening out to view the premiere of ‘The Dream of Fódhla’, plus the wonderful conversations and snacks.

I have included this review within my ‘Discovering The Sidhe’ series this Spring, as I do believe that Stephen’s initial inspiration of what John Moriarty said. “We need to reimagine Ireland through the eyes of Fódhla, the Earth Goddess of Irish mythology”. 

I tend to also suggest we re-vision our lives through the life flow of the ‘Sidhe’ through whatever entities we may imagine the ‘Sidhe’, though. To me, this is water. Some even say the ‘Sidhe’ are just those ancient megalithic ‘fairy hills’. There are some of those shown in this film. Some people believe that the entities are something else within them?  More about this in my next Nature Folklore edition. 

‘The Dream of Fódhla’ film will be online for everyone from early March, but obviously not with the same big screen and conversation experience I thoroughly enjoyed last night. But let's keep talking about this remarkable short film when it is released and you have watched it, maybe on your own home big screen? :-) .

If you would like to join my 'Ogham Prompts' course?
20 optional modules a year, join in from any module any time as this is a cycle course, plus some meet-ups
Please consider upgrading to monthly or very discounted annual subscription and get instant access to my 'Ogham Prompts' course modules.

Subscribers will also receive enlarged versions of my free postings to include video clips and interviews where possible. I believe more value that a book, though I have books being put together too. 

All of my 20 Ogham Prompts are now linked up for easy reference in one place … gazetteer