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BROSNA

CO. KERRY · IE

Brosna
Brosnach

STOP 07 / 07

Brosnach · Co. Kerry

A 174-person village on the Cork-Kerry border that holds the heart of Sliabh Luachra music.

Brosna is small. A hundred and seventy-four people at the last count, a church Ashlin built in 1868, two schools, a post office, and a few pubs that come and go with the years. Stand in the square and you can see most of it. The Cork border is a few minutes south. Limerick a few minutes east. The Munster Blackwater rises in the hills behind the village, which is the kind of fact you can repeat in any pub in the country and no one will believe you.

What makes Brosna worth a detour is what you can't see — a music tradition that punches several weight classes above the village's size. This is Sliabh Luachra, the upland country where Cork, Kerry and Limerick run into each other, and where the tunes are polkas and slides instead of the reels you'll hear in Clare or Donegal. The bowing is different. The ornaments are different. The feet move faster. Pádraig O'Keeffe, the schoolmaster-fiddler from Glountane up the road, taught half of it; his pupils Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford carried it out into the world; Con Curtin, born here in 1926, ran a session-pub on the square and gave the village a festival that's still going.

The honest version is that you come here in the last weekend of June, or you come here for an afternoon to look at the church and drive on. Outside the festival there is no restaurant, no hotel, and the pubs keep village hours. Plan around that and Brosna delivers something most villages this size can't — a working tradition you can sit inside, three nights a year, with players who learned it from people who learned it from the ones on the old recordings.

Population

174

Walk score

Square, church, two roads — done in five minutes

Founded

Parish church rebuilt 1868

Coords

52.3119° N, 9.2669° W

01 / 07

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 Sliabh Luachra

Polka country, not reel country.

The hills where three counties meet — Kerry, Cork, Limerick — kept a different tradition alive. Polkas and slides, not the reels and jigs you'll hear elsewhere. Different bowing, different ornaments, faster feet.

Stories & lore → 02 The schoolmaster

Pádraig O'Keeffe's pupils came from here.

O'Keeffe (1887–1963) taught fiddle from a battered bicycle around the parishes of Sliabh Luachra. Brosna was on his round. The tradition he kept alive is the tradition the village still plays.

Stories & lore → 03 The festival

Con Curtin weekend, last in June.

Three days of sessions, concerts, a céilí in the hall, and busking in the square. Held since 2001 in honour of the village's own fiddler-publican. The rest of the year is very quiet. That's the deal.

Music this week →

02 / 07

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The schoolmaster-fiddler

Pádraig O'Keeffe

Pádraig O'Keeffe (1887–1963) was born at Glountane Cross, fifteen minutes up the road towards Castleisland. He took over as principal of the local national school after his father died in 1915, then walked away from teaching in 1920 to play and teach fiddle full-time. He cycled the parishes of Sliabh Luachra — Brosna among them — for forty years, teaching by tablature in copybooks, drinking in Lyon's of Scartaglen, and outliving most of his pupils' parents. Séamus Ennis recorded him for Radio Éireann between 1947 and 1949, and the BBC carried the broadcasts in 1952. The recordings are still the source.

Why Sliabh Luachra sounds different

The polka and the slide

Most of Irish trad is jigs and reels. Sliabh Luachra is polkas and slides — faster, lighter, made for set-dancers in farmhouse kitchens rather than concert halls. The bowing is short and hammered. The ornaments are tighter. A reel from Clare and a polka from here will not sound like cousins; they sound like different musics that share an island. The tradition stayed local because the dancers stayed local, and when collectors finally arrived in the 1940s the tunes had survived almost untouched.

How the tradition got out

Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford

Two of O'Keeffe's pupils carried the Sliabh Luachra fiddle out of the parish. Denis Murphy went to America and back. His sister Julia Clifford ended up in London. Both recorded — Murphy with O'Keeffe and the box-player Johnny O'Leary on the 1963 album Kerry Fiddles, Clifford on her own and with her son. Without them the tradition would have lived and died on the radio reels. With them it ended up in the hands of every player who ever wanted to learn a polka properly.

The fiddler who came home

Con Curtin

Con Curtin (1926–2009) grew up in Brosna, emigrated to London in the 1950s, played fiddle at every Irish session in the city, and ran the Balloon pub in Chelsea for years. In 1978 he came back, opened a bar in Brosna, and turned it into a session house where the music could happen on a Tuesday as easily as a Saturday. The Con Curtin Festival was founded in his honour in 2001, while he was still alive to enjoy it. He died in 2009. The festival did not.

03 / 07

Music, by day of the week.

Schedules drift. This is roughly right. The real answer is "ask in the first pub you find."

Mon

Quiet outside festival weekend

Tue

Occasional small session — ask at the bar

Wed

Quiet

Thu

Quiet

Fri

Festival weekend (last in June): sessions in every pub from teatime

Sat

Festival: concerts, céilí in the hall, busking in the square, sessions late

Sun

Festival: afternoon trail through the pubs, finishing session at night

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

St Moling's holy well Signposted from the village. A wishing-well in a quiet field, traditionally visited on Saturdays in May. The water rises from the same hill that feeds the Munster Blackwater. Bring nothing, leave nothing.

1 km returndistance

20 mintime

Mount Eagle and the Cork border Up the boreen south of the village onto the high ground where Kerry runs into Cork. Big sky, bog, and a view back over the parish that explains why the music sat where it sat. Wet underfoot most of the year.

6 km loopdistance

2 hourstime

Drive the source of the Blackwater The Munster Blackwater rises in the hills above Brosna and runs east through Mountcollins. Quiet roads, no traffic, sheep with strong opinions. Worth doing on the way to or from the village.

15 km loopdistance

Half an hour by cartime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

Quiet. The well at St Moling's gets visitors in May. Otherwise there's not much pulling you here.

◐ Mind yourself

Summer

Jun–Aug

The last weekend in June is the Con Curtin Festival — three days of sessions, concerts, céilí and busking. The reason to come.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

Bog colour on the hills, sessions thin. Pair it with Castleisland the first weekend of October for the Patrick O'Keeffe Festival up the road.

◐ Mind yourself

Winter

Nov–Feb

Half the village shuts itself in. The fire is on, the door is closed, and a stranger is a stranger.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Showing up on a random Tuesday expecting a session

Outside festival weekend the village runs at village pace. There may be a session. There may not. Don't drive an hour on the chance.

Booking accommodation in the village

There isn't any. Stay in Castleisland, Abbeyfeale or Newmarket and drive in. Twenty minutes from any of them.

Confusing this with the Patrick O'Keeffe Festival

That one's in Castleisland, the first weekend in October. Brosna's festival is Con Curtin, last weekend in June. Same musical world, different villages, different weekends.

Treating Sliabh Luachra as one place

It's a region, not a town. Brosna, Scartaglen, Knocknagoshel, Gneeveguilla, Ballydesmond, Newmarket — each has its own players and its own night. The tradition lives in the spread, not in a single venue.

Getting there.

By car

Castleisland to Brosna is 20 minutes on the R577. Abbeyfeale is 15 minutes east, across the Limerick line. Killarney is 50 minutes south. The roads are narrow and twisty in the last few miles — that's the point.

By bus

Local Link runs a limited service between Castleisland, Brosna and Abbeyfeale. Worth checking the timetable; not worth planning a weekend around.

By train

Nearest station is Tralee, 45 minutes by road, then bus or hire car.

By air

Kerry Airport (KIR) is 40 minutes. Cork is 1h 30m. Shannon is 1h 15m and may be the easiest from the US.