Recording the voices of the past

The official launch of Cuimhneamh an Chláir took place on Tuesday night in Ennis where crowds turned up to find out about this new group of volunteers, who will collect and record the memories of Clare’s older community.
The initiative began last January as a pilot project and has grown to a group of 25 strong volunteers who have been travelling across the county to collect memories of days gone by.
Tomás MacConmara, project co-ordinator of the group, said there was brilliant feedback at the launch, which was held in the Temple Gate Hotel.
“We had over 250 people there. We’d hoped to get a great crowd but the reaction was powerful. John Hoey, grandson of Margaret Hoey, who died in early 2009 aged 105, spoke from the heart and struck a chord with everyone in relation to having a recording of his grandmother. We had recorded her memories in January this year, two weeks before she died. That conveyed strongly what we’re all about,” Tomás said.
This kind of group is unique to Clare in that it is a new type of organisation based on mobilising people within communities. It is a co-ordinated countywide approach. The whole ethos is to collect this information and get it back out to the public.
The reasons behind this project are to document and record and pass on details of a way of life without electricity, without the modern technologies that now exist and to showcase what life was like in those times.
“We’re witnessing the tail-end of a way of life and we recognise that once our elderly generation is gone, that’s also a way of life gone. So we set out to record these people’s memories. It’s not just folklore, it’s not oral history but, as memories, it will include all of those aspects. These memories tell the story of an Ireland and a Clare we don’t recognise anymore and that’s one of the reasons we decided it would be most appropriate to call the group Cuimhneamh an Chláir,” Tomás added.
At the official launch, people were given a flavour for some of the recordings that were already carried out as well as some unusual but intriguing aspects of the group’s work. Among these aspects is the collection of words used, which the groups has entitled Focal an Chláir, these would involve words in Irish or even just colloquial words common to a specific rural setting in Clare. The idea behind this would be to get these phrases and words out to the general public and keep them in use and to document what their context is. Another aspect is recording old recipes passed down for wild crops before they are lost and forgotten.
Each of the volunteers that partake in collecting the memories and documenting them are referred to as cuairteoirí, which also means visitors, and this was something that was picked up from speaking with the older generation who would refer to going on cuairt to a neighbour or friend.
Interestingly a large group of young people were in attendance at the event on Tuesday. Tomás said what is also good to note about Cuimhneamh and Chláir is that their cuairteórí are a young group of people aged from the twenties to their thirties, who are all anxious to preserve the history and memories of our ancestors before they are lost forever.
A further endorsement of the project – the receipt of LEADER funding – was also announced at  Tuesday night’s launch.
Anyone interested in finding out more about the group or what they do can visit www.clarememories.ie or contact Tomás by emailing macconmarat@hotmail.com.