Chapter 1: What is the significance of hearing nature's sounds?
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I stood, my head at an angle, craning to hear what the others were listening to. No matter how hard I tried, I could not hear it. They were nodding their heads, smiling at the recognition of this feathered visitor's voice. Yes, that's it. But the satisfaction and delight on hearing the first cuckoo was denied to me that year as spring unfolded like the ferns along our walk.
I just couldn't hear it. Sound, noise, echo, resonance, rustle, roar, scrunch, scrape, squeak, call, cry, bleat. Each of those words are connected by something most of us take for granted, the sense of hearing. So much of nature is absorbed, not always consciously, through our ears.
With my eyes closed, I could detect the buzz of summer insects, a picture painted by the sound of bumblebees rattling up and down the fingers of a foxglove. By the sea, I could hear the lapping of the tide curling on the fudge-like sand at the water's edge. I could hear the croaking of a frog, the plop as it dives into water, ripples widening to a wake of infinity.
I recall the sound of a baby seal crying for its mother, a melancholy wail cutting through the air, and the blood-curdling howl of a vixen screeching for her mate in the deep of the night. When I'm in woodland, I'm reminded of the poet John Clare, who used a beautifully onomatopoeic word, southering, to describe the sighing of the wind through the trees.
In autumn, the desiccating leaves do a discreet tango to the Latin beat of the wind. Sometimes it's the sound of those dry leaves crunching underfoot, or the first few splashes of rain hitting them, a prelude to an unexpected cloudburst. Often it is the grating rasp of a pair of branches rubbing together like two old friends, supported by a continuo of woodland birds.
The cuckoo, the chiff-chaff, the peewit all have names coined to echo their calls. Other avian sounds I could never bear to lose are the haunting call of the curlew or the robin's scratchy cry. All of these are notes of music to my ears.
Chopin's Raindrop Prelude, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, wonderful though they are, could never replace listening to the actual sounds that inspired them. The early morning symphony, that is the dawn chorus, must be the one outstanding sound that connects all who are mindful of the natural world, reminding us to respect and protect something that once gone can never be replaced.
I have immense sympathy for one composer who lost his hearing at quite an early age. This was Beethoven. He continued to create his magnificent music, echoing the remembered sounds of nature, even though from the age of 30 he could no longer hear all that inspired him.
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Chapter 2: How did a runaway dog spark a community effort?
The poor dogminder and everyone in the local stables tried to catch him, but he stayed out of reach. Kumo is a terrier whip at cross, and despite his small stature, he can move fast. They scoured the woods, but he had disappeared. Soon, sightings began to be reported. He had run into a housing estate near the Hellfire Club, but then re-emerged and trotted off towards Kilmashog Mountain.
It was the beginning of a five-day odyssey that would take him on a grand tour of the Dublin mountains. By dawn the next day, he still hadn't been found. My daughter rushed home from her equestrian idyll in the Tuscan hills, while my wife and I fretted and tried to organise travel home from the Greek island of Paros.
When my daughter and her partner got home, they and their incredible friends immediately embarked on the biggest dog hunt the area had ever seen. Dozens of people scoured the hills and woods using motorbikes and drones. Doors were knocked on, WhatsApp groups formed, thousands of flyers printed and distributed. There were occasional sightings, one of him happily jogging up the path to Tick Nock.
The posse descended on the area and saturated it, but there was no sign of him. Then silence. For a few days, there were no more sightings. Meanwhile, my wife and I were marooned on Paros. All the flights and ferries were booked out as it was a bank holiday weekend. We finally managed to hustle our way onto the last wildly expensive cabin on a ferry to Athens.
It was, appropriately, a cabin designed for people with dogs, and we couldn't help but contrast the luxury of the fittings with what we imagined Kumo was experiencing on the cold Dublin hillsides. Soon I found myself standing on Ticknock at five in the morning, calling his name, as the dawn chorus started up and the woods were alive with rabbits, fox and deer.
I stood there looking around the hills, trying to imagine where he was going, what was he thinking. We were heading home to rest when a phone pinged. Someone had posted on social media that they had seen a dog answering Kumo's description at two in the morning, running along the road, leading up to Johnny Fox's pub in Glen Cullen. We rushed to the area and scoured the outhouses and woods.
We knocked on every door along the road and handed out flyers. It was raining heavily, which I felt worked in our favour. Kumo hates the rain, seeing it as a personal affront, causing him both bodily and emotional pain. So wherever he was, I was sure he was holed up there, waiting for it to pass. We had regrouped at Johnny Fox's for coffee when the phone call came.
A lady walking her dog on a nearby hill had seen the poster. And when she spotted a small black and white dog huddling under a bush in the rain, she knew it was him. We rushed up to the spot and there he was, soaked but seemingly unsurprised to see us. There were tears of joy.
In the hours after his rescue, or capture, he dined on boiled chicken and then lay down to sleep in his favourite sheepskin basket, snoring a little. Often I look into his eyes and try to imagine what he was thinking about on those long nights and days without his food bowl, his basket and without his people.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the family face during the dog search?
At night, the wolves and whippets run in me along the road. I hide from the eyes of the cars. By day I go to ground, a son of the earth. I raw-dog the rain and huddle under a bush. At night the red lads stop and stare, their eyes like pilot lights on the TV in my living room. From the top of Ticknock, I look down on the city. The lights are beautiful. It looks like home.
It is not where I am going.
Scientists have long puzzled over the emergence of music in the story of human evolution, with Darwin describing it as the great mystery. One theory emanating from Harvard is that music provided the distraction for early man to hold two dissonant thoughts long enough to evaluate them, to make better choices and, as a consequence, to evolve.
It was with notions of refinement and the arts that we encouraged our eight-year-old's interest in learning to play the violin. We were beside ourselves with anticipation when she came home from her first bowing lesson with Loretto, equipped with a half-length violin and instructions to practice for 30 minutes every day.
Eager to demonstrate her newfound competence, Isabel cupped the violin to her chin, her left hand stretching to clasp the fingerboard, with index finger straining to press the A string in first position. Then it began. For weeks our house was filled with enamel-rasping screeches. What sounded like nails being drawn across a blackboard, I learned were scales.
The disconcerting, caterwauling-like riffs were arpeggios. We bit our lips and praised her efforts as we wondered just what exactly we had visited upon our once tranquil little hamlet. But she was determined. relentlessly searching for something within the chaotic cadences, something she seemed instinctively to know was there but just out of reach. Then everything changed.
The mist lifted, the veil drawn back. It seemed as if in an instant the screeching resolved itself into sweetness and depth and a tonal quality emerged. she had found the music she was searching for within the chaos. As her finger placement precision improved, as her bowing became more confident and as she mastered vibrato, we realised we had a musician in the house.
Within a couple of years, she graduated to a three-quarter length violin and at 12, she was ready for full size. we were recommended a violin maker in Dublin to make a selection. More than a little out of my depth, it appeared to me that there were two types of violin on offer. There were the old instruments of various shades of brown and dark amber, some with scratches and obvious repair work.
And then there were the bright new shiny ones. Only the best for my girl, I thought. We will have one of those, though I winced at the price tags. Isabel spent several hours trying out a variety of the shiny models, reluctantly making a selection which we took on approval to Loretto.
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Chapter 4: How did Beethoven's hearing loss influence his music?
© BF-WATCH TV 2021 Mergers, takeovers, name changes, promotions, relegations, bus stops and bankruptcy. This club has seen it all since it came into being in the first decade of the 20th century.
Right now, though, sitting at the top of Italy's Serie B league and with the season almost over, it's a club that looks destined, barring disaster, to take its place among the gods of Serie A next season, with Napoli, Juventus and Inter Milan all beckoning from the sidelines. So it's back up with the big boys then, once again.
Yes, Venezia has been here before, as recently as 2024, when the city went bananas for a week in those blissful early summer days after the home match against Cremonesi had clinched promotion. A year later, and they were back down in the B Division again. But now, right now, a city holds its breath. I know I'm holding mine. As a football fan all my life, I thought I'd seen it all.
But there's nothing quite like Italian football, the calcio as they call it. Not the game itself, for that's a thing of beauty the world over. No, what raises Italian football to the rafters is all that goes with it. The spectacle, the noise, the chanting, the singing, the flag waving, the pure passion of it all. I thought I knew what I was facing on my first visit to the Penzo some years ago.
Sure, this was just a game between two middle-of-the-road second division teams. The match being thrashed out on the pitch of the old and then fairly decrepit Penzo Stadium. Sorry, Pierluigi, no offence to yourself. What with you being a decorated First World War hero pilot and all that.
a young man who grew up on the city's Lido, and with your name now long bestowed upon this football ground, which lies just across the water from your birthplace. Although it was a game between two also-ran teams that day, still, what an experience. The drama, the noise, the sheer spectacle of the Curva Sud, that southern stand behind the goal, with its cheek by jowl heaving mass of humanity.
not least the good-natured football altars of the Venetian lagoon, with their own non-stop 90-minute performance. Drums, chants, claps, songs, flags, flares and smoke bombs, all par for the course. I couldn't take my eyes off them that first day. Many, many visits later, and still they hold me in their thrall.
as they will hold me again in the last match of the season, when the Arancio Nero Verdi, named for the orange, black and green strip that so defines the club, take on the Sicilians, facing Palermo at the Penzo. On the day of this final reckoning, I leave early for my walk to the stadium, located as it is in the tree-covered green lung of the city that is Sant'Elena.
Making my way from Santa Croce, right at the opposite end of this fish-shaped island, I'll begin to spot them. The men, women and children of the lagoon, with all their sartorial flashes of orange, black and green, the scarves, the shirts, the sweaters and the flags, of course, still rolled but ready for unfurling on the curva sud.
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Chapter 5: What role does music play in human evolution?
That Easter Saturday, a friend and I set off from Dublin for Donegal, back when teenagers hitchhiked across Ireland from a sense of adventure. Our progress was slow. Frost gripped Sligo Town when we finally reached her and spent the night in sleeping bags in the shop doorway, a gada kicking us awake at dawn. We hitched on into Donegal on Easter Sunday. What were we seeking?
Perhaps one of those transcending childhood moments that you never forget. This happened on Easter Monday when I entered that pub and heard John Doherty. An off-duty garter in the bar must have guessed that I was underage. But realising I was only there for the music, he insisted, with Jesuitical wisdom, on buying me a glass of stout, ordering me to nurse it all night.
Locals quietly chatted until finally the woman of the house opened the door and Doherty appeared, having been resting upstairs. He sat quietly on a chair set apart, tuning the fiddle she handed him. A hush descended as Dorothy raised a bow and began to play. His chin and eyes were the only still parts of him.
It seemed impossible for any old man to play so fast, his bow hand drawing grace notes and ornamentations between the notes. The sound so rich it seemed more than one fiddle had to be playing. I wouldn't have been surprised if Dorothy's fiddle burst into flames. Taking a break, he saw I was a stranger and briefly greeted me with great courtesy.
Then he played on until, long after closing time, the woman of the house opened the side door again. When he rose, the entire bar rose, as if for royalty. He excused himself, saying he was old and tired. Nobody sat down until he left the room. 1975 seems like a different world now, but even then, Dorothy's way of life belonged to a different era.
He was born in 1900, into a famous line of fiddlers stretching back to the 1700s. His father set high standards for his sons, Siamie, Mickey, Hugh and his youngest, John, which caused a gentle rivalry. Although field recordings of them all exist, John was the most famous. Yet often he didn't own a fiddle.
From early in life he travelled around the circuit of remote Donegal places, initially walking as a tinsmith and peddler by day. By night he played and taught music. At a time when the travelling people were an integral part of the seasonal rural economy, Doherty set lines of delineation about what work he did. Although proud of his traveller heritage, he was marked apart by music.
To have a Doherty stay in your house was regarded as an honour. This was before television, when every locality had visiting houses. Doherty's arrival was a source of intense excitement. He walked everywhere, borrowing a fiddle in every hamlet.
Ciarán Machna Huna recalled trying to track down the shy Doherty in the 1950s, going from hamlet to hamlet until finally discovering Doherty walking along a lonely mountain road. Field recordings were remarkable, often made in houses without electricity, the only power source being the battery of a car left running outside.
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Chapter 6: How does learning an instrument transform a child's life?
A word gifted. Joy. Care. Hope. Before we circled on. Receiving from them. Giving to them. Orhus. Curum. Thocus. It will be like this in the coming times, I said, weaving us on. No matter our troubles. There will also be music, laughter, love. Together we will create orchards, wildflowers, woodland, peace, belonging, freedom. Such futures we set onto the air, like birdsong from our mouths.
On this morning's programme we heard On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Zoe Devlin The Runaway Dog was by Michael O'Loughlin Changing Violins by Tom Rine Followed by Forza Venezia by Rosalind Dee The last travelling fiddle player was by Dermot Bulger. And This I Promise You, a poem by Grace Wells. The music was... The opening of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
5, The Emperor, played by Radu Lupu and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta. Wild One by Thin Lizzy. Meditation, from Thais, by Massonet, played by Nicola Benedetti, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding. Libiamo, from Verdi's Traviata, sung by Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Rizzi.
And Roaring Mary, Stormy Weather, played by fiddler John Doherty. Sunday Miscellany's broadcast coordinator is Elaine Conlon. The producer is Sarah Binchy. And you can listen back on the RTE radio app or on the programme website. Just search for RTE Sunday Miscellany. You've been listening to Sunday Miscellany.
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