The Legend Of Saint Kieran

I knew that this project would be loads of fun as soon as I entered the room. The pupils from the combined 5th and 6th classes at Saint Kieran’s School For Children From The Travelling Community in Bray bombarded me with questions - ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? How did you get here? How long did it take you? What car did you drive? What colour is it? Are you married or single?’ were just the ice-breakers, whose answers soon led to a second and then third wave of enquiries. I don’t expect to be subjected to the level of scrutiny that I experienced, on that morning in that classroom, again until my Last Day Of Judgement. When I complimented the group on their curiosity, charm and ability to listen, they said - ‘we are just nosy’.

If only the children had known that I had travelled to Bray that day in the boot of a car with only a rice cracker for sustenance. :)

I was asked by Caroline, their Teacher, to introduce the project that we would work on together throughout a series of workshops over the next six weeks.. Our goal was to create something for The Mermaid Arts Centre’s 2021 Yarn Storytelling Festival. After discussing various possibilities with the pupils they decided that they would like to create an illustrated book about Saint Kieran.

During the previous year’s Lockdown, pupils from Saint Kieran’s produced lots of wonderful and heartfelt work in response to an open call from The Mermaid Arts Centre for portraits and poems featuring loved ones… which is what led to their being invited to take part in this project.

During our second session, I told the class some stories that I had researched about the life of Saint Kieran. One that particularly amused and inspired them was about a time Saint Kieran met Saint Patrick whilst on a pilgrimage to Italy. Saint Patrick presented Saint Kieran with a bell that had no clanger. It was a silent bell that couldn’t be rung. Saint Kieran was understandably befuddled. Why would he be gifted a half-broken bell? Saint Patrick explained that Saint Kieran should return to Ireland, and that the bell would start to ring when he arrived at the right location to build a church. So he did… and it did!

A girl in the class named Brigid came up with the idea of adapting the story, so that instead of a bell with no clanger, Saint Patrick could give Saint Kieran a guitar with no strings. That spark of cleverness caused all the other pupils to get more into the idea of updating and changing the stories of Saint Kieran, to give each a unique and often hilarious slant.

This became the method that we employed to create The Legend Of Saint Kieran By The Pupils Of Saint Kieran’s School. I would tell them a story from the preexisting mythology, and then they would find ways to evolve, reimagine and alter it, so as to make it their own.

We combined a few of Saint Kieran’s stories to make a storybook-length tale. We wrote it out and divided it into page sized sections, and then began to make illustrations to go with the text. The pupils did a magnificent job of drawing and colouring the pictures.

Before too long, thanks to a great deal of teamwork and effort, all the elements necessary to put the book together had been produced. I had enough time to put everything together for our Printer, and also create a video for the launch.

You may have noticed the beautiful and subtle use of music. That was made by Brian Murphy, a very talented musician who has a special gift for being able to collaborate with other Creatives and accentuate whatever it is that they are attempting to do. He’s sneaky-brilliant, because he makes everything he works on better, whilst drawing little or no attention to himself… like an angel, or a fourth-dimensional being of some sort.

On the subject of fourth-dimensional beings, from time to time, throughout the project, we received visitations from Saint Kieran himself. I say we, although I myself, never got to meet Saint Kieran, because he always opted to pop in whenever I had left the classroom to fetch art materials or use the restroom. I was happy to get to see him in this photo at least.

Saint Kieran with the Authors & Illustrators of The Legend Of Saint Kieran

We had a tremendous book launch in The Mermaid Arts Centre. The book’s creators got to sit in the theatre and watch and listen to the story that they had made on a huge cinema-sized screen, whilst consuming all sorts of sweets and treats provided by Aoife Demel. Aoife is the curator and coordinator of The Yarn Festival each year. After the viewing, and much applause, Aoife presented everyone with copies of their book, printed by Triest Press in Roscommon. We posed for photographs for local news outlets, and we were generally made an almighty fuss of.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! A lovely write up about the project from The Bray People newspaper.

We also received high praise from Yarn Festival attendees, many of whom purchased copies of the limited edition book from The Mermaid Art Centre. It was particularly lovely to get a nice bit of recognition from The Irish Literary Times and famed Author and Irish Traveller, Oein DeBhairduin.

Screenshot of a tweet from The Irish Literary Timers no less.. or maybe it’s a retweet. I’m not sure. I’m not much of a Twitterer.

As if all that wasn’t enough, an ebook version of The Legend Of Saint Kieran has been included in the Children’s Books Section of The Traveller Collection Online, a website dedicated to documenting art, craft, stories and other cultural artefacts produced by people from The Traveller Community. You can check that out using this link - https://travellercollection.ie - though I’ll expect you back on this website promptly when you’re done. Thank you. Thank you please. :)

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