At midnight in the Ritz bar, the country and western music brought the painfully shy bachelor farmers on to the dance floor. Gliding and turning and sweating with nerves, they briefly clung to that rare commodity on Ireland’s west coast: women.
Jack from Tipperary sipped a pint of Guinness at the bar. Pushing 80, this was his 40th fruitless year at the matchmaking festival but, as the song lyrics kept telling him, hope was a marvellous thing. His spinster sister was at home minding the cattle. He had been on painkillers for 22 years, had broken most of his bones driving Ireland’s perilous country lanes and now all he needed was a wife. ”I do get lonesome in the farmhouse, but then I listen to the radio,” he said. ”I love the music, it has kept me away from sin.”
Jack, along with 70 000 lovelorn, paying visitors, was hoping for a miracle at Ireland’s Lourdes of Love.
Lisdoonvarna in County Clare, in the south-west of the country, is the final stronghold of a centuries-old tradition. The dying art of the Irish matchmaker, who paired off the shy and negotiated their dowries, is now the last hope of an isolated rural community keeping itself alive with European Union grants.
There are about 20 bachelors to one woman in this wind-swept corner of the south-west coast. Ireland has one of Europe’s highest rates of suicide in its rural areas, with lone farmers among the most desperate and depressed. Now they pay the matchmaker â,¬50 a year to enter their name in his 100-year-old ledger in the hope of trying out their straight-talking charm.
”Your skin is lovely and your lines are even,” observed one gallant farmer to his new introduction.
But in the true spirit of Celtic Tiger capitalism, what was once an autumn bachelor fair has morphed into the biggest singles event in Europe — a staggering money-spinner bringing â,¬2,5-million and up to 80 000 people over six weeks each year.
Coach-loads of women arrive from England, eager thirtysomething men fly in from the United States. There is speed-dating, ”singles horse-trekking” and a pageant for the most eligible. The village of 700 people swells to bursting point as those without a room sleep in their cars.
As the festival prepared for an influx of 20 000 romantics recently, the matchmaker, Willie Daly, sat in his farmhouse contemplating the growing difficulty of rural pairing. On the wall hung the Pope-like portrait of the patron saint of Irish charmers, John F Kennedy. But still the prospects for love were slim. When Daly took over from his father and grandfather 40 years ago, the matchmaking had a near 100% success rate. Now the rate had dropped to about 25%. Daly remains the nation’s king of romance, having made more than 1 500 perfect matches, but there are not enough Irish women to go round.
Country women had either fled for Dublin, London or the US or had got ”terrible picky” and independent, he said. They were a lot less interested in ”prudently” looking beyond the exterior of a good-hearted man who hadn’t combed his hair for two weeks and had a shortage of teeth.
‘Teeth are easy to get these days if you want some,” Daly added. ”Most of the bachelor farmers haven’t had a cuddle from a woman since their mother died 30 years ago. That’s 30 years of unused love and attention to lavish on someone. Irish men are an attractive proposition.
”They are romantic, they play a lot of music, dance and sing. They are kind and faithful … well, there’s no one else to run off with. With all these cows calving and the mares foaling, the farmers look at the beauty of it and think ‘I’d like a baby.”’
Unfortunately, some, tortured with shyness, wait until they are 75 to take action. From seven to 10 each night, Daly sits in his ”office” — a table in the front nook of the Matchmaker pub.
There he opens his matchmaking ancestors’ ancient ledger held together with old shoe-laces. Men approach and enter their names and hobbies: horses and playing cards. Then they head for what Daley terms the ”great ambassador to love”: the Guinness.
”He’s a charmer. He could get two corpses out of a grave and make them make love to each other,” said a musician from Dublin.
Daly’s ledger is now bursting with so many papers that two drunk visitors recently bolted as he approached, mistaking him for the taxman.
A new addition to the crumpled pages are photographs sent from women in Thailand. Small numbers of farmers along the west coast have recently married Thai women and English-run Internet bride services have been quick to post sample introduction videos to Listdoonvarna.
Daly has not committed to the idea. He cannot decide whether it is best to spare Thai women the Atlantic gales and vast age differences of the rural dating scene, or to embrace their enthusiasm as ”something God sent the way of Irish people”.
John, a 57-year-old haulier and hurley stick-maker from Kilkenny, was into his fourth year at Lidsoonvarna and the loneliness was becoming unbearable.
”All I ask is to meet a woman who likes country and western music and is faithful,” he said. ”I’m not the type of person to stop her from dancing with anyone else, as long it ends there.
”Actually, I’d love a Filipino wife, they are supposed to be faithful, nice girls and good workers. I don’t mind about language barriers, both of us would learn.”
He gave a wistful sigh and headed off to find the matchmaker. — Â