Love, Irish Style

From Islands Magazine, via MSNBC.com:

I Love Ireland
Looking for love (and a pint of Guinness) at the Matchmaking Festival

Willie Daly moves through the crowd like a modern-day messiah. People crowd around, their eyes wide with expectation, their hearts open to his sermon of universal love. They clutch his forearm as if touch alone will hasten their quest, suffuse them with the energy that flows through this jovial, gray-bearded sage. At any other place you might think this was some sort of religious revival. But this is a jam-packed pub in Ireland, in a little place called Lisdoonvarna near the blustery west coast of County Clare on the North Atlantic. The occasion is the historic village matchmaking festival, and Daly is one of the last of the traditional Irish matchmakers — a faith healer, a heart mender, a miracle man of Irish love.

Read the whole story here.

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My wife and I honeymooned in Ireland back in 2002, and while we didn't go to Lisdoonvarna, we did pass by many similar small towns, places where, if you blink, you missed the whole thing. In County Galway, however, we did go to the town of Roundstone, very much a spiritual twin to Lisdoonvarna, and the shooting location for one of our favorite movies of all time (quite appropiately), The Matchmaker. The movie follows a young Boston woman who ends up in the (fictional) town of Ballinagra in the middle of a matchmaking festival, with all the romantic comedy fixings along the way. It is a wonderful and charming movie that showcases the beauty of northwestern Ireland as well as offer a glimpse, however movie-like, at this old Irish custom. Rent it/buy it, you'll like it.