The last night of the program was the culmination of many of the cultural activities we’d been participating in since day 1; the acadamh at NUIG liked to ensure that we had a full experience of traditional life in the Gaeltacht. Thus we had lessons in singing traditional songs (it was labelled as sean-nos singing, but it really wasn’t), sean-nos dancing, and ceili dancing.
There was a great deal of all of that on the last night. I’m not terribly coordinated so I didn’t participate in the dancing, but I do enjoy singing. We did rousing renditions of “Peigín Leitir Móir,” “An Cailín Álainn,” and “Tá Mo Chleamhnas Déanta.” I particularly like “Tá Mo Chleamhnas Déanta,” though it’s the saddest of the group. I think we all found singing to be particularly useful for pronunciation practice.
At varying points some of the other students performed; a good many of us played traditional music, though it was only a small handful that volunteered to play in front of everyone else, rather than with everyone else as was more usual. I myself play tinwhistle and grew up playing with the Groton Session in Massachusetts, but I didn’t volunteer to go up. It was more than enough to watch and listen and have this room filled with Irish speaking where it had been English on that first morning.