All About August: Anne Lucey talks to a returned son of Cahersiveen who helped set up a festival with a compelling mix of music and culture Festival highlights

'Benny McCarthy, Shane O'Driscoll and I met one night and decided to set up a festival with a Celtic theme. The difference between this and previous festivals was we were thinking big," John O'Connor explains.

"We never had a lorry. From the word go, we had a proper stage."

O'Connor, who had been working abroad in Germany and Spain, was to return home for good - he now teaches English at Coláiste na Sceilge secondary school.

What has emerged since that first meeting is Cahersiveen Celtic Music Festival, a cultural highlight in the calendar of south Kerry. This bank holiday weekend will mark its eighth year with a programme of more than 40 events from concerts to polka sets, lectures, coastal walks, archaeological trips and theatre along with many of the traditional events associated with an Irish town festival.

The festival logo designed by the artist Jim Fitzpatrick is, perhaps, a modern version of the ancient Siveen, who gives her name to the "city" of Cahersiveen.

A pre-Christian princess, Sive (her formal name) is thought to have been the daughter of a chieftain and an instructress in martial arts, according to local historian Leonard Hurley.

Known once as "O'Connell's town", the place of the Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, Cahersiveen has always managed somehow to secure a place on a bigger stage. Nearby Valentia was the world centre of transatlantic communications for over a century - parts of the copper and rubber bound cable are still to be found in local scrapyards.

More recently, Cahersiveen has come to prominence as the seat of the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue.

On coming home, John O'Connor immediately appreciated, with the enlightenment of the returned, how much south Kerry had to offer, and yet how much it was by-passed.

The festival has always sought to expand and inject something new. This year its theatre programme has been extended.

In the intervening eight years much has changed in the town, a section of a Government department has moved to Cahersiveen, a marina has opened, there are new municipal buildings.

The festival has been part of this new sense of itself in Cahersiveen and of its past, O'Connor believes.

Historical and political lectures have always been an important element in the programme too.

Prof Brigid Laffan, of UCD, will speak this year on whether Ireland is an independent sovereign state, now that it is so much part of Europe, while Dr Arnold Horner, also of UCD, will speak on Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo's map of the vast Kerry bogs of Iveragh from 1811.

Turf cutting has been part of the commercial life of the area for more than 200 years with one nearby bog alone stretching for 4,300 acres. Equally, the festival is as much a celebration of the rich archaeological history of south Kerry as it is of the usual craic.

"The August Bank Holiday weekend nothing happened in Cahersiveen. People were always leaving and going somewhere else. Now people who have emigrated are coming home for the weekend or holidaying around it. It is a family festival with plenty for children," he says. The date also fits in well before Puck Fair in Killorglin, another great south Kerry festival. The three day "festival of the goat" is on the following weekend.

The Celtic theme is central in Cahersiveen. "There is a lot of the Celt in us," O'Connor says.

And archaeological walks are one way the festival links in with Kerry's past. Of late, south Kerry has laid claims to having the richest archaeological remains in Western Europe, even richer than the better known Dingle peninsula.

"In Germany, people walk, walk, walk. In Switzerland also," O'Connor notes.

It is an aspect of the area that is crying out to be developed more, he says, especially given there is a ring fort, a stone cross, a fulacht fia (ancient cooking-pit) or a view across to Skellig Michael, almost every 100 yards of the way of any walk in the area.

On Saturday, community artist Seán Ó Laoghaire will construct a colourful mandala out of heaps of petals, flowers and shells and other materials. Observers will be allowed participate in the design, to give a picture of the Celtic spirit, he says.

The mandala is a symbolic circular figure with various divisions and figures.

It is used in Buddhism and other religions to represent the universe.

In Cahersiveen's case, John O'Connor predicts, it will "awaken the true Celtic spirit" in all who experience it.

u Cahersiveen Celtic Music Festival starts this afternoon with a hill and coastal walk from Crom to Coonana Harbour.

A 11-piece Dutch fun band plays later tonight and Madhouse performs The Complete Works of Shakespeare. There is a fireworks display at the town park.

u Saturday begins with a historical walk of the town. Among other events are music workshops, busking competitions, an open air ceili, and a kids Olympics.

The one man show Talking through his Hat is on stage in the old library.

Sea Biscuit and Jerry Fish & the Mudbug club take to the festival stage.

u Sunday's events include a Celtic Mass at noon. Amergin will perform traditional music at Cahergal Stone Fort and Smokie take to the festival stage.

u Further Information at www.celticmusicfestival.com.