A chara, - Chris Dooley praises Carlow's Eigse festival and the vision of the five founders, who included myself (From the South East, June 9th).
He does not mention Padraig O Snodaigh, who was the inspiration behind Eigse Ceatharlach. Padraig needs no praise from Chris Dooley or from me, but without him adraig, there would be no Eigse Ceatharlach.
In an attempt to encourage the Carlow branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1978, Padraig proposed running Eigse Ceatharlach. When the initial committee, mentioned in Chris Dooley's article, took up Padraig's suggestion, he helped contact artists for the early exhibitions and even took on the task, with his wife, the sculptor Cliona Cussen, of collecting exhibits in Dublin to bring down to Carlow.
In the Reamhfhocal to a book published in 1980 to commemorate Eigse '79, I wrote: "Eigse '79 was a celebration of Carlow and its culture ... we thought of culture ... as acknowledging and including all the culture of Carlow, from its artists and craftsmen to its buildings and archaeological remains, from its creative writing in Irish and English to its music, old and new. We believe that if people look and recognise the worth of what surrounds them, they cannot fail to appreciate Irish language and culture as part, indeed as the underlying dynamic, of what Carlow is today."
I would like to congratulate the current Eigse committee on the continued vision and effort that has made Eigse Ceatharlach such a major festival. In particular, I congratulate them on continuing to acknowlege both the Irish and the English parts of Carlow's culture by securing poets Cathal O Searcaigh and Michael Longley for this year's Eigse. - Is mise,
Seamus Mac Pairc, Baile an tSeipeil, Ceatharlach.