Beautiful Ballyferritter:
February and March have been wonderfully busy for learning about Irish culture. I spent the end of February in Ballyferriter, in West Kerry, very near Dingle. Ballyferriter is a Gaeltacht, or a designated Irish-speaking area within Ireland. As we've touched on before, while English is seen as the primary language in Ireland, Irish is still spoken across the country and has been especially preserved through Gaelscoils (Irish-speaking schools), Irish language classes for secondary school leaving certifications (final exams), and Gaeltachts.
According to the older generation of Ballyferriter, there are some whose parents did not have much (or speak much) of the English language at all, and would have had a much stronger accent. Back then, the Grannies, or older ladies of Barllyferriter were very fashionable. According to a local storyteller named Tomás Ó Lúing, or Tommy Long in English, they would always wear their hair up and wore beautiful headscarves knotted under the chin. Some of these older ladies practiced a tradition called keening, where during a funeral, they would comb their hair long to the sides of their face, chant laments, and cry as they followed along the funeral party.
