In Irish paganism, the Druids, or priests of the Celtic people, believed that the earth was a manifestation of the divine, and one look at the landscape of Ireland's wild west coast inspires respect for that idea.

The terrain seems to offer an almost supernatural glimpse into our planet's past, a portal of sorts that can be seen, heard and felt, a stage that cloaks you in its mystery.

I'm Kira Cook, an Irish well part Irish American adventurer, storyteller, and host of the travel series "Islands Without Cars."

And now I'm in County Clare in the west of Ireland, to explore the old world traditions that carry on in farms and towns throughout this romantic and mythologized part of the world.

Our journey begins in the tiny, hospitable town of Lisdoonvarna, with the year round population of only 900 people.

This once thriving spa destination is now known for hosting the oldest matchmaking festival in the world.

There was no town here in the early 1830s.

It's a very new town in an Irish context.

And people found the healing waters of the of the spa that were occurring naturally from the ground, started taking those waters and started feeling better.

Then they started telling somebody else, and all of a sudden people started coming for the taking of the waters at the spa centre here.

It's the building there is.

One of the original springs came and had super healing power.

So a lot of people came down here.

They stay here for a little while, and if they had ailments, the water basically cured their ailments.

And in a guest house was built.

And then another one was built, and it became a place that investors came from all over Ireland and built hotels, and then a town was built around it.

Alas, the mineral rich wells have been closed for decades, leaving some of the outdated equipment behind like an unintended time capsule.

I've always wanted to use a Battle Creek roller to see what it would be like to trim my muscles and relax.

Here we go.

Wow.

I sure do feel relaxed.

And my muscles feel trim.

Which muscles?

We won't say.

How long am I supposed to stay here for?

Today there is some hope and even tentative plans to renovate the spa and, I assume, update the wellness treatments.

This is horrible.

Oh, God.

With or without the spa.

For over 160 years, tourists and love seekers have been coming to Lisdoonvarna each September for their world renowned matchmaking festival.

Why did the matchmaking festival start here?

A lot of people had their families with them, because they stayed for long periods of time to take the waters, to be healed over a period of time.

And when their families started mingling, that's when romance happened as well.

So matchmakers came in and they helped them get together and they brought them together.

You can call it matchmaking in a formal sense, but really it was people gathering together in a fun environment and in a relaxing environment, falling in love.

And they came from all over the country to do that, and a whole community was built around it.

It was built around love.

For centuries, people have come not just from all over the country, but from all over the world to drink, dance, talk, laugh and hopefully meet that special someone.

What are you doing here this evening?

Looking for love.

What kind of man are you looking for?

A nice, gentle, secure man.

Kindness.

Someone who looks after me.

Someone who's honest, who's caring.

You know, you've got a really good heart.

That's what I'm looking for.

They come from all over Northern Ireland.

Donegal?

Yes, they come from all over.

And they see people come every year, which is great.

Yeah.

What brought you to the festival?

There is a fun bit of fun dancing.

Yes.

And some drink.

And a bit of craic, as they call it.

Here.

Yes.

Not the crack in America.

No, it's very different.

Can you define crack?

For us?

Crack is when you're having a great time and a great laugh.

And it just sort of happens.

I run the Ritz here in Lisdoonvarna with.

Heather Crowe, came to work at the festival 37 years ago, fell in love, got married and now runs the Ritz Hotel with her husband and their three children.

So have you seen people come here and fall in love over the years?

Oh, yeah.

Matches be made.

Absolutely.

I'm not from here myself.

I'm from Donegal.

I came here myself and I never got to go home, so I didn't.

Because you fell in love.

Well, I met my husband here anyway.

Two very different things.

Yeah.

But I definitely have seen people, and it's just lovely.

A lot of them might have a sad story, like.

But then they come here, they forget everything.

Do you know what I mean?

They just love company.

Yeah.

And dancing.

Friendship.

Everybody knows everybody.

The best of friends.

I've watched Albert and Cecily come here over the years.

They love to dance.

They love to mix with the people.

They love the music.

And I've known them as long as I'm here.

Coming for years.

Oh, wow.

So I have.

Yeah.

And they love to dance.

Albert and Cecily Lawler fell in love in lisdoonvarna 57 years ago.

When Albert accepted a dare and fate stepped in.

It was a big room, and we were standing on one side of the room and he was at the other side, and one the boy said to me, I dare you to go over and ask her to dance.

So I did.

I went over and I said, would you like to dance?

And the first thing she says to me, are you able to dance nice.

And so is that what drew you to him?

His ability to dance?

Oh, yes.

If you couldn't.

Dance in my books, fine.

Goodbye.

Okay.

From there on, we got married a year after.

Wow.

Have you come back to dance?

Never missed.

A year.

So, what is it about the festival that you enjoy so much?

What draws you back here?

Well, I'll tell you.

The place itself is lovely.

The drink is good.

You never get a bad drink.

And the dancing is good.

And the dancing?

My God, it's fabulous.

I mean, the minute you wake in the morning, there's a guy playing somewhere.

There's music coming out of somewhere.

So wouldn't you like.

If you were to give advice to somebody who was entering into a relationship?

What would you say?

What's the secret to a happy, long marriage?

Be honest.

Be honest with each.

Other and don't be telling yarns.

And don't let on.

I love you if you really don't know whether you do or not.

Yeah, well, I can't wait to watch you dance on the dance floor.

Oh, well, I've had a fall three weeks ago.

Yeah, and my two knees are.

And every time I went to the doctor with something happened, they said, were you jiving again?

Can't help it, I love jiving, yeah.

All of this jiving and merrymaking wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the omnipresent Willie Daley, a third generation matchmaker whose business of love brings people to lisdoonvarna for this festival of fun pheromones and getting fixed up.

Willie meets people at the matchmaker bar nightly and has them fill out one of his questionnaires and then touch his historic book of applicants.

For luck.

Which one?

That one.

The middle?

Yeah.

Willie graciously invited us to his family farm and matchmaking museum to talk about the intuition, observation, and wisdom that make him the so-called horse whisperer of matchmaking.

We're here with Willie Daly, who is fond of saying, to make a long story short, and then telling a story.

That's anything but, Willie.

Will you tell us your life story?

Oh, okay.

You were a children of matchmakers.

Yeah.

My, I, my name is Willie Daly.

I'm known as a traditional Irish matchmaker.

Now, I probably am fortunate that I inherited matchmaking.

My grandfather was a matchmaker.

You know, he was mainly at cattle fairs.

Pig fairs.

There was a man at the fair.

He was fairly well off man, a nice, decent man, but he was fond of drink as well.

And five times my grandfather had approached him, suggesting Gerald Sorin, and he found something wrong.

If he got time to think and he'd go home and be sober, his mind was too much into thinking what could go wrong.

Yeah.

There was a lovely girl at the fair, and she said to my grandfather, could you get somebody for me?

The man said, she's nice.

I wouldn't mind getting married to her, but he had said that about all the other girls.

And then he changed his mind in two hours.

Three hours later, you know.

So there was a priest walking up and down the cattle fair.

And my grandfather says, Father Kelly, can you do us the honor?

Can you get this couple married?

And he got married at the cattle fair.

Wow.

And they stayed married.

They stayed married.

They had 19 children.

Wow.

And then when did you become a matchmaker?

Well, I started matchmaking at about when I was about 15, but I stopped different times because I had probably seen the matchmaking from my father's time, and it was very time consuming.

And when did you decide that that's something you wanted to actually pursue?

I only did it because people kind of forced me into it.

No.

Well, I did it for fun about 56 years ago, I suppose.

And it has continued.

How many matches have you made?

Probably around 3000.

Really?

Maybe a little more.

Maybe some.

A bit less.

Wow.

Do you keep.

Track?

I don't really know.

People keep telling me that they picked us up 50 years ago.

Wow.

60.

And I'd have to say it's great to see you again.

I wouldn't remember them, though.

Yeah.

You know, there was a girl and the girl was lovely.

Very vivacious.

She was about maybe 23.

And she said, have you anyone older?

I said, yeah, I have a man.

I said, he's about 77.

57 and she said, I know I wouldn't be interested if you weren't even older.

She's 20 something, 23, 23, and she wanted someone older than 77.

Yeah.

Why?

What?

Anyways, then I said does.

The man was about 91 but looked kind of fresh.

Though he was well dressed.

He had fabulous teeth.

Wow.

He wanted a young girl and he wanted to have children as well.

But she said, I'm scared of him.

She says with teeth.

He had teeth like a shark, you know.

But anyways, they got married and he died on the third night of the honeymoon.

No.

But she was pregnant.

What?

Wow.

She had the baby around for nine months.

Wow, what a story.

Oh, seriously.

So, do people sort of know of you in the town?

In this area?

They know that at this point, this is what you do when they call you.

Because this morning we came over and you've had, I think, four calls within 20 minutes.

Yeah, that'd be all fellas.

That'd be all.

They're aware of the festival being on.

So there's a renewed possibility of love and excitement in the festival brings all that.

How has the festival changed over the years?

Well, the strange thing about it is that while everything has changed, nothing has changed.

Yeah.

They still want someone to share their life.

They want someone to be in their home.

They want to have children find and love and be.

For some people, it can be a lifelong pursuit.

So when you find love for those people, for a matchmaker, it's a great feeling to see them how happy they are.

Hello!

It must be a great feeling for him because Willie is so committed to matchmaking to Francine.

Maybe.

Hello.

That he continued to ply his trade with me.

I put her on.

To what, Tom?

Even though I'm happily married and told him so repeatedly.

It was you.

Insisting on not telling him that I was married, saying she might come.

Well, she might, she might be there.

She might not be happy.

She might not be happy.

Married or unmarried, hopeful or disillusioned.

And with the aid of Ireland's love ambassador, known as Guinness, the crack is what keeps people coming back to the festival year after year.

I'm loving angels instead.

Woo!

Yay!

Year round visitors come to County Clare for so much more than matchmaking.

Like this rough, desolate, moon like ribbon of rock called the burin, which comes from the Irish word for rocky place running partly alongside the untamed Atlantic Ocean.

This otherworldly 200 mile limestone circle was formed by glacial activity that began 330 million years ago.

At its southern end, the burin gives way to the Cliffs of Moher, a majestic nine mile stretch of sea cliffs sculpted by wind and water.

The tower, as high as 702ft above sea level.

The views from atop the cliffs are magnificent.

Perched along the cliffs is O'Brien's tower, built by Cornelius O'Brien in 1835 to benefit the local economy by boosting tourism, and it continues to be a top tourist destination today.

After the drama of the Cliffs of Moher, a more gentle but equally impressive Experience is a visit to the gentle waterfalls cascading away from the quaint nearby town of Ennistymon.

And for those water worshippers who really miss Lisdoonvarna old mineral baths, there is the unique experience of soaking in whisky barrels filled with hot water and seaweed.

The seaweed is known for its curative properties.

Alginates and iodine comes out of the seaweed along with this kind of gelatinous goop that's apparently incredible for the skin.

It can cure skin problems, and it's great for arthritis, detoxifying impurities, and eliminating stress along the shoreline.

It's a match made in heaven, but I will tell you that getting out of these barrels makes a person think of nothing more than a warm Irish sweater.

Luckily, between the ocean and lisdoonvarna is Clare Woolen Mills in the charming town of Doolin.

My name is Nora Kelly, and of course I work in a shop selling sweaters and tweeds and many items to the tourists.

Items of interest to us for sure.

Yeah.

My favorite place on earth is Doolin.

Absolutely.

Why do you like Doolin?

It's magic.

The ocean, the stones, the rocks, the cliffs of Moher.

If you go on the burn and walk there in the month of May and June.

The flowers amazing.

And the amazing energy.

Even today, in a wet day, if you went there to walk, the energy comes up from the rocks.

The sunlight penetrates the limestone and it contains the heat.

It's beautiful.

There's a magic moment there, and that's what I love about it.

Now, I've been away and in different places in my life, but this is an easy place.

I love it.

Back in Lisdoonvarna.

We stopped in at the Burren Smokehouse, where Swedish born proprietor Birgitta Curtin, along with her Irish husband Peter, have combined Scandinavian heritage and Irish history by reinventing and elevating the ancient craft of smoking fish.

I come from a sustainably self-sufficient farm on the east coast of Sweden, and was used to using everything from around us, and that's how the smokehouse started, because we wanted to give people an opportunity when they come to the Burren to also taste produce that are made in the Burren and sourced locally here in Ireland.

These are actually the ovens.

They're specially built for us.

So you would have all the smoke comes in in these little slots and just over the mackerel or the salmon or whatever it is, and it just comes in through the sides, circulates around.

So salting, smoking, it's all for preserving food.

And we use these oak shavings, and the oak shavings is actually a side product for somebody else's handcraft.

So they make high end furniture.

This is their waste.

It's our gold dust.

Wow.

And it's only oak that you use.

We only use oak.

And it's very traditional to Irish smoking as well.

They used to be a lot of oak forest in Ireland.

So traditionally oak has been used for smoking salmon.

I'd love for you to get a taste of our cold smoked salmon.

They're a bit delicate, so you have to.

That's good.

That's it.

You have it.

Oh my God.

Wow.

That is so good.

Okay.

I mean come for the love.

Stay for the fish.

Come for the fish.

Stay for the love.

You do what you want but you got to come to this duvana.

Oh my God.

So good.

Birgitta met her husband Peter here while traveling in Ireland in the 1980s.

Today they work literally side by side.

She at the smokehouse and he next door at the roadside tavern.

I've gone through a fair journey of my life so far and to be honest, right?

If I'd known how life would be so easy when my testosterone levels had dropped, I would have castrated myself years ago.

Right.

The charming and not castrated Peter Curtin was born on the second floor of the roadside tavern, which has been in his family since 1865.

This is a small town, right?

So I've always been involved in tourism, you know.

I've always been neighbourly, you know.

That's central to the whole thing.

Yeah.

You know I remember back in the day, my my parents did lots of acts of kindness to people who were less fortunate to themselves, and, and, and that's the kind of folks that we are.

As it turns out, the hospitality of Peter and his family is, well, legally ancient.

Historically, the role of preserving and interpreting Irish law fell to arbitrators known as the Brahmans in the seventh century.

These Brehon Laws, as they became known, stipulated that all households were obliged to provide some measure of hospitality to travelers, and in particular strangers.

After a thousand years, English law replaced Brehon law, but by then the idea of caring for strangers was deeply embedded in the Irish sensibility.

The notion of the Irish pub in the original form from the time of the Brehon Laws and our own culture, goes back to this thing called a brooding and a brooding was enacted into law, whereby you had to have a hostelry, a place for people to come in from the cold and to be fed, and to have a place to sleep and stay.

As you passed by, you know, and that's that's essentially the ethos that my grandfather inculcated into his family.

You know, and and all the way down to my good self.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ireland displayed this ancient hospitality by finding homes throughout the country for over 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees in Lisdoonvarna alone.

The population doubled suddenly from 900 to 2000 people, with the government subsidizing their lodging in hotels and homes in an exemplary commitment to human rights.

We had more hotels in this town than anywhere else in our county because of the festival and because of tourism, so there was accommodation available for them.

And that's that accommodation was filled in an emergency response.

The people in the area were really welcoming.

And I think I'm really proud of, of of how people responded to to that overnight.

Anastasia and Tanya are two of the Ukrainian refugees who left the danger and catastrophe of living in a war zone and ended up in rural Ireland.

When the war broke out, we didn't know what to do.

Like like every Ukrainian, we were lost and we just were watching the TV and hopefully we could hear a good news.

But not.

Almost all.

Our region was occupied from the very first days of the war.

After a week in basement, I decided that I can't stay there anymore, waiting for something.

For over two years, these women and their families have been navigating new lives.

With help from the local Irish government.

The Clare County Council tried to help us as much as they can with the housing, with the accommodation.

But I'm working here full time.

My husband is working full time as well and my son is attending primary school.

Yeah, because that helps to live.

To live a regular life ordinary life.

So after living here for two years, how do you feel now about the town and its people?

Oh, people are so nice and supportive and kind.

I like that my kids go to school.

My youngest one just started preschool.

Yeah, I had a plan for my entire life in Ukraine.

It was clear.

I knew what I should do.

So if you would ask me one year ago, am I waiting to go back to Ukraine?

I would say certainly, yes.

But now I don't know.

I don't know.

I imagine you're stuck between two worlds, right?

So you are, of course, hoping to be able to go back home for this war to be over.

But knowing that you have no control over that and you have to carry on here until something changes.

So is your plan that this is your life here now, or are you kind of always thinking, well, we'll be going back as soon as we can?

If you would ask me, maybe a year ago, I wouldn't tell you the answer.

But now like, everything has changed for me.

And now I think I am going to stay here because my family is here and my home is where my family is.

We value every day of our life here.

I had different stages.

The first one was that I didn't want to accept anything.

Ireland.

Nature.

Good people.

I couldn't see anything here.

Then I opened my eyes and I saw very friendly, safe atmosphere here.

And then.

Acceptance.

Some help.

Are they the hotel?

Something positive was in that moment.

Like that was like the beginning of the beautiful future.

Stay safe.

Stay warm and lovely to see you again.

Lovely to see you too.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Take care.

And then I realized that that's my life.

And when the destiny gives you that chance, you need to accept this.

Million million, million million.

Thanks to this beautiful country and people here.

With origins in wellness, hospitality and love.

Ireland's ancient traditions are a living model and a modern inspiration.

By offering comfort, support and just plain kindness to strangers.

(Transcribed by Sonix.ai - Remove this message by upgrading your Sonix account)