MICHAEL: Welcome to Ireland with Michael.

I'm Michael Londra, and in this show, I get to tell you everything I love about my home country the best way I know how, through music.

Behind me is the magnificent flat-top mountain of Benbulbin in the heart of Connacht.

Now, this province in the northwest has inspired some of Ireland's most beloved composers, poets, and fiddlers to capture its very essence, all of them storytellers of the first rate.

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael is made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time or just longing to return.

There's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for nearly 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus, has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you're thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ (waves rumbling) MICHAEL: Since pre-history, there have been four major provinces of Ireland.

Loose territorial divisions that each had their own myriad independent kingdoms often ruled over by one provincial king.

In the wild northwest, this province was known as Connacht.

It is this region, deeply rooted in all things Irish, that our finest poet loved most of all.

♪ Of this region's numerous artists, the most famous must be William Butler Yeats, poet, dramatist and writer of prose, and a pillar of Irish literature.

Few others could or would dictate the exact specifications of their gravesite.

Under bare Benbulben's head in Drumcliff Courtyard, Yeats is laid.

Here he lays, and on his stone, the words cut by his command, "Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman, pass by."

The fact that Yeats made such detailed specifications about the site of his eternal slumber gives some indication of just how important the area was to him and his work.

Although Yeats was born in County Dublin, he thought of Sligo as his childhood and spiritual home.

So it's from Drumcliff down to the county town of Sligo we go to visit the Yeats Society, a hub for the arts in this bustling seaport.

The building itself is a work of art built in the arts and crafts style, quite unusual in Ireland.

It was originally the bank as well as the banker's house, lucky fella, and in the main exhibition room, you can still see the safe.

I was welcomed by Susan O'Keeffe, the very accomplished director of the society.

Susan, thanks so much for inviting us here to this lovely building in the heart of Sligo.

I'd love you to tell me everything that you feel about Yeats and his place here in this great part of the world.

SUSAN: Well, I mean how long do you have, Michael?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I suppose.

SUSAN: I mean, we could talk about Yeats for the length of his life.

But I suppose what's really important is that because we're standing here in the heart of Sligo, it is linked indelibly with William Butler Yeats.

He called it The Land of Heart's Desire.

That was his first play.

And what other beautiful name could you have for a county than Land of Heart's Desire?

And that's how he always saw Sligo right through his life, and he lived until he was 73.

And he was still writing about Sligo until pretty much two days before he died.

MICHAEL: I am enthralled by poetry, I'm also a little bit terrified of poetry.

Why would you invite me to this building, and would you be able to win me over, do you think?

SUSAN: Oh, for sure, it's absolutely not difficult because of course when you start to just turn the pages of any of Yeats's collections and you start to see some of perhaps the smaller, shorter poems first and begin to see the lyricism in them and the wording and the...

There's just something, there's some kind of spiritual energy, almost, that comes from particularly some of his earlier work.

And that's where a lot of people come through, that earlier work.

It gets sparser, sparer, more modern was the expression in the beginning of the 20th century, you know.

More kind of dark, but of course he was aging, and he was troubled by that.

But that, too, has its resonance, that it's a journey that you bring Yeats with you during your life.

And if you do it here and see the mountains and the fresh air and the clouds and the things that inspired him.

So what else would you draw except that kind of inspiration?

So yes, we can easily win you over, Michael.

I think I've already done it.

MICHAEL: You experience his words out in the county and around the country, is there any... We've seen most of the Yeats sites here in the county.

Is there anywhere else that you think we might have missed?

SUSAN: Just as he was getting married, and he married quite late in life, he bought this beautiful, old tower in County Galway.

And it was part of the Lady Augusta Gregory's estate originally.

And she, of course, was his mentor and his muse and his helper.

He cited her in his Nobel speech, for goodness sake.

And this beautiful tower, he lived in it for some time with his wife and their two children.

And it's called Thoor Ballylee, which was the old Irish name for a tower.

And he loved the idea of living in a tower that sort of reached to the beyond, is how he saw it, that it reached to the sky and beyond.

And it is a wonderful place to go.

So, much as I know, you will travel around Sligo too?

MICHAEL: I will.

SUSAN: I would recommend Thoor Ballylee.

It is a very beautiful place.

♪ MICHAEL: Susan's the expert.

So with my marching orders, I went south across Connacht, the land of Yeats, into Galway where even the weather couldn't render the place any less inspiring.

"I, the poet William Yeats, with old mill boards and sea-green slates, and smithy work from the Gort forge, restored this tower for my wife George; and may these characters remain when all is ruin once again."

So goes the words WB Yeats instructed to be carved in a stone here at Thoor Ballylee, his summer home, where he stayed with his family to be inspired, calling on images and memories from ruin or from ancient trees.

It fell into disrepair after Yeats's death, but the local society has restored it to its former glory and put in an interactive exhibit for learning more about his life and works in the very place where once walked Ireland's first Nobel laureate.

Yeats's words and imagery are beautiful on their own, but his early work is especially well-suited for being set to music.

I'd trust few others than my friend Aileen Mythen to elevate Yeats's lyricism with her voice.

♪ Down by the Sally Gardens ♪ ♪ My love and I did meet ♪ ♪ She passed the sally gardens ♪ ♪ With little snow white feet ♪ ♪ She bid me take love easy ♪ ♪ As the leaves grow on the tree ♪ ♪ But I being young and foolish ♪ ♪ With her I would not agree ♪ ♪ ♪ In a field by the river ♪ ♪ My love and I did stand ♪ ♪ And on my leaning shoulder ♪ ♪ She placed her snow white hand ♪ ♪ She bid me take life easy ♪ ♪ As the grass grows on the weirs ♪ ♪ But I was young and foolish ♪ ♪ And now am full of tears ♪ MICHAEL: I wanted to see more of this region that Yeats loved so well.

The natural beauty, rich history and the artistic traditions that inspired him are all still here; and lucky me, I only had to make one stop to get a taste of all three.

Markree Castle was given to Edward Cooper, who served under Cromwell when his army defeated the O'Brien Clan on this site.

And so Cooper married the O'Brien's widow, as you do, and built the castle.

His great-grandson Edward Joshua constructed an observatory on the grounds, installing the world's first cast-iron telescope with the largest refractor lens in the world.

Together with his assistant, they produced the celebrated Markree Catalog, a study that measured and recorded the position of 60,000 stars.

I am here to meet a star of another nature, fiddle icon, Oisin Mac Diarmada of the band Téada, who I had the pleasure of touring with many years ago.

♪ ♪ Oisin Mac Diarmada, I can't believe that I'm here in Sligo.

It's been a long time since we toured together, so I'm happy to be in your part of the world now.

OISIN: Welcome to Sligo, it's terrific to have you here, Michael.

MICHAEL: I consider you to be one of the masters of this beautiful instrument here in Ireland.

Can you tell me a little bit about the fiddle tradition of Sligo?

OISIN: Yes, well, you are definitely in fiddle country here in South Sligo.

We're very, very proud of the fiddle tradition here and the flute tradition, but the fiddle tradition is probably best known and the links with America are so huge as well.

Back maybe a 100 years ago, nearly every house had a fiddle hanging up in South County Sligo, so it was a very natural part of social interaction, people meeting and playing and dancing and chatting and all that sorta stuff.

So it was part of the fabric of social life, and so it has continued.

It's changed, but it's still going strong.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL: So tell me, you know, a 100 years later, those tunes are still very much alive and will be in a 100 years time.

OISIN: Right, isn't it amazing that these tunes just keep giving to all these generations, you know, em.

You know, a lot of them have been written down, I mean some of them were collected over the years because people realized, even though the musicians themselves weren't learning them from books, but antiquarians realized, you know, "We gotta preserve this in some ways," and this is before recordings.

But then we got recordings.

And the place of America is huge, of course, because these great Sligo fiddle players like Micheal Coleman, James Morrison, Paddy Killoran emigrated from Ireland.

We lost them here, but they went to America and recorded these amazing recordings, which made their way back to Ireland and influenced fiddlers all over Ireland ever since.

MICHAEL: And as a figurehead, where do you think those tunes and that music and traditional music is headed in the future?

OISIN: I suppose this music is only passing through all of us, and we do to it, you know, what feels natural to us, and I suppose every musician changes throughout their life, you know.

We're living people, we're living musicians.

So when I was younger, I was influenced by certain musicians, as life goes on, I tend to have different influences, and I suppose we try to sprinkle a little of our own on top of the music as well on this part of the living tradition.

♪ MICHAEL: Ho!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: There's one individual who affected the living history of Irish music more than arguably anyone else, and as it so happens, he too called Connacht home.

Turlough O'Carolan, Ireland's national composer, "The Last of the Bards."

Born in 1670, just before the civil war, his family's home in Meath was surrendered to, I'm afraid to say, Cromwell.

Famously, if Cromwell didn't kill you, he'd send you here declaring, "To hell or to Connaught."

♪ The boy was adept at verse but smallpox robbed him of his sight at the age of 18, spelling the end of his academic pursuits.

The harp was often the only hope of the livelihood for the blind as it could be learned through repetition and was transmitted orally.

O'Carolan took to it showing a rare gift for melodies.

Harpists like him were the political commentators of the day, and their satire was so feared that Cromwell's army often destroyed harps and killed their owners but O'Carolan himself thrived.

For over 40 years, he played his harp across the Emerald Isle, writing to suit his patrons' tastes.

But it was back here in Connacht where he finally settled, marrying at the ripe age of 50 and putting down roots at last in his wife's hometown of Mohill.

♪ Much is lost of the life of O'Carolan, but much of what we know relates to his love of a drink, we've a lot in common.

In his case, the doctor advised he'd better stop or Ireland would lose its last bard a lot sooner.

He did so, but fell into such a depression that his harp went neglected until another physician, his friend John Stafford, recommended he'd better take it up again.

When he commenced anew, the depression lifted and he composed a joyful tune, one of O'Carolan's famous planxtys, a word that he invented to celebrate and pay the good doctor.

Alas, it may have done him in.

On his deathbed, O'Carolan requested his harp once more to write the hauntingly beautiful Farewell to Music still played today.

♪ What's amazing is that O'Carolan is is still played and loved today by the next generation of Irish musicians.

I had the immense pleasure of hearing harpist Séamus O Fhlatharta, accompanied by his sister Caoimhe on the fiddle.

♪ Good evening, Séamus.

Anyone who knows me will know that I have a mad passion for O'Carolan, our greatest composer.

Now, I feel that it is extra special to be able to sit down and listen to you today, young kids and musicians who also love O'Carolan.

Can you tell us a bit about what you love about O'Carolan?

SEAMUS: Yeah, well, I suppose when I was first starting off on the harp, the initial draw for me was the sound of the harp, and I knew nothing of O'Carolan, or nothing of the great work that he had done to preserve these brilliant melodies and have them continue into modern music as well.

But when I did later come into adolescence, and I suppose adulthood as well, I started really appreciating the work that he did do, and inevitably I started picking up some of his work and sharing it with Caoimhe, with the brothers as well, and like the Sean -nós I suppose, there is that kind of connection to a real kind of a primal sense when it comes to music and almost like an origin when it comes to harping.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL: You're not only carrying the tunes, you're also carrying on the tradition of being traveling musicians because you travel all over the world.

O'Carolan didn't reach all over the world, he reached all over Ireland.

So now you're taking that music so that everyone can hear it.

SEAMUS: Yeah, and proudly boasting as far as we can go 'cause it really does deserve the recognition, and his work was just phenomenal.

♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: But this town has more to boast about than the connection to O'Carolan.

Mohill, like seemingly every little village in Ireland, boasts its own castle, Lough Rynn.

You really are tripping over them, but having stayed here myself, I know how lovely it is.

Although its construction was at one time a symbol of the tyranny of landlords, the third earl, William Sidney Clement, whose father began the building mistreated his tenants so horribly that a conspiracy was born, and the bad Earl, who had already survived several attempts on his life, was finally assassinated in Donegal in 1878, yikes.

I went for a walk about the walled gardens with hotel and estate manager Ciaran Reidy.

Ciaran, I loved my stay here a couple of years ago, I wonder what it's like, though, to have to manage a hotel, but at the same time manage a castle and the estate that goes with the castle.

CIARAN: Sure, well, it certainly isn't your usual general manager, hotel general manager role, particularly, at Lough Rynn castle.

You have hundreds of years of history here that we are preserving.

So 92,000 acres was the size of the estate back in the day, we are a fraction of what that is today.

MICHAEL: How many acres have you now?

CIARAN: 300-acre estate today.

A lot of buildings that are here on the estate, they're all preserved, they're listed, so it's just a different upkeep today, than what you would have in a new, in a modern hotel.

♪ MICHAEL: To end my day exploring the very heart of Connacht, I just had to see a living tradition of a different sort, one you may have a piece of in your very own home.

We've popped just across the border, two miles into Northern Ireland, because I couldn't resist seeing some of the world -class porcelain produced right here at Belleek Pottery for more than 160 years.

It all began when John Caldwell Bloomfield inherited his father's estate.

The Great Hunger was ravaging this island, and Bloomfield was seeking some kind of employment for his tenants.

An amateur mineralogist, he ordered a geological survey of the land and found that it was rich in minerals.

So he built the factory and even got a railway run to Belleek so that coal could be delivered to fire the kilns.

The craftsmanship in Belleek grew the company's prestige, famous now for how incredibly thin it is, slightly iridescent, and molded into delicate lace-like sculptures.

Like just about everywhere in Ireland, I was welcomed like family by Patricia McCauley, a Belleek native, whose life has long revolved around the factory here.

First, I'd love to know how long you have worked in this beautiful building.

I suspect it's been a while.

PATRICIA: It has, it's been 41 years, Michael, and you are very welcome to Belleek.

MICHAEL: You know, the one thing when you walk into this building is you notice how grand it all looks, but it feels like a family affair, and maybe you can tell me about your family involvement?

PATRICIA: I will indeed, Michael.

Well, let's just say, I've been here 41 years, I started off in the painting shop, painting little pigs and things like that, and eventually made my way into the tourism end of it.

But my dad also worked in the mill room end, and that's where they make the slip and the ingredients for the actual china.

My husband works in the factory, so you might get to see him a little later on.

I have brothers-in- law working here, aunts, uncles, and in fact, my two daughters would have started off working here as tour guides.

MICHAEL: Tell me, what do you think is the secret to Belleek?

Because no matter where I go in North America, the people who come to my shows will talk about Belleek, or I'll see it in people's houses, it's everywhere.

PATRICIA: I suppose what makes it unique is our china is cream.

So it's really the ingredients.

It's feldspar, china clay, frit, and a few of the old magic stuff thrown in there.

But it's Parian china, as opposed to bone china, and Parian actually means translucent, so when you hold it up to the light, you can see through it.

MICHAEL: Everything at Belleek is done in-house.

The very materials in use come from the land around us, and the craftspeople who work it into these exquisite creations could not have been friendlier.

Jacqueline, tell me what you're doing now?

JACQUELINE: I'm working on the Hanako basket, which is this one.

And now I am gonna put the top ropes on it.

MICHAEL: Oh.

JACQUELINE: So, I have to put two ropes on, one is a left-handed rope which I'm at at the minute, and then I'll have to do a right-handed rope.

MICHAEL: Now is that pretty solid there?

Do they snap or... JACQUELINE: Yes, they would.

And the clay varies, there's different variations in the clay, so it's just all natural material.

MICHAEL: Now a piece like that, how long does it take from start to finish then?

JACQUELINE: Well, this is the fourth day I've been at this basket.

So I've done the base first.

MICHAEL: Jacqueline, it's a work of art.

Do you kinda forget what you're doing and the artistry involved?

JACQUELINE: You always appreciate what you're at, and everything has to work to a standard, so you're always looking to do the best you can.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Thanks for joining me on my travels around County Sligo.

I'm Michael Londra, and I hope to see you next time on Ireland with Michael, but for now, cheers, sláinte.

ANNOUNCER: Want to continue your travels to Ireland?

A deluxe Ireland with Michael DVD, featuring all episodes of Season one and two, plus bonus concert footage is available for $30.

A copy of the Ireland with Michael companion travel guide, featuring places to visit as seen in Seasons one and two, is also available for $30, a set of both is available for $55.

MICHAEL: To learn more about everything you've seen in this episode, go to IrelandWithMichael.com.

ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael was made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time or just longing to return, there's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for nearly 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus, has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you are thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ MICHAEL: OK, put your hands up in the air.

Come on, let's get a-waving.

♪ In my heart heart its rightful queen ♪ ♪ Ever loving, ever tender ♪ MICHAEL: That's it.

♪ Ever true ♪ ♪ Like the Sun your smile has shone ♪ MICHAEL: Go on, Wexford.

♪ Gladdening all it glowed upon ♪ ♪