MICHAEL: Welcome to Ireland with Michael.

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

Today, I'm standing on an ancient street in Waterford, known around the world for the production of the highly acclaimed and much sought-after Waterford Crystal, but this is a city just waiting to be discovered.

Dramatic Viking origins, massive works of sand art, and an horologist's delight are just some of the things waiting for us in the Crystal City.

So let's get to it.

♪ ♪ ♪ 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.

♪ MICHAEL: Located on Ireland's southeast coast, the city and county of Waterford were founded in the ninth century as a Viking stronghold.

Originally called Woodstown, it was the largest Viking settlement outside of Scandinavia.

If you're going to start anywhere in Waterford, it's got to be right here at the House of Waterford Crystal.

The city's been perfecting this unique and breathtaking glassware more intricate and elaborately carved than anywhere else on the planet since before the idea of the United States of America was even dreamed up.

Well, what are we doing here?

Well, they're making the stuff right inside and I know just the man to show me around.

Glenn, how are you?

GLENN: Good, how are you keeping?

Nice to see you.

MICHAEL: Want to go inside?

GLENN: Yeah.

Let's do it.

MICHAEL: Glenn Murphy is an Irish singer making a name for himself all around the world.

You might have seen him on The Ellen Show, but more importantly for us today, he was born and raised in Waterford, and has agreed to show us around.

GLENN: See all the molds.

MICHAEL: Every piece of Waterford Crystal starts as a mold, cut to the finished piece by craftsmen like John Keane.

It is a real treat for me to meet you.

Uh, I have a load of Waterford Crystal back in my house in Iowa, and I, I get to look behind the magic now and see, meet people like yourself.

Waterford Crystal has been your whole life really?

JOHN: Yeah, since I was 14 years of age.

When I started everything was timber molds then.

Everything was, had to be made from timber.

MICHAEL: Right, there was, there was no automation?

JOHN: No automation whatsoever, no.

MICHAEL: Is a lot of your work very individual do you think?

Is it?

JOHN: Yeah, a lotta, a lotta, a lot of the pieces since we came down here now have been individual pieces, you know like the piece there for the fireman's helmet for Mariano Rivera and his- MICHAEL: The baseball player?

JOHN: Yeah, and his baseball glove as well, ya know.

MICHAEL: Wow, that's fantastic.

JOHN: Yeah MICHAEL: And so how many years have you worked here now?

JOHN: 51.

MICHAEL: 51?

JOHN: 51 this year.

MICHAEL: You'll give it another 50, will you?

JOHN: No, well, next year, with the help of God, I'll be gone.

MICHAEL: Oh right, you can put your feet up then.

JOHN: Yeah.

Retire.

MICHAEL: Well thanks, John.

It's nice to meet you.

♪ As you walk through Waterford Crystal.

That is amazing.

You get a sense of craftsmanship that almost belongs to another time.

I've been coming down to Waterford Crystal being from Wexford for many a year and I've seen you do this, uh, many times before, but it still blows my mind pardon the pun, uh... How long did it take you to learn what you do?

EDGAR: Oh, a lifetime.

Ya start off, I started when I was 15 in a five-year apprenticeship, and then three more years to become a master blower.

And I'm at it now, I think 36, 37 years.

MICHAEL: And it seems to me that you're like a family.

There's, it's a tight group of people and I guess you get to know each other well.

EDGAR: Oh yeah, we all grew up together, even, even real family, like I'm nearly third -generation glass blower.

Ya know, I have brothers in here, dads, uncles, real family.

MICHAEL: Do you stop learning after your apprenticeship or is it a... and do you constantly make mistakes or?

EDGAR: Yeah, you never stop.

You're always learning.

It's only a fool who'll think he knows it all, ya know, even, even these new glasses now, we're just still learning those.

MICHAEL: Oh right, new designs happen all the time I guess?

EDGAR: Every, every month, new designs.

MICHAEL: Well, uh, Edgar, long may you blow glass because, uh, I love the stuff.

EDGAR: Ah, nice to do it as well.

MICHAEL: That knowledge and artistry is all on display here in the main showroom.

♪ MICHAEL: Glenn Murphy, we are in the glorious Waterford Crystal showroom.

I want to talk about another wonder of Waterford, and that is your singing voice.

(Glenn laughing) I am amazed by your talent.

You're one of the most beautiful lyric tenor voices I have ever heard.

♪ Of all the money ♪ ♪ That e're I had ♪ ♪ I spent it in good company ♪ MICHAEL: I first heard you on The Ellen Show, uh, that's, uh, where I think people in America will know you from, but, uh, you're a Waterford native.

GLENN: Mmmm MICHAEL: Did you grow up in the city?

GLENN: Oh yeah, I've, I've been living in Waterford now my whole life.

I went to college in Dublin, but I've been back living here now for a couple of years, and this is really where I learned to sing, you know especially in the theater scene down here in Waterford.

Is so, um, full of life and there's so much going on down here, and there was all through my childhood that I was always on stage, I was in choirs, I was in musicals, I was in concerts.

Anything that I could do to get in front of an audience, I just grabbed the opportunity to do.

♪ Of all the comrades that e're I had ♪ ♪ They are sorry now ♪ ♪ For my going away ♪ ♪ And of all the sweethearts ♪ ♪ That e're I had ♪ ♪ They would wish me one more day to stay ♪ ♪ But since it falls unto my lot ♪ ♪ That I should rise and you should not ♪ ♪ I'll gently rise ♪ ♪ And softly call goodnight ♪ ♪ And joy be with you all ♪ MICHAEL: And the first time that American audiences probably saw you live was you when you toured with Celtic Woman, is that right?

GLENN: Yeah, yeah, a couple of years ago myself and my friend, Ronan, we're in a duo, Glenn and Ronan and we toured with Celtic Woman for two years, which was an amazing experience.

Everyone we met along the way was so lovely and so welcoming, and it was just a wonderful experience to meet American audiences, see American towns, the theaters over there, it was just really incredible.

MICHAEL: And you are now a solo artist.

Your, your Celtic Woman days are behind you and you're, you're forging your own career now, your own recording career.

GLENN: Yeah MICHAEL: What's next for Glenn Murphy?

GLENN: So I'm currently working on my first ever EP, ya know, which is an exciting, exciting prospect.

I'm working on songs at the minute, some originals, some covers and some musical theater stuff.

I love to sing all types of music so what I'm really doing at the minute is just finding which ones I think are right and which ones I think that people kinda want to hear.

♪ A man may drink and not be drunk ♪ ♪ A man may fight and not be slayed ♪ ♪ A man may court a pretty girl ♪ ♪ And perhaps be welcomed home again ♪ ♪ But since it has so ordered been ♪ ♪ A time to rise ♪ ♪ And a time to fall ♪ ♪ Come fill to me ♪ ♪ The parting glass ♪ ♪ Goodnight and joy be with you all ♪ ♪ So goodnight and joy be with you all ♪ MICHAEL: Just across the street from the Crystal Center is the old Bishop's Palace.

♪ Designed first by Richard Castle who departed to build Leinster House in Dublin and completed by Honest John Roberts, a Waterford local.

Inside, you'll find only the finest 18th Century furniture, silver, paintings and of course, crystal.

Isn't it always the case that the bishops end up with the nicest houses?

Well thankfully, here in Waterford the palace and its treasures have been opened up to the public and we've got the resident expert to show us all of it.

Eamonn McEneaney, Director of Waterford Treasures, which covers the museums in all of this quarter.

♪ So Eamonn, here we are in this incredible dining room.

EAMONN: Yeah, it's a very beautiful dining room.

It's nearly 300 years old, the room itself.

And the chandelier you're looking at of course is one of the finest Waterford chandeliers dating to the 1780s, um it's probably the finest chandelier in Ireland.

It's set in a historic context here.

And when you think of it, it was only made a couple of hundred yards away from here in Penrose Lane named after the family of course who established the factory here in 1783.

MICHAEL: Ah!

EAMONN: And it all adds to the whole theater of dining, which was basically showing off how wealthy and how important you were to have then this beautiful chandelier.

And everyone of course ate.

There wasn't electricity or there weren't oil lamps at this stage so you ate under candlelight.

So everyone looked fabulous regardless of how old you are.

MICHAEL: I like that kind of lighting.

EAMONN: You didn't need Botox or anything like that (Michael laughing) so they all looked wonderful then of course And everything was about sparkly things because the sparkles reflected the light and that saved money on the candles... MICHAEL: Ah!

EAMONN: ...which were extremely expensive.

So even the very, very wealthiest people in Ireland, um, would invite you to dinner early or invite you to dinner on a moonlit night, A, that you could get to the place safely, and B, that was enough ambient light um, within the house also.

And then, of course mirrors then reflected the light of these chandeliers.

And every lit bit of cut crystal was to reflect the light.

MICHAEL: Wow.

EAMONN: And that's why ladies wore shiny silk and big jewels to reflect, and the gentleman had epaulets and gold braid on their uniforms, and brass buttons, and the whole thing was to just keep reflecting light everywhere.

And even everything on the table was about reflecting light, the silverware and all the glassware again, it's all cut to reflect light.

♪ MICHAEL: What's so cool about this corner of Waterford is that there's a museum for just about everything.

There's so much here, how do you find the time?

Oh that's right, at the Irish Museum of Time of course.

EAMONN: Now Michael, we have the largest collection in the world of Irish time pieces going back to the 1680s, the earliest Irish long case clock or grandfather clock, the earliest Irish bracket-clock, which this is a bracket-clock, and the earliest Irish watches going back to the 1680s.

Um, I'll just show you this one in particular because it was found in a, in a Waterford house in fact at an auction about 20 years ago.

It's... you know that we all hear a clock going tick-tock?

This is the very first clock in the world that tick-tocked.

It's called an anchor escapement.

And there was a dispute about this with the British Museum and all the rest of it.

Their clock is 10 years later than this, and this one is signed and dated by a London maker.

And the inside of it, all... the insides of all these wonderful clocks are all done in brass, but this one is brass which is gilded.

They put a gold leaf over all of it.

And obviously the man who made it, William Clement decided, "Look at this, "this is going to be one of the most important clocks "in the world, so I'll really "give it the full monty and, "put, put the gold leaf on it."

There are some spectator clocks like this one here is the largest one ever made, and it would tell you the day it made, 300 years ago exactly.

It would tell you not only the time, the month, the day of the month, and it played music.

And so it was, imagine to be able to do that in 1720?

People were saying to me, "Who's that interested in clocks and watches?"

But I think everyone is.

MICHAEL: Everybody's obsessed with time.

EAMONN: Yeah, they are.

♪ The most used noun in the English language is the word time.

So it's, um, it's very, it's very important.

We are all obsessed with time, being on time and all the rest of it, and how much time have we left in life, and...

So it's, it's a really wonderful exhibition.

♪ MICHAEL: Eamonn, would you tell me a little bit about this boat?

EAMONN: Yeah, this boat is based on a piece of ship's timbers that we found in our archeological excavations.

And then we worked with the people in Denmark, and they were telling us that a boat this size is what the piece of timber came from.

So we had a, a, a group, of uh, volunteers make this ship, re- rebuild this ship from, from the drawings we got from Denmark.

Our Nor... our Vikings are Norwegians and this was the name they had on the city, Vadrarfjordr.

It's about 13 miles upstream from the coast, and it means "a haven from the windy sea" in, in, in Norwegian.

And Vadrarfjordr became Waterford.

MICHAEL: Wow, and why did you put the longboat right here?

EAMONN: Well, because it's beside the only monument in Ireland named in honor of a Viking.

It's called Reginald's Tower and that name has been on it for a thousand years.

And Reginald was the first King of Waterford.

There was also a Reginald there when the Normans came in 1170 and they brought the four Viking leaders of the city into this tower in 1170, and they played good cop, bad cop.

They killed two of them, and they freed two of them.

And the idea was that, "This is your lesson.

"If you cooperate with us, we'll be merciful.

"If you don't, we'll chop your head off."

(Michael laughing) So there were hard lessons to learn.

MICHAEL: Eamonn, you...

I know you are the expert when it comes to Viking history.

So much so that I hear that Norway bestowed a great honor on you.

Can you tell me about that?

EAMONN: Well, I've a great interest.

I'm not... Nobody is an expert on these things.

We're still learning about our history.

MICHAEL: OK EAMONN: Yes, in 19... in 2019, the King of Norway, um, made me a member of... gave me the Honor of Merit, which is a knighthood in Norwe..., in Norway for, um, I suppose involving Irish people in our Norse heritage, and particularly the people of Waterford in our Norse heritage because I came up with this idea of developing this area here to show off our history, which of course is the oldest city goes back to the Viking times.

MICHAEL: I can safely say that I've had the most interesting day that I've had in Ireland in many a year, and that's because of you, sir.

Thank you very much.

EAMONN: Thank you, Michael.

♪ MICHAEL: Waterford was founded due to its proximity to the sea and it forms a significant part of your identity growing up here.

As it did in Wexford, my own hometown just to the east.

But there's an artist out here who's doing something truly spectacular with the transient canvas of the shoreline.

♪ Manuel, we are about a half hour's drive and about a million miles away from Waterford City here in Stradbally Cove on the Copper Coast.

And uh, I wanted to come down to meet you because you do something really, really special that has uh, intrigued me for a few years now.

Could you tell me about your sand art?

MANUEL: Well, I started exactly on this place about seven years ago.

And uh, I just... Actually, the first thing I did was uh, uh putting, getting a piece of driftwood and uh, uh, drawing the tattoo, which is our wedding ring, the design of that onto that beach with the kids in the background.

So that's how everything started.

MICHAEL: So it was romance that started this art then?

MANUEL: Kind of yeah, we, we, we, (laughing) we'll go with that, yeah.

♪ MICHAEL: And so tell me, uh what first drew you to kind of creating art out of nature?

MANUEL: To see the contrast when you kind of do go over the sand with a rake, that kind of gives me the... the idea to go for bigger designs.

And I'm always kind of drawing at home, and I just rescaled that in a, onto a big size.

MICHAEL: Can I have a look at those technical drawings and how you start and uh grow it to the masterpiece that they become?

MANUEL: Of course you can.

So I'm, I'm working these out at home.

It takes a couple of nights to get all, uh, all the dimensions that I want.

And I, I kind of work out a construction plan for the beach, how to proceed.

I do a lot of measurements.

I do outlining first, and at the very end, I start actually raking and shading because when I, when I rake the sand, the tidal sand has uh, is, is dry and bright on the surface, and there's a lot of moisture underneath.

So when I rake it, that moisture comes up is darker, the sand is darker, and that creates a contrast and that's how I draw.

♪ MICHAEL: Uh, can I have a look at the tools?

MANUEL: What, the tools?

MICHAEL: Are they special tools?

MANUEL: No, it's just an ordinary, an ordinary um, uh garden rake, which I actually got in Lidl, (Manuel laughing) MICHAEL: Wow.

MANUEL: And it's... you can, you can MICHAEL: Oh yes!

MANUEL: You can expand it uh, to any size you want.

MICHAEL: Very good.

MANUEL: And as I said, it's nothing, nothing special.

Of course, I made, I made some special ones out of where I kinda have, uh, uh, not as wide ones and... MICHAEL: For more intricate design.

MANUEL: Sometimes I use the brush as well for the shading and stuff like that, but, but this would be the basic, the basic tool.

MICHAEL: Well, I know I'm fascinated by the designs.

I know they're endless and uh, I love that you've made Celtic art a part of Celtic nature in a way.

MANUEL: Yeah well, I'm big into the, the Celtic knots, the Celtic designs and, and they're a chall... a challenge to do on the beach because on the big scale with the, with the endless knots, it's kind of, you easily get lost in the big scale and uh so it's kind of a nice challenge for me.

♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: Caoimhe, Cian, Kayleigh, and Diarmuid, and together ye are Tulua.

Uh, now, I thought that was a Gaelic name, but uh, you're enlightening me now and telling me it's not Gaelic but it's...?

CAIN: Uh, Sanskrit.

MICHAEL: Sanskrit and... CAIN: Yeah, it's off the cuff.

MICHAEL: What does it... what does it mean?

CAIN: Eh, it means becoming more or rising.

MICHAEL: Rising, becoming more.

And at your tender age, I guess the only way is up, so... CAIN: Hopefully anyway, yeah.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: So tell us a bit about what it's like to be uh, a teenager playing traditional music in Ireland?

Uh did ye grow up playing music?

CAIN: Yeah, so em there's a school of music just uh, up the road from us, and they, we kinda just grew up going from primary school and uh, we kinda got introduced to that school of music.

And em, ya know that's where like that's where we met each other and we started going to fleadhs, and we started doing little em, events and all that the school of music organized.

And through that, kinda we kinda developed our own em, our own interest you know for trad.

Em we weren't like directly playing with each other.

We were playing like big bands and big groups, em, but just... it's only recently that we really came together and you know, kind of started incorporating each other's our, our own individual music with each other's, so... MICHAEL: So you're... in a way, you're kinda finding your style now?

CAIN: Oh yeah, yeah, we're still, still really trying to search for it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: Well I, like, I am obviously obsessed with traditional music and when I, uh discover new, young talent and I'm excited by it, I uh, I want the whole of America to learn about it.

Uh, now, do ye have designs on touring?

Would you like to hit America soon?

CAIN: Oh, yeah, that would be, that would be amazing, yeah.

KAYLEIGH: Yeah definitely, yeah.

CAIN: Yeah, yeah, that would be up there as one of the best things we could even imagine to do.

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh well, uh what I'd love to do is let American audiences hear you, um...

Uh so let's give them a piece of Tulua.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: Thanks for joining me on my travels around Waterford.

I'm Michael Londra, and thanks for watching Ireland with Michael.

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're 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 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 ♪ ♪