John Spillane on transforming the Victorian Cork fairytale Fior-usga into a glorious ‘folk opera’

“Myth is something that never happened, but always is.”

That’s a line from a chat I had with Cork singer/songwriter John Spillane, who was paraphrasing a chap called Gaius Sallustius Crispus, not a regular at the Lobby Bar, nor from Ballincollig, but a Roman historian.

John led me on a magical journey through Victorian Cork, Gaelic literature, court jesters, colonialism, the Great Hunger, oh, and his soon to be released ‘magnum opus’, a glorious folk opera entitled Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough, which has been a long time in the making.

“The idea has been there for 15 years or more and it was actually composed between 2015 and 2017,” said An Speallánach.

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“I started on the first of January 2015, and spent three full years composing it, and during that time I workshopped it with with the Corcadorca site-specific Theatre Company in the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork where we worked on it for a week, each time with opera singers.

“Then I got a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2018 which allowed me to finish it and it was recorded last year.”

Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough is a three-act Gaelic folk opera, a bilingual work which Spillane calls “an imagined re-Gaelicisation of the Victorian Cork fairytale Fior-usga collected by Thomas Crofton Croker in the 1800s and published in his book Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland in 1828″.

The story is a surreal tale culminating in a drowned kingdom because the king was afraid that the ordinary people would take all the water from the well so he closed the well off from his subjects so that only he and his daughter had access to it.

However, after an unfortunate accident, all the water from the well escapes and floods the valley, drowning the kingdom.

As lore tells us, the water formed the lough in Cork city as we know it today. They say you can see the tops of the underworld towers on a clear day and hear the music of their big party on Midsummer’s night...

And so we have the basis of Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough.

John’s work is being called a ‘folk opera’ but he himself has reservations.

“You know, there’s something ‘big’ about the word ‘opera’ so I had to break it down into ‘a story’.

“I had the structure of the English language version by Thomas Crofton Croker and then it was translated into German by the Brothers Grimm the following year in a book called Irischen Elfenmärchen.

“So I had that structure to go on. But just as we can glimpse the tops of the towers under the waters of the lough of the otherworldly city or castle that was there, we can see the Gaelic story beneath the Victorian Cork fairy tale,” says John who is trying to strike a blow for the Irish language with this work.

He also says that there is an anti-colonialism message running through Fíoruisce in that he got his university education at a time when Seán Ó Tuama’s Poems of the Dispossessed was first published so Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough is about dispossession and repossession but it also has contemporary resonances, as John explains.

“In 2015, 2016 and 2017 we had huge marches against the water charges,” he explains.

“Here in Cork, the Fianna Fáil government brought in water charges. People protested, they were eventually scrapped.

“That is what the Legend of the Lough is all about, the closing of the well and the charging of the water. Does that water not belong to everyone?” he asks.

At the same time as the concept behind Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough was taking shape, John started writing loads and loads of lyrics, both in English and Irish and workshopped with some dramaturges about the structure of the opera before he “went down the rabbit hole”.

Just as we can glimpse the tops of the towers under the waters of the lough of the otherworldly city or castle that was there, we can see the Gaelic story beneath the Victorian Cork fairy tale

—  John Spillane

“I put together a world of Irish storytelling from some of my favourite books and brought together anything to do with horses, anything to do with birds, anything to do with the fairies, anything to do with war, curses and so on,” says the Corkonian as he worked all the pieces of the musical jigsaw together.

Big pieces in the jigsaw were the singers who would play the different roles of the folk opera – John had decided to use folk and sean-nós singers as singing in the Irish language came more naturally to them so he recruited Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin for his great, deep voice, to play the King; Ríoghnach Connolly as Queen Éadaoin and Niamh Farrell as the princess, Fíoruisce.

Also on the recording are a wealth of musicians, including Alan Doherty (from the much-lamented Aldoc) and Billy Mag Fhloinn, the horn blower and bullroarer.

The double CD is now recorded and ready for pre-order but is there a chance we will see Fíoruisce staged anywhere in Ireland any time soon?

Probably not, says John.

“Ideally, Corcadorcha would have staged it but they no longer exist,” says John.

“It would be fantastic but right now, I’m the composer and my work here is done,” he says.

John Spillane launches Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough by unveiling a site-responsive art exhibition by artist Megan Clancy at The Lough in Cork City on Sunday September 15, followed by a listening party at MTU Cork School of Music. Admission is free but booking via Eventbrite is essential.

Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough, a folk opera by John Spillane, will be available on CD and digital from Friday September 13. Pre-order at fioruisce.ie