Have you heard of Seanchoíche?
Dublin man Ciaran Gaffney came up with the idea of gathering people to tell and hear stories - from heart-rending regrets to bizarre tales in praise of salt.
Ciaran Gaffney remembers the time a woman stood up and told a room full of people a regret she carries to this day.
The story was about moving to a big city in England from a small Irish town. Lost and miserable, she couldn’t find her way to the bus stop to catch a ride to a job interview.
An old man saw her in distress and offered to walk her to the bus.
The crowd at a Seanchoíche in Dublin.
Cairan Gaffney
“So, they start walking together and he's quite old. He's quite frail. And he asks her where in Ireland she's from. And she says where she's from and he says, 'that's where I'm from',” Gaffney told RNZ's Culture 101.
Irish storytelling nights now a global sensation
When he’s got her safely to the bus stop, he tells her that she reminds him of his sister who had recently died, Gaffney says.
“And she gets onto the bus, and she looks back to wave at him. And she sees that he's hunched over the bus stop bawling, crying, bawling, crying.”
The woman stayed on the bus and 14 years later still lives with the regret, he says.
“And she thinks of this man all the time. And that broke my heart into pieces. And everyone in the room was crying. It was something just so magical in the way she told it.”
Gaffney, who lives in Dublin, created Seanchoíche (pronounced shan-a-key-ha) out of a hunger for connection when the city was was coming out of post-Covid lockdowns.
These story telling nights have since grown into an international community, packing out events in Ireland, the UK, Europe, the US and now New Zealand.
It might never had happened had he landed a job in corporate sales, he says.
“In that job interview, the hiring manager asked me to talk a little bit about this Seanchoíche thing that was on my resume in the bottom right-hand corner.
“And I spoke about it for around two minutes, clearly with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm. And he interrupted me and he said, ‘Ciaran, you're not getting this job.’ And I said, ‘what?’ It was in the final round.
“And he said, ‘Because I have never seen someone speak so passionately and so enthusiastically about their hobby, you need to make that your full-time job'.”
Seanchoíche is a portmanteau, combining the word seanchaí, which is the Irish Gaelic for storyteller, and Oíche, Irish Gaelic for night, he says.
Storytelling runs deep in Irish culture, stemming from a time when low levels of literacy in rural communities meant the spoken word was how information spread.
“In the 15th, 16th and 17th century the only way they could access things like folklore, gossip, mythology, even moral codes and religious codes, was by gathering at a barn or in a pub or in a cottage and listening to a seanchaí who would share stories.”
Each Seanchoíche has six to eight storytellers who have pre-applied to tell their tales.
“These stories can be anything from personal anecdotes to pieces of fiction, prose, diary entries, monologues, trains of thought,” Gaffney says.
Each story night revolves around a particular theme.
“It could be something like love or embarrassment or identity.”
A storyteller at a Seanchoíche in Dublin.
Ciaran Gaffney
There have been some memorable yarns spun over the last four years, he says - the theme of love a perennial favourite.
“The first five speakers all spoke about platonic love, they all spoke about friendship, which I thought was beautiful and quite a surprise.
“And then the sixth person was a geologist, and she told this incredible kind of a spoken word essay style story about her love for salt, which was absolutely bizarre, but it was so entertaining. And it made you think about salt very differently.”
Seanchoíche Auckland, with the theme 'Beginnings' is happening Thursday 5 February from 6pm at Norma Taps. Tickets available here.
