The Unquiet: Songs for my Mother RTE Radio 1
If you listen to one programme on radio this week, please make it this one.
The Unquiet: Songs for my Mother – a radio documentary on RTE Radio 1 – is Irish traditional singer Pauline Scanlon’s tribute to her late and beloved mother, Eileen.
It is brimming over with love and compassion and it’s a story that’s been told over and over again down the years.
Eileen's life wasn’t straightforward, says Pauline, who spent three years on an album of songs in her memory.
Eileen Scanlon was born in 1954, she was a Dingle woman and the portrait painted by those closest to her was of a very kind, very beautiful woman with a great sense of humour as well as being a fighter for the underdog.
You would see her out protesting – on the picket line outside Dingle Hospital – and yes, she loved Joe Dolan... she went to his funeral and his month’s mind as well.
The Unquiet Grave was about love and about letting go for Pauline who made the album over three years in a cosy garret studio in London.
She finds comfort and solidarity in the traditional songs that have been passed through “many hands and many generations and many hearts and many souls”.
Her mother, like thousands of women before her, got pregnant in the 1970s and was sent to Dublin where she stayed with a family and had her son who was given up for adoption.
“That was the deal .. they took the baby almost like they were doing you a favour and the deal was you didn't speak afterwards.”
Her dad was in the dark a bit at that stage, she said, it was a sad and lonely time for both of them.
But the couple went on to marry.
“For my whole life I felt like I had a stone in my belly of ‘Don't Tell Anyone,’” said Pauline.
She knows open frank conversations is the right thing, but still, even though her mother is dead, it feels like some strange betrayal.
The story doesn’t end there.. it is only the beginning.
There is lightness and wit. Eileen had a feistiness about her... she would never judge, said her daughter.
But there are shadows too, very difficult and dark times for the family.
Her story is one that was repeated thousands of times across Ireland – there are families sitting down to Sunday dinners or Christmas or Easter and the child who was given up is always there; a secret held between them.
When she died, Eileen’s family scattered her ashes on the sea where she loved to rest her eyes.
This is a very beautiful and moving documentary.
Pauline Scanlon speaks her truth quietly and lets her voice and her music carry us with her on a river of love and compassion and grief.
