North of the Clonallon Road in Warrenpoint rises the Hill of Jenny Black. It is named after an infamous old witch who dwelt there in the days when the dark arts held sway, when certain women were suspected of being in league with the demon. They were thought to have the evil eye and conjured spells to the injury of humankind. Every accident that happened was the suspected actions of a witch.

To the credit of the people of Ireland, it must be said that they took no part in the cruel torturing and murdering of persons suspected of witchcraft, which disgraces nearly every country in Ireland to this day. There was a statute passed by the British in Ireland against witchcraft. It wasn’t until the Witchcraft Laws were repealed by King George II that the ancient dames breathed freely once more after the long reign of terror and persecution against them. One might ask: where are they all now?
Jenny Black resided at the top of Clonallon Hill and she was held in the greatest terror by those believers in the dark arts.

She was generally seen sitting in her cabin at the wheel, spinning and weaving diabolical spells and charms in the usual manner of witches. Her black cat would blink at the fire in the grate, in the usual manner of black cats. It is said that her cat would talk to Jenny Black in front of visitors, until they fainted or fled with fright.
At this time, the hills of Clonallon were covered with dense woods, believed to be inhabited by evil spirits, devils, hobgoblins. The local folk would give these woods a wide berth after dark. Jenny Black was long noted for playing tricks upon nocturnal wanderers; she appeared in frightful shapes and would swoop down on them to tear or jostle them about the road.

One dark night, two farmers were returning from the town with their horses and carts. When they met the hill, Jenny was just alighting off her broomstick. The horses were not acquainted with Jenny’s particular form of travel – they bolted and galloped wildly back down the steep hill. At the bottom of the hill, the horses collided and sent their owners flying off the carts, headfirst to the ground. The horses, wild with fear, then trampled the men and killed them where they lay.

On another occasion, the witches fair and devils gay were enjoying an evening’s entertainment in the wicked woods of Clonallon when they were disturbed by a farmer of the name O’Hare. Slightly under the influence of the uisce bheatha, and spirited by his indulgences, O’Hare boldly faced Jenny’s assembled guests. He was not in the least bit cowed by their numbers and horrible appearance. Stepping unsteadily forward, he challenged the whole condemned lot to fight him. Looking around and smiling at each other, the beasts fell upon him with teeth and nails, tore at this flesh and beat him over the head with their limbs.

Jenny Black, cleverly manoeuvring the broomstick, swept down from the air like a hawk, lifted him out of the woods and sailed through the skies towards the lough. Halfway to Carlingford, Jenny dropped the unfortunately O’Hare far into the dark waters below, where he sank and remained below the surface. The farmer O’Hare’s sad fate kept local folk from meddling in the devil’s business any more. They spoke of Jenny Black in a more respectful manner after that.

​I am doing a good bit of research these days into the connections between folklore and community identity. This has involved a long hard look into folk songs and traditional song, in particular. I’ve been reading a short book I found in a charity shop called Ireland: Towards a Sense of Place. It’s interesting because it was published in 1985, though many of its ideas have yet to bear fruit in Ireland today.

A lot of Irish lore delves into life on this island – as well as life off this island. Emigration is a major theme in the songs and stories because it seems we are never done leaving. I don’t think there’s anything particularly Irish about emigration, or indeed about any of the recurring themes in our local stories. The reason they are popular is that they are universal, human themes: love, loss, death, revelry, magic, etc. Irish folk culture has been influenced by other western European cultures for as long as we can tell.
 
In the category of the so-called emigrant’s farewell, we can understand the sense of place that has become so important in Irish culture. With a diaspora spanning continents and millions of people who feel Irish, this sense of place is a fascinating one 100 years since the foundation of an independent Irish state. Although a very young political entity, Ireland’s sense of history seems timeless.

If this sleep were on you in Cill na Dromad or some grave in the West,
It would ease my sorrow, though great the affliction and I’d not complain.

- Ó Tuama and Kinsella, An Duanaire, Poems of the Dispossessed, No. 68
​
In this poem, it scarcely matters where Cill na Dromad actually is. It could even be fictional, for all that it matters. The point is, as Seán Ó Tuama reminds us, we all know what Cill na Dromad is: “the centre of one’s universe, the beloved home-place”.

It is possible to share these past experiences through the songs and music of the past. We can use these memories to help us define ourselves. Only with an appreciation of what's gone before can we cast judgement on our own past and our own identity. If we can't engage with our own community, we're left alone to forge meaning and identity through other sources; like American media.

Who we are is much more complex than our family history. Likewise, where we're from is much more complex than the physical space in which we find ourselves. Like a map, a physical location is “static” and “does not capture the rounded sense of place as experienced by the insider”:

It's these 'memory-moments' that make us who we are. They grant us our cultural references. I believe that culture is behaviour; we are what we do. Smyth said in 1985 that, "To know who you are as a people is vital to the balance of all our lives." We have to be careful to stave off the gradual dissolution of local memory and therefore local identity. This could easily happen if we don't remember the things that brought us to where we are. It has happened before. Indeed, it's already happened in large parts of western Ireland where songs, stories, language has been lost. Looking at Dublin in 2016, is the cult of progress is "eliminating part of our memory, part of our identity, part of our future"?

Folklore is a product of a people’s culture. Stories and songs are passed through generations to preserve the previous impressions of a community. These can be melodies, ideas, rhythms, stories or movements. Dancing and singing are age-old human pastimes. They are timeless. By participating in the traditional arts here in Ireland, we can share a moment of community with our ancestors (the people who lived here before us). Though removed in time, we are connected by place. A song can act as a time machine; or, as composer Michael McGlynn has said, songs exist “out of time”.

One of the reasons we enjoy the traditional arts relates to our constant search for identity. We crave a connection to people whom we perceive to be similar. Through the traditional arts, we can connect with people who are absent, who are gone, who have said what they wanted to say. By singing folk songs, we can feel a connection with such people in the past. Often, we pursue this connection backwards in time while ignoring or suppressing the social need to engage with others in the present, who might live and work and move around us every day.1

When we see artworks from another era, we can begin to imagine the culture of those peoples through their works of art. Therefore, we can have a more complex and personal understanding of the people. If these people come from our own place, we often feel we can better understand ourselves. Lore also has a narrative power when it takes the form of story and song (but can also be abstract) in that it allows us each to have an interpretation and thus add to the story as it is passed onto the next recipient. In this way, we are contributing to our own story, our own identity.

So we as citizens can unleash our own imaginations as to what might be possible in our own worlds. Museums play a important role in this process in providing a hushed atmosphere for personal reflection on artefacts and artworks. Of course, lots of people don’t feel comfortable in museums, so we must ask: for whom are such institutions a barrier to seeing the world in a different way?

In recent decades, artists have accepted that, by experiencing art in a more comfortable atmosphere, the audience is more open to the ideas within. Otherwise, when artists are obsessed with more traditional modes of cultural dissemination, people who are deemed to be uneducated/uninitiated can feel excluded from the process.

Thus, an “authentic invitation” can disentangle an artwork from the prestige or prejudice of its context. This is very important for any artist, or any innovator attempting to introduce a new idea to any audience. So how can we extend this authentic invitation? How can we engage citizens in a genuine dialogue about human values? Dewey believed that art gives us the capacity to sympathise, to identify with others beyond a relation to the past, and can serve as a way to see and imagine possibilities in the present (as well as the future).

By this reasoning, music could be seen as a powerful approach to fostering ‘community amongst any group of people, especially people who are already connected by place.