Page Title
Teacht Aniar
a permanent Wild Irish home
Wild Irish is grounding in, and growing up. We are crowdfunding (now until the end of May) to raise money to buy the house and land we currently live on in South Killkenny, near Waterford city. The site will be a venue for all future retreats and a home for our family.
We need a home, for our family and our work.
Since founding Wild IRish in 2017, we have helped hundreds of people reclaim their language and rediscover their cultural and spiritual traditions.
Now we need your support to bring Teacht Aniar; our vision for a croílár dhúchais (native centre) and a home for our family into reality.
An Deis (The Opportunity)
We have recieved a great opportunity to buy the house and property we are currently living in in South Kilkenny before it goes on the open market.
To avail of this opportunity, we are crowdfunding €125,000.
The áit (place) consists of an 1.5 acres of land, a renovated traditional farmhouse, which would be our family home, a courtyard, three outbuildings and a barn in good condition. There is a sloping meadow out back that leads down to the Blackwater River.
Faoin Áit ( about the place)
The áit has the potiential to house both our family and an croílár dhúchais.
There are stables which would be acommodation. There is a fine big yard for parking; a longshed for workshops or a dining room. A barn for events and yoga, storage and utility sheds and a polytunnel. A big meadow out back with a grand view for camping.
And lastly but not leastly there is the river.
An Abhainn Dubh, a tributary of the Suir, has good water quality and banked by a wild gorsey glen. In time, we could buy it, protect it.
Relations are good with the neighbours and the owners and there is a strong dúil (desire) locally for something of this nature.
An Fís (The Vision)
Teacht Aniar is how we say resiliance in Irish, it translates literally as returning from the West. This will be the name of our new home and centre where the function of building community resiliance for a changing future will underscore and give meaning all our activites.
Like any good name, it works on two levels.
Teacht Aniar translates literally into returning from the West and describes our heroic journey from the Gaeltacht remote Western Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibne.
As natives of Waterford and Wexford, Teacht Aniar is particularly pertinent title that describes our journey (heroic or not) from the remote Western Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne to our native ceantar. Having rediscovered and refined our Gaeilge, we carried it home; like an ember in the pocket. Ag lorg an sponc chun é a lasadh.
The áit is equadistant from our native parishes.
We would design it to permaculture principles and take a community meitheal and skillshare approach to the building. Those that donate to the project can do so in exchange for a place on a weekend retreat in the future.
An maoiniú (The Funding)
As this purchase for a dual purpose of a family home and a social enterprise, we will separate the áit into two separate folios. One for the house, which will remain in our name and the rest being transferred to our non-profit Wild Irish. We will be the caretakers of the áit and our family will host those who come, in a tradititional village sense of the word.
As a non profit Wild Irish will then be eligible for both capital and current funding from the Department of Culture and Gaeltacht for the establishment of Irish language centres outside of the Gaeltacht. This centre would be the first of its kind in all of Ireland.
In this journey, we have encountered hundreds of like minded individuals around Ireland. This is an opportunity now for our scattered community to gather together to learn new skills, to speak our language and to celebrate our rites.
An turas go dtí seo
The journey to here
WE began Wild Irish Retreat as an Irish language and cultural revival weekend eight years ago in the Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle) peninsula in West Kerry, Ireland. We learned a lot on our first wild and (edgy) retreat on the tail end of Hurricane Ophelia, making a sweatlodge at high tide in a rocky cove.
Six months later Uisne, our first son was born.
The retreats got wilder as we brought them to Cearbhuil's off grid land in the Burren. Tents replaced dormitories. Fires replaced cookers. We rebelled against the lockdown and had one retreat where everyone cried at being close to other humans again. Eirú was born.
We split our efforts then, responding to the requests, and the difficulty of both being absent from two small children. Siobhán held women's creative retreats le Gaeilge, craft and ritual, collaborating with Cearbhuil Ní Fhionnghusa and Mishel from Tang. Diarmuid did sweatlodges and hurling for men's retreats and joined yoga teacher Michael Ryan to found Nature of Man.
Then two years ago, we left Corca Dhuibhne in search of community, a home and a 'road schooling' adventure. We traveled around Ireland house-sitting, camping and bringing Wild Irish to festivals with poetry, rituals and wild hurling. And every time we had to leave a place, another would appear on the horizon. Like this we learned to live in trust and not give into the anxiety of being without a stable home.
Then we conceived a third child, and the appetite for travel evaporated and was replaced by a longing for stability and a nest. Life brought us to a halfway point in Killkenny near the small Steiner school here.
For eight months we lived in temporary places and our son was born in a one-bedroom cabin. For the first three months of his life, we lived in a happy heap but again we had to move on.
Then a friend told us of a farmhouse in her family, which we could stay in until it was sold. From the day we moved into 'Fr Tom's old place' in Chruabhaile, we saw the potiential to realise our vision for an Irish language retreat centre and home, all in one place. It's a homecoming, exactly halfway between our native birthplaces in Waterford and Wexford.
AS soon as we landed in Chruabhaile (Crowbally) known as Fr Tom's place, the vision we had fostered for so long crystalised. The messages were loud and clear. Now is time. This is the place.
