Éanna Ní Lamhna: "Every day you should say ‘I never knew that’. It keeps your brain going"
Eanna Ní Lamhna with her flute in Kilrush, Co Clare. Picture: Eamon Ward
In the late afternoon every second Tuesday, Éanna Ní Lamhna retreats to her bedroom for her half-hour online flute lesson with Caitriona Ryan, principal flautist with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.
The naturalist and broadcaster has taken up a challenge set by Music Network to learn to play a musical instrument, get sponsorship to do so from friends and family and achieve Grade 1 standard, with exams to be held this summer. The aim of the Grade-1-a-thon Challenge is to help raise €50,000 to establish a national bank of musical instruments for use by people over the age of 65.
“I said I’d give it a lash,” Ní Lamhna, 71, says from Co Clare — she and husband John moved here temporarily from Terenure last October so they could be in the vicinity for their son’s wedding.
It’s not her first time learning a musical instrument. “In my youth I learned the piano accordion, a most dreadful instrument. They say a gentleman is someone who could play the piano accordion — but doesn’t.”
Growing up in rural Co Louth in 1950s Ireland, Ní Lamhna says nobody had a piano. “Except for posh people — the squeeze box was the poor man’s piano.” The Tree Council of Ireland president openly admits that — while she learned to read music — she had “no ability”. And when Music Network’s invitation arrived, Éanna’s daughter sat her down and gave her some blunt advice.
“She said ‘don’t take up anything with strings because you’re tone deaf and have no musical ear’. She was right but you don’t like to be told. And she said ‘don’t take up the piano because your arthritic fingers wouldn’t be able to move fast enough’!”
Because two of her three children had studied music — her daughter achieved Grade 5 in the flute, one of her sons Grade 8 in the bassoon — Ní Lamhna’s “house owned a piano, a bassoon and a flute”.
Her daughter suggested the flute as a good option for Ní Lamhna taking up the Grade-1-a-thon Challenge. “If you press the right key, you get the right sound.”
So far she’s had four lessons. And she’s pleased with her progress. “The flute isn’t like the tin whistle — you don’t stick it in your mouth and blow. You have to blow across it, like blowing over a beer bottle."
“But the other day I was able to play a scale with five notes, and Caitriona said it did sound like do, re, mi, fa, sol. She has given me a few tunes with just those five notes — Irish lullaby ‘Éiníní’ and ‘Sur le Pont d'Avignon’. I don’t mind if I don’t pass the exam — it’s the journey that’s important.”
Music Network is calling on people across Ireland to take on the Grade-1-a-thon Challenge, and Ní Lamhna says practising every day from 4.30-5pm cheers her up. “I mightn’t be any better than I’d have been as a kid but I’m getting a lot more fun out of it. I’m a glass half-full person but I still find it a wonderful thing to do in these times — because you can’t think of anything else when you’re trying to get the note. You’re totally focused. It’s a half-hour escape from whatever ails you.”
Describing herself as “someone who’s always looking and asking questions”, Ní Lamhna says the day you don’t learn anything is a poor day. “Every day you should say ‘I never knew that’. It keeps your brain going, your curiosity.”
Locked down in Clare, she’s doing the best she can to follow Covid rules. “We buy enough food to keep us going for the week. My husband does a lot of home-cooking — last week he made marmalade.”
Her 2021 resolution is to have a cup of tea in bed every morning, preferably made by John. “It’s a bit of communication with each other before the day starts. It’s a gentle start and a reward for all the mornings when the children were young and you almost had to be up before you got to bed.”
With Vandeleur Woods in her 5km range, she walks in woodland every day and finds it easy to notch up 10,000 steps. She sees Covid as the result of human interference with, and removal of, wildlife habitats.
“We’ve interfered with wild animals. We’re putting too much pressure on them, not giving them enough space in the world. So it’s no mystery a virus would jump from an animal to a human. It’s nothing new — it happened with Ebola, SARS, Spanish Flu, the Black Death. It always happens when you get pressure of people and animals living close together.”
A panellist on onRTÉ Radio 1 since it started 26 years ago, Ní Lamhna has personally encountered people’s newfound, lockdown-induced appreciation of nature. “I’m getting lots of queries — could I identify a yellow bird in someone’s garden? What kind of spider is this? I got a lovely picture of a curlew the other day that someone took when they were out walking.”
Her new book, , due for publication by O’Brien Press in March, is about how the world works, from easy things like pollination, to more complex like carbon sequestration.
She’s hoping lessons and appreciations gained during the pandemic will accelerate efforts to tackle climate crisis. “Lockdown will go away. We can fix Covid. But we can’t fix climate if we don’t do it soon. By 2030 we’ll have gone too far to pull it back. The bad news about climate is worse than Covid — it’s about the end of our world, not just a disease that’s among us for a year.”
On the plus side, she says Covid has shown that governments can take big action on a national scale. “When a terrible crisis happened, the Government reacted and put loads into saving us. We never had any hope that’d happen — necessary big action taken at national level — but it did. If they did it for Covid, they can do it for climate change — if they realise how vital it is to do it.”
It’s in aid of the Music Network Instruments for Older People Appeal, which aims to raise €50,000 to establish a national bank of musical instruments for use by the over 65s.
The Challenge sees participants learn to play the musical instrument of their dreams, with the added motivation that comes from asking friends/family for sponsorship.
For this Challenge, Music Network has teamed up with Royal Irish Academy of Music — participants can take Royal Irish Academy of Music Grade 1 exams online free of charge (subject to availability) in early summer 2021.
Music Network will share participants’ progress along the way on its social media channels, including that of Éanna Ni Lamhna, who has taken on the flute.
- For more on how to take part, how to source an instrument, as well as a helpful fundraising guide, see https://www.musicnetwork.ie/instrument-hub/how-you-can-help/grade-1-a-thon-challenge.
- Donate to the Music Network Instruments for Older People Appeal through: JustGiving, musicnetwork.ie and through Music Network’s Facebook page.
