MICHAEL: Hello and welcome to Ireland with Michael.

I'm Michael Londra, and in this show, I get to tell you everything I love about my home country, the best way I know how, through music.

Today, we're north of Dublin, heading into Kavanagh country, the birthplace of Patrick Kavanagh, whose writing revealed the realities of rural Ireland, and the common people in the early days of our republic.

It's the picture of pastoral serenity just about everywhere you go and one of Ireland's best kept secrets.

It also happens to be a land I don't know all that well myself.

So, let's discover it together and to invoke Kavanagh, may tranquility walk with me and no care.

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael is made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time, or just longing to return, there's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you are thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ ♪ (water splashing) MICHAEL: We're beginning our journey across the Northeast, just beyond the pale in Slane, County Meath.

A village built on the steep hillside beside the River Boyne on the road from Dublin to Monaghan.

It's a wonderful stop as we make our way from the city out to the country.

The reverse of the trek taken on foot by this land's poet, Patrick Kavanagh.

But before we get to him, there's an old building right here on the river with an extraordinary story.

(birds calling) This is the old mill of Slane.

Water-powered and built in the 1760s to grind flour before converting to work linens.

It's a beautiful building, more like a country estate than a shell for industry.

So, it's lucky that having been out of use for a few decades, it's now been embraced as the home of the Handmade Soap Company, who do, well, exactly what it sounds like they do.

As for the mill, it's been converted to generate electricity from the River Boyne which powers all of their operations here.

As much as I'm enjoying the fresh air out here, I can't wait to smell what's happening on the inside.

♪ (machines working) Donagh Quigley, I am always in search of great Irish products back in the US and I walk into my local Dillard's about a week ago, and there on the counter was the Handmade Soap Company.

A huge success across North America.

How in the name of God did it all start?

DONAGH: Well, it was- it was a 10 year journey to get to Dillard's, Michael.

And we started 10 years ago with two pots in the kitchen myself and my wife, Gemma.

We hadn't a clue what we were doing but it grew quickly in Ireland.

The brand grew quite, very quickly here.

MICHAEL: So, what do you think is the secret to an Irish soap company being so successful then?

DONAGH: We just keep doing what we always did with the two pots in the kitchen, except we just do it a bit bigger.

We use the finest natural ingredients.

Even this premises where we make the product, it's a repurposed old linen mill.

It's powered by a turbine, which runs off the river which runs just right behind that wall there.

So, we've always done this.

We've always made the finest, naturally products that we could, and it just so happens that that's what people want these days.

MICHAEL: When you look at natural on a box, what does it mean really?

DONAGH: Everything from our supply chain, our suppliers, how we vet them to how we treat people in the factory here, paying a living wage as opposed to minimum wage to how we relate to our suppliers to our end-of-life packaging.

We use all recycled materials.

So, it certifies every step of that process.

So, we just try to do the way we live our life and im- imprint that on our company.

MICHAEL: And of course, this being Ireland.

DONAGH: This is cold process soap... MICHAEL: Donagh happens to be a musician as well as a chemist and an entrepreneur.

He did us the kindness of playing a tune on the Uilleann pipes, Ireland's national pipe.

♪ ♪ ♪ Further along the road and into the Irish Heartlands, we finally come to the birthplace of the country poet.

♪ (birds calling) Patrick Kavanagh lived his first 35 years here in Inniskeen, County Monaghan on his family's farm.

He started writing poetry as a teenager and having left school at 13, he took as his subject the world that he knew.

The fields and hills of Monaghan, which as he wrote, made him the sort of man he was, a half-faith ploughman whose country of mind had a hundred little heads on none of which foot room for genius.

(sheep calling) Though he may not have claimed genius, we will on his behalf.

The peasant poet was still a working farmer when his first book was published and his literary aspirations drove him to walk the full 50 miles to Dublin to make the connections which forged his career.

♪ The church in whose yard Kavanagh now rests eternally has been converted today into a museum, an educational center focused on his life, work, and legacy.

For the intrepid know nothing like myself, it's the perfect place to brush up on this vital Irish voice.

DARREN: One of our greatest poets and cultural icons in Ireland.

MICHAEL: And I was greeted by Darren McCreesh, the passionate manager of this fine collection.

So, in North America, when you think of Irish literature, I think probably a couple of names come up before Kavanagh, that's Yeats and Heaney.

Why specifically should an American listen or- or read about Kavanagh?

DARREN: Kavanagh describes, really eloquently, the indigenous Irish experience.

He was the first to properly write about what it means to live up in rural Ireland and- and be off the land.

He was a farmer himself.

He knew all about the landscape.

So, if you want to get a proper authentic experience of- of Ireland, Patrick Kavanagh is- is the man.

Seamus Heaney would say that- that he literally built on- on what Kavanagh wrote.

That Kavanagh opened the door for Heaney to write about ordinary things, things that- that were based around his own home place.

To write about bogs, to write about, you know, like old wooden gates, fields.

That it was okay.

That Kavanagh gave him permission to write about that.

And when Heaney won his Nobel prize and gave- gave his lecture, he actually name checked Patrick Kavanagh as being key- key to his development as a poet.

Yeats beforehand was very much writing from an Ang- Anglo kind of Irish perspective but also writing about universal themes.

And hi- his- his work is- is beautiful and lyrical.

But in terms of an indigenous Irish experience, Kavanagh is the man.

♪ On Raglan Road on an autumn day ♪ ♪ I saw her first and knew ♪ MICHAEL: Even if you don't know Kavanagh and you're not the type to be flipping through the poetry books, you may yet have heard his words as set to music by Luke Kelly of the Dubliners.

♪ That her dark hair would weave a snare ♪ MICHAEL: "On Raglan Road" is a contemporary classic and there's no better place to perform it than a late night pub.

♪ I saw the danger yet I passed ♪ ♪ Along the enchanted way ♪ And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf ♪ ♪ At the dawning of the day ♪ ♪ On Grafton Street in November ♪ ♪ We tripped lightly along the ledge ♪ ♪ Of a deep ravine where can be seen ♪ ♪ The worth of passion's pledge ♪ ♪ The Queen of Hearts still breaking hearts ♪ ♪ And me not making hay ♪ For I loved too much and by such and such ♪ ♪ Is happiness thrown away ♪ ♪ On a quiet street where old ghosts meet ♪ ♪ I see her walking now ♪ Away from me so hurriedly ♪ ♪ My reason must allow ♪ That I not love her as I should ♪ ♪ For an angel woos our clay ♪ ♪ He'll lose his wings at the dawn of day ♪ ♪ On Raglan Road on an autumn day ♪ ♪ I saw her and first I knew ♪ (audience clapping) Cheers.

(audience clapping) Thanks so much.

(water rushing) While Kavanagh's lyricism can be beautifully set to a tune, the musicality of his writing comes through without the aid of melody.

To hear the words aloud in this place, the poetry comes alive from the page.

MAN: Can I mention the dark fields where the first gay flight of my lyric got caught in a peasant's prayer?

Wherever I turn and I see in the stony gray soil of Monaghan, dead loves that were born for me.

(water rushing) MICHAEL: Now, if you can't afford to have someone recite Kavanagh to you, Inniskeen is thought of exactly that.

Here in the center of the town is an eco-friendly, hand cranked poetry jukebox filled with words on demand to illuminate and enrich our lives.

Though Kavanagh himself, he might not have approved of each and every poem included being in truth, something of a prickly man and a caustic critic, the access to literature so vital to his start, he would have heartily approved of.

(background chatter) MAN: On an apple-ripe September morning, through the mist- chill fields I went with a pitch-fork on my shoulder less for use than for devilment.

MICHAEL: Beautiful.

♪ To really understand the life that Kavanagh came from, you need to understand the history of rural Ireland.

A history in which one dark decade of hunger and emigration looms hugely.

♪ In the town of Carrickmacross, there's a relic, which like all of Ireland has adapted with its times.

♪ We've come to the Carrickmacross Union Workhouse, or 'Teach na mBocht.'

A poor house.

During the 1840s, amid the great hunger, of nearly 8 million some people in Ireland, 3 million were destitute, evicted from their blighted land by absentee British landlords to whom disappeared what food was grown.

♪ Hundreds of these workhouses were constructed to look after our own, but it was pittance wages and not much to go around.

Grim charity indeed as the mass grave behind the building attests to.

♪ Yvonne, we've come right up to the roof of the house.

Can you tell me about this room?

YVONNE: Well, this room is an original children's dormitory and approximately 200 girls slept here on straw, on the wooden floor without light or heat because there was no electricity in the 1840s.

And they were teenagers in this room and then the boys slept in a separate dormitory.

And a matron would've supervised and managed all of the children.

MICHAEL: So, when families came into the workhouse first, the whole family was separated so young kids were left on their own... YVONNE: They were.

They were.

They were separated.

Babies once they reached the age of two, they were separated from the mothers, which is one of the reasons why families hated to come into the workhouse because they were segregated.

Husbands and wives, boys and girls, mothers from children.

And that's one of the reasons they earned the name, 'the poor man's jail,' because of how harshly families were treated when they came in here.

MICHAEL: Can you imagine being a little three-year-old girl on your own in this room, this packed room, with a sour matron and just being terrified and cold and miserable?

YVONNE: Exactly.

I mean, there was no fireplaces in the dormitories but the master and matron, they all had fireplaces in their rooms.

MICHAEL: Of course they did.

YVONNE: But not the children.

It was body warmth that kept them warm in here.

♪ MICHAEL: The workhouse remained open for 80 years and only closed in 1921.

Today, this huge, nearly 200-year-old complex has been beautifully restored and with a fresh paint job, it's become a community center, museum and preschool, housing local artwork and a trove of information and exhibits on those darkest days of Irish history while the peels of children's laughter make for a much brighter future.

♪ MICHAEL: Although I've got plenty of help from the locals today stumbling my way across the Northeast and a better understanding of this corner of the country, I still feel somewhat lost.

MICHAEL: Well!

AUSTIN: Well.

MICHAEL: You see, when I'm not shooting a travel show, I usually travel around Ireland in one of these buses.

Would you gimme a ride to Carlingford Lough?

AUSTIN: No problem.

MICHAEL: And always with my great friend, Austin McArdle, by my side.

As it happens, he's the perfect guide for this part of the world.

So Austin... AUSTIN: Mm.

MICHAEL: You've been the guide/driver on all of my tours for about nine years now.

♪ Are you sick of me yet?

AUSTIN: I was just about to say, lucky you.

(laughs) MICHAEL: But seriously though, this is the first time that we've been up in your neck of the woods.

Is it?

I think it might be.

AUSTIN: Well, it is.

I think you threatened to come many times, but you never bothered.

MICHAEL: Truth.

Ah, so, I- You are from Monaghan Town.

Right?

AUSTIN: Yes, I'm a town man.

Yep.

MICHAEL: Now, what I'd love you to do is, imagine that you had a bus full of Americans behind you and you were telling them about Monaghan.

What do you think is the reason to come to this part of the country?

AUSTIN: Well, unlike the west coast of Ireland, we haven't got that scenery, of course.

You know what I mean?

But what we have is beautiful parks, beautiful pubs, food, all that type of stuff.

Good music, you know, good traditional music.

MICHAEL: I know that.

AUSTIN: Rock music, and a lot of country music.

Irish country music.

It's amazing we have a beautiful festival in Monaghan town.

♪ ♪ (seagulls calling) MICHAEL: The end of the line with Austin, or at least where he is throwing me off the bus, is the beautiful Carlingford Lough.

A fjord halfway between Belfast and Dublin that's been a tourist destination since the Victorian times when the railway between those two cities was first built.

But while we could easily while away the day enjoying the view, I've got a few very good reasons to want to get to my accommodations at Castle Leslie.

I think it'll be best if I just show you.

♪ The 1870 castle behind me built appropriately in Scottish baronial style is magnificent.

But there's so much more.

A thousand acres to explore.

The largest equestrian center in Ireland, an exquisite wedding venue if it's good enough for Paul McCartney after all.

And it's more affordable than you might think.

I'll admit, it can be a bit hard to stay at the castle on short notice but you should be able to get a room at the lodge.

And trust me, it's just as posh and closer to the restaurant and spa anyways.

♪ Speaking of the restaurant, we've been invited into the award-winning kitchen of head chef, James Devers.

JAMES: We're gonna garnish it first.

MICHAEL: For a practical and very edible demonstration of what's on the menu tonight.

(kitchen sounds) James, when they told me that I was going to go to the castle and the head chef was going to cook for me, I thought, well, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

What are you going to cook for me today?

JAMES: So for main course, we're going to do a Silver Hill duck breast... MICHAEL: Lovely.

JAMES: That we actually have on the menu right now and the assorted garnishes over here.

So, do we start?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

JAMES: So, we'll first generous season of salt and pepper.

With this duck especially, it's very fatty.

It's actually been bred for this fat.

It's from Emyvale.

It's the next village over.

It's very famous.

It's called Silver Hill Duck.

MICHAEL: Huh.

JAMES: We put that on now.

MICHAEL: So, you don't need any extra fat to cook it?

JAMES: No, absolutely not.

You might even want to drain off a small bit... MICHAEL: Alright!

JAMES: During the cooking process.

And we put on a cold pan just so that the fat can be rendered down fully.

MICHAEL: Oh, very good.

JAMES: So, it'll take a couple of minutes here from cold.

Then we flip it.

MICHAEL: That's fine.

We flip it, we baste it and add some herbs.

So, I'm going to leave this in the capable hands of Andrew.

MICHAEL: Good man, Andrew.

And so tell me, it must be important for ye to- to use local ingredients from around the area.

JAMES: Absolutely.

MICHAEL: Because the estate is so huge.

It must have a lot.

JAMES: It's massive, yeah.

Here on this estate, actually myself and Andrew, we have foraged quite a bit.

There's all different varieties of mushrooms, there's herbs, there's... We grow some of our own herbs, all our own edible flowers, micro-greens, stuff like that, you know.

MICHAEL: You also have your own deer.

JAMES: We do, yeah.

Estate venison, we had for three to four months a year.

We typically get maybe two or three dropped in a month which we have to butcher ourselves there on site.

So, we're all pretty good at that now.

MICHAEL: Oh.

Right.

You're a butcher as well as a chef?

JAMES: Yeah.

You have to.

MICHAEL: So James, while we're waiting on the duck, what else have you got for me?

JAMES: So, this is an amuse-bouche that we've started doing recently.

It's a smoked tomato and marshmallow with a nice Manchego cheese on the outside and some dehydrated tomato powder.

And then there's a red onion jelly.

MICHAEL: But you've got a bit of magic for me as well.

JAMES: Yeah.

So, as well as the tomatoes having been smoked beforehand, we're going to, for effect, smoke it inside the dome and then tableside that would be taken off by whoever's serving the table for a nice effect.

MICHAEL: Could you give us a shot?

JAMES: So, let me show you, this is what we would do at the table then.

So take it off, give a nice puff.

Very nice.

MICHAEL: Ah, beautiful.

♪ MICHAEL: Ohh!

JAMES: Okay.

So I think we're ready to carve the duck now.

Let me take it over here.

So, we can place the duck on here.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Is this- Is this the part where I get to taste it?

JAMES: Yeah.

Absolutely.

So, we're gonna garnish it first with... MICHAEL: Oh.

JAMES: Some fuchsia flowers grown on the estate.

MICHAEL: Of course.

JAMES: And we'll finish it with this duck jus that we talked about earlier.

MICHAEL: (gasps) That is magical.

♪ JAMES: So now you can try it.

MICHAEL: In case you didn't know, I'm telling you right now, James, that I officially have the best job in the world.

I'm going to have a little bit of that cherry with it.

♪ That is... That's magnificent.

JAMES: Thank you.

Thank you.

♪ MICHAEL: Let's relax in the finery and the splendor of the music from Tiernan Courell and his father, Declan.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: Thanks for joining me on my travels through the Northeast.

I'm Michael Londra and I hope to see you next time on Ireland with Michael.

But for now, cheers.

Sláinte.

ANNOUNCER: Want to continue your travels to Ireland?

A deluxe Ireland with Michael DVD featuring all episodes of Season One plus bonus concert footage is available for $30.

Season Two plus bonus concert footage is available for $30.

A copy of the Ireland with Michael Companion Travel Guide featuring places to visit, as seen in Seasons One and Two, is also available for $30.

ANNOUNCER: This offer is made by Wexford House.

Shipping and handling is not included.

MICHAEL: To learn more about everything you've seen in this episode, go to IrelandWithMichael.com.

ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael was made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time, or just longing to return, there's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you are thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

MICHAEL: OK, put your hands up in the air!

Come on, let's get a-waving.

♪ In my heart its rightful queen ♪ ♪ Ever loving, ever tender ♪ MICHAEL: That's it.

♪ Ever true ♪ Like the Sun your smile has shone ♪ MICHAEL: Go on, Wexford.

♪ Gladdening all it glowed upon ♪ ♪