The Morrigan

Tweet I didn't make it to the pumpkin festival after all. The blustery weather put paid to my attending. I went to the nearest pub instead. The sign outside promised a night of "spooky stories". How could you resist that? Outside, a lively breeze was sporadically pasting wet leaves to the pub's windows. Inside, the place glowed. It was suitably decorated, with pound shop cobwebbery hanging from every corner, unusually carved pumpkins flickering on the bar, and candles lit on every table. And then there was the storyteller, a secondary school teacher from Trim. He looked the part...not quite Eddie Lenihen, but bearded, bespectacled and behatted.

We settled down for some old fashioned ghost stories, but it seems the teacher had different ideas for the night than the sign outside let on. Instead of the advertised tales of terror, we were treated to a dry, stilted lecture on celtic mythology delivered from a laptop. He more or less chastised us for coming to hear "spooky stories" (a phrase he often repeated in a prickly tone) and we were to learn, instead, about the origins of Hallowe'en - or Samhain, which began near Athboy and Kells.

We listened as he read mechanically from a word processor document about the historical origins of the Tuatha De Danann, Tara, and Morrigan, the triple-headed hag. A lot of people were confused. None more so than the proprietors, who had gone all out on special effects for the night of spooky stories. The teacher's creaky lecture was therefore intermittently interrupted by a bar man releasing vast clouds of dry ice into the pub, and by the odd cringey sound effect from a Halloween CD. A final, awesome display of what-the-fuckery topped off the whole endeavour, where, mid-lecture, the teacher's wife emerged from the dry ice wearing an African tribal mask. Y'know the sort you can buy in that safari shop on Liffey street? Must have been all the rage in pre-Christian Ireland, those yokes.

in fairness, a lot of the stuff was pretty interesting

MP3: Kurt Vile-Overnight Religion

Kurt Vile's latest album, Childish Prodigy, is on heavy rotation around these parts. It is a rattly, loose collection of songs which are ostensibly lo-fi, but borrow from classic rock, psychedelia and krautrock. He has a great voice, yelpy, expressive, sometimes all Avey Tare innocence, and other times corroded by a hint of sneer. He has a great way with a guitar too - liquid, bejeweled patterns of notes often emerge from the production fuzz, catching you by surprise. Check him out.