West Cork is a place apart. In the last third of the last century it became something of a refuge for those hoping to forge – a suitably ambiguous verb – what used to be known as an “alternative lifestyle”. There are still quite a few antiquated hippies down there, as well as a few artistic types and the odd retired media tycoon. Something of the old magic survives; step into the market in Skibbereen on a Saturday morning and, despite the rain and the grey hair all round, it could be Berkeley, 1968.
But something survives too of an older magic, one that goes back to the pre-Christian Ireland of the sídhe, or fairy folk, and Yeats’s sorcerer queens and tragic warriors, and it pervades The Well of Saint Nobody, Neil Jordan’s beautiful and deceptively simple tale of love, rejuvenation and losses restored.
