Aannnd en di eeyev’nin, he would hearrr da song of the siyelors,” she growled, her fiery visage lighting up with the setting sun. Her dark-malt curls sway with the fury of a wild wind. Atop Hook Lighthouse, Europe’s oldest, stood the torchbearer of its enigma, the lighthouse keeper’s granddaughter. Narrating tales of her grandfather, her baritone, rustic syllables seem synchronised with the towering old structure and the forbidding expanse of the Irish sea beyond. The song of the sea, ‘Older than time’ as a sailor buddy calls it, was the apt prelude to my saga of soul-stirring musical experiences in Ireland.

Western Europe’s musical capital has you swimming in a shoreless ocean of sound and rhythm. Indeed, Ireland is for those with an appetite for Ghiza-e-Rooh (food for the soul), the Sufi name for music. Ireland is a country ever-immersed in merry-making, be it Northern Ireland where ballads and black tea with the legendary guru of John Lennon, Francis Mcpeake 3, reveals a spiritual connection between Indian and Irish music, or during a Gaelic Radio broadcast in the Irish Republic, when ragas and reels rock the stage through sonorous serendipity.