Waterford man enjoying international recognition for unearthing strange Irish tradition
There was a huge turn out for David's new book "The Wind Beneath the Stone" Photo: Libby Marchant
David Keohan is a busy man. A former kettlebell champion, he works as a paint mixer and spends his free time conducting field research on ancient Irish traditions. What does this field research consist of? Well, a bit of scouring through old archives, some time spent interviewing experts on the subject and a good bit of travelling to various sites to visually appraise his hypothesis. But mostly, his work involves lifting giant stones – some as heavy as 200 kilograms.
How and why he dedicated nearly all of his free time to this project was the subject of his speech at the launch of his book, ‘The Wind Beneath the Stone’ at the Book Centre last Friday, May 22.
Getting up at four o’clock in the morning is a difficult thing to do, but worth it says David. If he didn’t get up at 4 am, he never would have gotten the chance to travel to every county in Ireland, he never would have discovered a whole other side to himself – one that is in tune with his emotions and the history of his environment.
If David wasn’t willing to get up at 4 am, we never would have gotten to read his lovely book because that’s when he wrote it. Every morning at the craic of dawn, fuelled by “many, many coffees”, David wrote this part memoir, part travel book, part academic thesis on his experience of stone lifting.
He argues that it's not just about lifting the stones, “it's about the journey.” He argues that by stepping outside of your comfort zone, by cold calling people to ask them about their passion (indeed, Dr Conor Heffernan of Ulster University has become a friend and mentor to David), you begin to view your environment entirely differently.
This experience began with David’s dissatisfaction with the idea that all there is to life is your job. He said at the launch that most people’s lives are like this: “You’re in work, you’re doing your job, you go home. Every now and then, you go on a weekend away.” He said that as soon as he started travelling around the country at the weekend and meeting fascinating people, his whole life, "took a right turn."
He told the News & Star that he would return from these adventures asking himself, “Did that actually happen?” In fact, David was so taken with the many weird and wonderful people he met on his journey, he told the that he’s written another book all about how the people of Ireland are bringing back this tradition, not just him. He is also in the process of applying for a PhD to further solidify the often intangible or poorly recorded tradition of stone lifting in Ireland.
He has already noticed a huge resurgence since he began learning about this tradition four years ago. He said: “At the end of this book, it was just starting to take off, and the last two years have been unbelievable.”
Ironically, David has discovered fifty-four stones in every county on the Island of Ireland except for his own home county of Waterford. He says he’s very “close” to discovering Waterford’s first stone. There is a stone on a plinth in the Anne Valley that has some stories associated with it. “It is a stone on a plinth – it didn’t float up there by itself.”
Getting involved in this ancient activity is basically free, according to David. All you need to do is go to the beach and start lifting stones. The rest will come after.
