Photos courtesy of Joe Keane
Although the Dublin Irish Festival occupies three long days each year, it would be impossible to visit each and every stall, talk to every vendor and see everything there is to see.
However, there is one spot that should be a yearly destination for festival-goers. That stop is the Wishing Tree.
Wishers use colored paper and string to record their wishes and tie them to a branch. As the Irish Festival comes to a close, the tree transforms into a huge green cloud, wishes raining down on passersby and the grass below it. Last year, about 4,500 wishes swung from the branches of the Wishing Tree.
Joe Keane with the Wishing Tree
Stopping at the tree conjures feelings of happiness, hopefulness and, in some cases, sadness. Wishes for a pet or for true love are common, as are wishes for family members to overcome illness or reunite, the beginning of world peace, and a cleaner earth.
In 2013, one wish that hung from the tree was adorned with the scrawl of a child’s handwriting: “I wish that no one would fight over me.”
Three years ago, the tree made its debut at the Irish Festival – brought to Dublin, naturally, by an Irishman. Joe Keane, who now lives in Boston, was inspired to come to the festival by Sandra Puskarcik, director of community relations for the City of Dublin. Keane brings the tree to Dublin and only to Dublin each year at the Irish Festival; you won’t find Keane’s tree anywhere else.
Keane – who has a passion for storytelling, ancient history and the pre-Christian spirituality of Irish culture – based his tree off of the trees around Clootie wells. These wells exist in places of pilgrimage in Celtic areas, and those who take pilgrimages to the wells are known to tie rags to the trees around it as part of a healing ritual. In Celtic history, trees represent the past, present and future: The roots of the tree grew in the ground of the past, the base of the tree is in the present and the branches of the tree grow into the future. Placing a wish on the tree enables the branches to bring that wish into the future.
Dreamers will be happy to know that wishes placed on the tree at the Dublin Irish Festival aren’t just thrown away after the festival ends. Last year, Keane packed up more than 2,500 slips of paper from the tree and brought them with him back to Ireland. Keane called upon the four corners of consciousness, burned sage around the wishes to rid them of negative energy and offered up the wishes ceremoniously by burning them.
Keane’s interest in the spirituality of Celtic and Irish history doesn’t start nor end with the Dublin Irish Festival; he leads tour groups around spiritual sites such as the Clootie wells and to trees like the Wishing Tree that he brings to Dublin each year.
“Just seeing so many prayers when you go to some holy well, all these relics and prayers and hopes for children and babies and old people at the wells,” says Keane. “That’s what inspired that.”
Joe Keane also hosts tours to sacred sites in Ireland. For more information, visit www.celticrevival.com.
Amanda DePerro is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
