Founded in 2017 by Diarmuid Lyng (hurler and facilitator) and Siobhán de Paor (poet and celebrant) in Corca Duibhne, Wild Irish curates events for adults and children in the form of retreats, workshops, wilderness camps and rituals rooted in the Irish language, indigenous culture and sharing of ancient skills.  We create conditions in which people can reconnect with nature and our not-so-lost traditions. We’ve both been teaching Irish for the past two years in the Steiner School in Kilkenny.

Our focus is trifold: Language that feeds the mind, Skills which feed the body and Culture that feeds the soul. As hurler and poet and Irish speakers, we carry cultural flames. Rediscovering a native spiritual tradition, is part of the saothar(work), one that is rooted in a personal gnosis and which integrates our pagan roots and Celtic Gnostic history with our contemporary mysticism. In the Celtic fire festivals, sweatlodge, ancient pilgrimage and new sacred rites of passage, we are weaving the fabric of a collective expression of faith.

In Collaborating with a community of experts involved in nature-based skills, we serve the physical aspect of our reclamation. We believe that the revival of these skills goes hand-in-hand with the rising of the Irish language.

Our mission

We are part of a growing national movement of re-indigenation. We recognise that a global severing of people from place has occurred. And that this severance is at the core of our environmental degradation and habitat loss. We recognise that the reconnection of people to Nature will cultivate the strong collective will needed to preserve our land and reverse the destruction of it.

Indigenous culture provides all the tools nessacary for this reconnection to occur.

Our values

Resilience building: Wild Irish focuses on using the language in the context of nature based skills, which will build resilient communities for a future of dwindling resources.

Community: We seek to cultivate a local and national community of peers who are motivated towards the preservation of language and culture and to create an Irish hub in South Kilkenny where we can gather for exchange and support in this goal.

Creativity: Within creative expression there is a prescription for many modern ails. That spirit of creativity invoked with the Irish language is the same spirit that moves us towards a more noble purpose in life.

Children: Páistí sa croílár: Though much of our work is with adults, we aspire to create adult learning spaces that make provision for children so that they can observe and absorb the skills that will make them resiliant for the world of tomorrow.  IN our Teacht Aniar project, we will model the sráidbhaile,the village, where children accompany and assist their parents at work. 

Ar Scéal (our story)

We began Wild Irish Retreat as an Irish language and cultural revival weekend eight years ago in the Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle) peninsula in West Kerry, Ireland. We learned a lot on our first wild and (edgy) retreat on the tail end of Hurricane Ophelia, making a sweatlodge at high tide in a rocky cove.

Six months later Uisne, our first son, was born.

The retreats got wilder as we brought them to Cearbhuil's off grid land in the Burren. Tents replaced dormitories. Fires replaced cookers. We rebelled against the lockdown and had one retreat where everyone cried at being close to other humans again. Eirú was born.

We split our efforts then, responding to the requests, and the difficulty of both being absent from two small children. Siobhán held women's creative retreats le Gaeilge, craft and ritual, collaborating with Cearbhuil Ní Fhionnghusa and Mishel from Tang. Diarmuid did sweatlodges and hurling for men's retreats and joined yoga teacher Michael Ryan to found Nature of Man.

Then two years ago, we left Corca Dhuibhne in search of community, a home and a 'road schooling' adventure. We traveled around Ireland house-sitting, camping and bringing Wild Irish to festivals with poetry, rituals and wild hurling. And every time we had to leave a place, another would appear on the horizon. Like this we learned to live in trust and not give into the anxiety of being without a stable home.

Then we conceived a third child, and the appetite for travel evaporated and was replaced by a longing for stability and a nest. Life brought us to a halfway point in Killkenny near the small Steiner school here.

For eight months we lived in temporary places and our son was born in a one-bedroom cabin. For the first three months of his life, we lived in a happy heap but again we had to move on.

Then a friend told us of a farmhouse in her family, which we could stay in until it was sold. From the day we moved into 'Fr Tom's old place' in Chruabhaile, we saw the potential to realize our vision for an Irish language retreat centre and home, all in one place. It's a homecoming, exactly halfway between our native birthplaces in Waterford and Wexford and Teacht Aniar (Coming from the West) captures our journey from the West Kerry Gaeltacht from which we brought the precious embers of Irish home to lay in our hearth here.

More about us

Siobhán de Paor is a poet, dramaturg and celebrant. She teaches creative expression and land connection using Irish as a medium. Her mission is to reclaim our indigenous rites and articulate as Gaeilge a collective spiritual tradition that is truly representative of the mystical experiences of the Irish people. She is an outspoken advocate for maternity rights in Ireland and through her own story has highlighted the gross abuse of birthing women in the hospital system.

She hosts rituals for rites of passage and the Celtic fire festivals. Her performances are biographical, brave and compelling.

Diarmuid Lyng is a hurler, a great one, and since he retired from the game a new mission has clarified for him; to rewild hurling. And to this end, he has brought the game to the most unlikely places and people, facilitating a community game outside of the confines of club and competition.

He holds healing retreats with sweatlodge for men in the Wicklow Mountains with Nature of Man where breathwork and a sharing circle go hand in hand with wrestling and hurling. He hosts wilderness camps with young men in GAA clubs creating an opportunity for teams to connect with their place and their team mates in a way that is new and meaningful. He is a gifted facilitator and a fearless advocate for a change in Irish sport and society. The Irish language is woven throughout this facilitation work, in particular in sweatlodge.

In learning Irish in his twenties, Diarmuid discovered access to a world of native wealth he taught was barred to him.