Dungiven

Now, I'm not the first Bauron maker to use them.

In fact, the first Bauron maker to use them was a guy called Seamus O'Kane, and he was very much the father of the modern Bauron, and he was from Dungiven in County Derry, about 30 years ago, more even, he was getting torn, split skins from his Lambeg drumming neighbours and buying those in when their skins had torn from being played and he would make Bowrons from the remnants of the big Lambeg skins and that's become a whole thing now so that most Bowron makers would offer a Lambeg skin option And I'm very lucky to have a close relationship with an elderly gentleman up in Tondra Gee who makes my lamb egg skins for me and has been making them for over 20 years for me.

He's been making lamb egg skins himself for 70 years.

He's an absolute gentleman.

We'll be right back.

Cara Dillon there, the singer from Dungiven in the north of Ireland, who's been part of the scene for 35 years now.

We went to her third album, After the Morning, released in 2006, which was produced by Cara and Sam Lakeman, her husband and musical partner, and we had the opening song, Never in a Million Years, written by Cara and Sam.

Before Kara, we had the latest from Arise and Go, the trio with members from Atlantic Canada and upstate New York.

so this kind of maybe solves that a little bit more i do worry though for the like how they decided which um which races are in the actual league you know how that sort of came about if that was like a beating process because to my mind if you're not in the league then you're going to lose a fair few entries due to that right do you would you agree with that

yeah i mean i'm thinking of some of the races that were on the league that were successful things like um the cumber cup The Malcolm Cup, I can see there's a race in Enniskillen, one in Owenbeg and Dungiven.

Sorry, should I read out what the six races are for the season? Yeah.

So it kicks off on the 25th of October with the Bobby Ray Cross Country at the Billy Neal NBA Country Park, which totally makes sense.

So if Bram Stoker wasn't building his famous count around Vlad, where was he looking instead? One answer takes us back to Ireland, to County Derry.

Between the towns of Dungiven and Garver lies the townland of Slaughter Verity, where local tradition points to a lonely grave said to belong to a man who refused to stay dead.

The idea that Dracula wasn't really based on Vlad the Impaler leaves us with a bigger question.

Where did his vampire come from? Like most great writers, Bram Stoker built Dracula from many different influences.

The northern and western chiefs seem in this age to have made some improvements in military equipments and tactics.

Kuinagal, a celebrated captain of the O'Kanes, is represented on his tomb at Dungiven as clad in complete armor, though that may be the fancy of the sculptor.

Scottish gallow-glasses, heavy-armed infantry, trained in Bruce's campaigns, were permanently enlisted in their service.

Of their leaders the most distinguished were MacNeill Cam, or the Crooked, and MacRory, in the service of O'Connor and MacDonald, MacSorley and MacSweeney, in the service of O'Neill, O'Donnell, and O'Connor Sligo.