Is it a wife you’re looking for or is it a donkey?”
Our photographer Philip and I are literally minutes in the presence of Willie Daly when the famous matchmaker’s phone rings and he utters the above words.
The road signs directing you to Willie’s place bill it as “donkey farm and matchmaking”, hence the equine reference.
As well as having donkeys on display (Mary, Teresa and Pamela Anderson) Willie also has a matchmaking and farm vehicle museum on site.
This dual endeavour is located on the farm Willie grew up on in Kilshanny, Co Clare, roughly halfway between Lisdoonvarna and Ennistymon. His youngest son renovated the original farm house and has cattle.
Willie, as you may know or may have gathered from this article thus far, is a colourful character. His phone rings a further two times with matchmaking enquiries while we’re there. Each time Willie hands me the phone without warning, leading to an interesting chat with Willie’s associates.
His last call concludes with the hope of a match in the air: “I’ve a funeral tonight. Give me a ring tomorrow. I’ve a girl there that might suit you. She wouldn’t be miles away from you, within the same county. You’re welcome. Bye bye.”
Willie is a born storyteller. His tales range from Sive-esq stories of young women marrying older men to dowries sent from America and The Beatles going unrecognised in Joseph McHugh’s pub in Liscannor.
At a glance, the combination of donkeys and matchmaking may seem curious to many, but it works very well for Willie. You see, the donkeys and museum also serve the purpose of covering for people who might be calling for matchmaking themselves.
This trick of having a ruse for those looking for matchmaking services is something Willie learned from his father as a young boy while attending cattle fairs with him. There’s a long tradition of matchmaking in the Daly family; both Willie’s grandfather and father were matchmakers.
“At old cattle fairs there could be 100 farmers there, with one fella’s cows in one place and another fella’s cows in a different place. They’d all keep them in their own little square,” Willie explains. “We’d be down with cows, myself and my father, when I was young.
“Some man would walk up to my father; people get great fun out of watching people going up, saying to themselves, ‘That fella has daughters now, I wonder is that why he’s going over.’ So the man going over would shout out, ‘Henry,’ that was my father’s name, ‘how much do you want for that cow?’ He’d say that out loud to throw everyone else off the scent.
“Then he’d say quietly, ‘You know Peggy and Eileen, as the day goes on you might find somebody for them.’ He’d say that in a whisper and be walking around still looking at the cow, so their neighbour wouldn’t hear.”
The road signs directing you to Willie’s place bill it as “donkey farm and matchmaking”. \ Philip Doyle
Oh, Lisdoonvarna
With such a strong family tradition in matchmaking, Willie describes himself as having inherited the matchmaker title.
“Well, my father had gotten old. The last match he made was mine. He was probably close enough on 90. He made the match in October and we got married sometime in February. I’m divorced.
“I saw a lot of matchmaking growing up,” Willie recalls. “I might have thought it was too time consuming. People would want to have a lot of privacy with you, which is time consuming.
“When I started, I did it and I had the office in Lisdoonvarna. There was a door on the room in The Matchmaker Bar, but we took down the door, so it wouldn’t have the same privacy. People wouldn’t be all night telling you what they want then. I found that was quite a good idea taking down the door.”
While he still offers private one-to-one matchmaking, making his services at the Matchmaking Festival more public was a positive move for Willie. Lads and ladies usually come into him in groups of 10 or so and it’s immediately evident who likes who.
“They’d quickly tell you who they liked. They’d say, ‘Can you introduce me to that fella over there?’ Or, ‘Jaysus, she’s a lovely girl.’ So, it made it very easy.”
Irish people, Willie feels, are very shy. Though in his eyes, this is not necessarily a bad thing: “It’s a lovely quality though, shyness.” However, it does call for a bit of social lubrication, he reckons.
“There’s a lot of shyness with fellas early in the day. Irish people are shy. I’m always convinced that if it wasn’t for Arthur Guinness there’d be very few people married in rural places.”
Matchmaker Willie Daly with Anne O’Donoghue. \ Philip Doyle
With the renowned Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival returning to its usual format after a two year COVID hiatus, Willie as the resident matchmaker for the past 50 years, is looking forward to getting back to business in earnest.
The festival runs for the whole month of September, with dancing and music in the pubs. This year though, the country music marquee will not take place. Willie, as mentioned above, is normally situated in The Matchmaker Bar.
Love off hold
At the 2022 festival, Willie feels, there will be a renewed focus on secure relationships and marriage, owing to a lack of opportunities to find love during the pandemic.
“Back in 2019 everything was really going well, financially even. Women I found would be asking, ‘What does he look like? Has he nice hands? What are his teeth like?’ The word that is being used a lot now is ‘secure’. People want to feel secure.
“I think the COVID has definitely brought people’s minds to a different place. To an extent, people are kind of love starved – aren’t they? Love was on hold for a couple of years.
“People are really at the bit, ready to go, so I think it’s going to be awfully good this year. I think a big crowd will be at it. I’m getting an awful lot of calls from people in America coming over, mainly women looking for Irish men.”
Willie always brings his ‘Lucky Love Book’ to the Matchmaking Festival. He carries it into the kitchen to show us. It was passed from his grandfather down to his father and then to himself. It was once the book where they took down the details of the person they were matching, but now Willie says it brings luck.
Matchmaker Willie Daly's Love Book \ Philip Doyle
The book looks like it was once an old-fashioned hardback copy. The covers have come away from the spine. There are pages stuffed in – Willie’s matchmaking forms – meaning it’s probably four times the size it was intended to be. The whole thing is secured by a shoelace tied around it.
“If you touch it with both hands and close your eyes, you’ll be in love and married inside of six to 16 months,” Willie describes. “If you want to be in love and happy, no marriage, you touch it with one hand. You touch it for 10 or 11 seconds with your eyes closed.
“If you’re already married and you touch it - you can touch it as well for your partner - you’ll restart your honeymoon from that day on again. So you can’t lose out at all. It’s all win-win.”
With much discussed in the realm of matchmaking and many stories told – some of which can’t be printed in this paper! – I have just one final question for Willie: is there someone out there for everyone?
His answer, a resounding yes: “There’s no old shoe but there’s a stocking to fit. I’m a great believer in that.”
And in his opinion, there’s no time like the present to settle down with the one you love.
“It’s the old expression, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you have the person in the house that you can walk up to, put your arms around them and tell them you love them - that’s better than travelling around the countryside or dreaming,” he smiles.
To wrap up this interview, Willie plays on the guitar and sings the song, Maids When You’re Young Never Wed an Old Man. Very fitting. Just as he’s finished, an American lady, intrigued by the road signs, comes straight into the kitchen via the open front door.
“I’m curious about the matchmaking donkeys,” she says straight off the bat.
Things got lost in translation via the road signs and she thought Willie was a matchmaker for donkeys. She’s from North Carolina and after we explain, she touches the Lucky Love Book.
Love pending. Watch this space.
Read more
Dating a farmer: what’s love got to do with it?
Love without the pub this Valentine’s Day
Is it a wife you’re looking for or is it a donkey?”
Our photographer Philip and I are literally minutes in the presence of Willie Daly when the famous matchmaker’s phone rings and he utters the above words.
The road signs directing you to Willie’s place bill it as “donkey farm and matchmaking”, hence the equine reference.
As well as having donkeys on display (Mary, Teresa and Pamela Anderson) Willie also has a matchmaking and farm vehicle museum on site.
This dual endeavour is located on the farm Willie grew up on in Kilshanny, Co Clare, roughly halfway between Lisdoonvarna and Ennistymon. His youngest son renovated the original farm house and has cattle.
Willie, as you may know or may have gathered from this article thus far, is a colourful character. His phone rings a further two times with matchmaking enquiries while we’re there. Each time Willie hands me the phone without warning, leading to an interesting chat with Willie’s associates.
His last call concludes with the hope of a match in the air: “I’ve a funeral tonight. Give me a ring tomorrow. I’ve a girl there that might suit you. She wouldn’t be miles away from you, within the same county. You’re welcome. Bye bye.”
Willie is a born storyteller. His tales range from Sive-esq stories of young women marrying older men to dowries sent from America and The Beatles going unrecognised in Joseph McHugh’s pub in Liscannor.
At a glance, the combination of donkeys and matchmaking may seem curious to many, but it works very well for Willie. You see, the donkeys and museum also serve the purpose of covering for people who might be calling for matchmaking themselves.
This trick of having a ruse for those looking for matchmaking services is something Willie learned from his father as a young boy while attending cattle fairs with him. There’s a long tradition of matchmaking in the Daly family; both Willie’s grandfather and father were matchmakers.
“At old cattle fairs there could be 100 farmers there, with one fella’s cows in one place and another fella’s cows in a different place. They’d all keep them in their own little square,” Willie explains. “We’d be down with cows, myself and my father, when I was young.
“Some man would walk up to my father; people get great fun out of watching people going up, saying to themselves, ‘That fella has daughters now, I wonder is that why he’s going over.’ So the man going over would shout out, ‘Henry,’ that was my father’s name, ‘how much do you want for that cow?’ He’d say that out loud to throw everyone else off the scent.
“Then he’d say quietly, ‘You know Peggy and Eileen, as the day goes on you might find somebody for them.’ He’d say that in a whisper and be walking around still looking at the cow, so their neighbour wouldn’t hear.”
The road signs directing you to Willie’s place bill it as “donkey farm and matchmaking”. \ Philip Doyle
Oh, Lisdoonvarna
With such a strong family tradition in matchmaking, Willie describes himself as having inherited the matchmaker title.
“Well, my father had gotten old. The last match he made was mine. He was probably close enough on 90. He made the match in October and we got married sometime in February. I’m divorced.
“I saw a lot of matchmaking growing up,” Willie recalls. “I might have thought it was too time consuming. People would want to have a lot of privacy with you, which is time consuming.
“When I started, I did it and I had the office in Lisdoonvarna. There was a door on the room in The Matchmaker Bar, but we took down the door, so it wouldn’t have the same privacy. People wouldn’t be all night telling you what they want then. I found that was quite a good idea taking down the door.”
While he still offers private one-to-one matchmaking, making his services at the Matchmaking Festival more public was a positive move for Willie. Lads and ladies usually come into him in groups of 10 or so and it’s immediately evident who likes who.
“They’d quickly tell you who they liked. They’d say, ‘Can you introduce me to that fella over there?’ Or, ‘Jaysus, she’s a lovely girl.’ So, it made it very easy.”
Irish people, Willie feels, are very shy. Though in his eyes, this is not necessarily a bad thing: “It’s a lovely quality though, shyness.” However, it does call for a bit of social lubrication, he reckons.
“There’s a lot of shyness with fellas early in the day. Irish people are shy. I’m always convinced that if it wasn’t for Arthur Guinness there’d be very few people married in rural places.”
Matchmaker Willie Daly with Anne O’Donoghue. \ Philip Doyle
With the renowned Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival returning to its usual format after a two year COVID hiatus, Willie as the resident matchmaker for the past 50 years, is looking forward to getting back to business in earnest.
The festival runs for the whole month of September, with dancing and music in the pubs. This year though, the country music marquee will not take place. Willie, as mentioned above, is normally situated in The Matchmaker Bar.
Love off hold
At the 2022 festival, Willie feels, there will be a renewed focus on secure relationships and marriage, owing to a lack of opportunities to find love during the pandemic.
“Back in 2019 everything was really going well, financially even. Women I found would be asking, ‘What does he look like? Has he nice hands? What are his teeth like?’ The word that is being used a lot now is ‘secure’. People want to feel secure.
“I think the COVID has definitely brought people’s minds to a different place. To an extent, people are kind of love starved – aren’t they? Love was on hold for a couple of years.
“People are really at the bit, ready to go, so I think it’s going to be awfully good this year. I think a big crowd will be at it. I’m getting an awful lot of calls from people in America coming over, mainly women looking for Irish men.”
Willie always brings his ‘Lucky Love Book’ to the Matchmaking Festival. He carries it into the kitchen to show us. It was passed from his grandfather down to his father and then to himself. It was once the book where they took down the details of the person they were matching, but now Willie says it brings luck.
Matchmaker Willie Daly's Love Book \ Philip Doyle
The book looks like it was once an old-fashioned hardback copy. The covers have come away from the spine. There are pages stuffed in – Willie’s matchmaking forms – meaning it’s probably four times the size it was intended to be. The whole thing is secured by a shoelace tied around it.
“If you touch it with both hands and close your eyes, you’ll be in love and married inside of six to 16 months,” Willie describes. “If you want to be in love and happy, no marriage, you touch it with one hand. You touch it for 10 or 11 seconds with your eyes closed.
“If you’re already married and you touch it - you can touch it as well for your partner - you’ll restart your honeymoon from that day on again. So you can’t lose out at all. It’s all win-win.”
With much discussed in the realm of matchmaking and many stories told – some of which can’t be printed in this paper! – I have just one final question for Willie: is there someone out there for everyone?
His answer, a resounding yes: “There’s no old shoe but there’s a stocking to fit. I’m a great believer in that.”
And in his opinion, there’s no time like the present to settle down with the one you love.
“It’s the old expression, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you have the person in the house that you can walk up to, put your arms around them and tell them you love them - that’s better than travelling around the countryside or dreaming,” he smiles.
To wrap up this interview, Willie plays on the guitar and sings the song, Maids When You’re Young Never Wed an Old Man. Very fitting. Just as he’s finished, an American lady, intrigued by the road signs, comes straight into the kitchen via the open front door.
“I’m curious about the matchmaking donkeys,” she says straight off the bat.
Things got lost in translation via the road signs and she thought Willie was a matchmaker for donkeys. She’s from North Carolina and after we explain, she touches the Lucky Love Book.
Love pending. Watch this space.
Read more
Dating a farmer: what’s love got to do with it?
Love without the pub this Valentine’s Day
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