Rare footage of Connemara circa the 1950s accompanies the video of a song about escapism by a singer-songwriter based in Galway city.
David Boland – who makes music under the name New Pope – unearthed the vintage holiday footage of County Galway, and Mayo, during an extensive trawl online.
He came across the decades-old colour film on YouTube, and contacted the man who had uploaded it looking for permission to use it as a music video for one of his songs.
“I don’t really know anything about him. His name is Michael Rogge, he is a Dutch man, and he seems to have travelled around the world a lot during the 1940s and 50s and County Galway was one of the places he visited and filmed,” said Boland.
The video is a throwback to more innocent times. There is a scene with two women and a man in the foreground, and a picturesque hill in the background.  In another, a man brings home turf from the bog on his donkey-drawn cart.

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“The song is called Onwards, Westwards and it’s all about escaping from the city. Sometimes in the city we get caught up in things that are inconsequential but you get out of that environment, clear your head, and things don’t seem as important,” he said.
He said Connemara is beautiful, and the old footage was a perfect fit because, “it is exactly the type of place you’d want to escape to”.