Prepare for a Wilde weekend in Enniskillen
A Wilde weekend of fairytale, fantasy and frivolity for serious people is promised at the In Our Dreams festival (16–20 October 2025) based in the island town of Enniskillen, in the beautiful County Fermanagh lakelands.
The town has strong connections with the renowned writer Oscar Wilde, who attended Portora Royal School Enniskillen from the age of 10 to 17 (1864–71), where his love of the writing and philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome was first kindled and honed.
Wilde’s most famous short story, The Happy Prince, was inspired by his experience of the town. Looking out from his school dormitory he could see Cole’s Monument, a statue standing on a tall tower, which became the prince in his story. The festival is named after a line in the story when children tell their teacher they have seen angels “in our dreams”.
The festival is part of a project led by Arts Over Borders to celebrate the literary connections between the short story and Enniskillen town.
A highlight of the festival will be Wildelife On Erne, the launch of 10 new river sculptures of the other flora and fauna in the Happy Prince story, alongside the Swallow, on River Erne to create a new sculptural walk around Enniskillen. In 2021, around 150 gold-leaf swallows were attached to the second and third storeys of 80 buildings in Enniskillen in an art installation and walking trail commissioned by Arts Over Borders to launch the development of the Wilde Island Town: Home of the Happy Prince project.
A Happy Prince Pageant will be also part of the new festival and will be a community farewell to the swallows departing from the northern hemisphere to winter in South Africa.
There will be a festival opening lecture on the theme of “How wonderful is the power of love”, a line from The Happy Prince. A wider programme to be announced in spring 2025 will include performances of Wilde’s plays, and promenade theatre ‘Oscar Wilde at Home’ in one of Fermanagh’s stately homes. There will be a theatrical presentation of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a performance of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and fairytale storytelling in the evenings in High Street shops.
Wilde is not the only literary giant to have connections with Enniskillen. Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett also attended Portora Royal School (1920–23). For over 10 years, his work has been celebrated by Happy Days Enniskillen, through its programme of public art, festivals, installations and educational projects firmly establishing Enniskillen on the global literary map.