Cothrom an lae seo, 40 bliain ó shin, a fuair Séamus Mac Aonghusa bás. Ceoltóir, bailitheoir agus craoltóir a bhí ann, agus d’fhág sé oidhreacht shaibhir ina dhiaidh.

Chaith Séamus Mac Aonghusa seal ag obair le Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann, ag taisteal timpeall na tíre ag bailiú ceoil, amhrán agus béaloidis. Tá ar bhailigh sé fós le fáil i gCnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann in An Coláiste Ollscoile, Baile Átha Cliath.

Chun comóradh a dhéanamh ar an lá, seo blaiseadh beag den saghas oibre a rinne sé. Leagan den amhrán ‘Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair’, a bhailigh sé ó Shíle Ní Ghallchóir (Síle Mhicí) i nGaoth Dobhair, Co. Dhún na nGall, Márta 1943.

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the death of Séamus Ennis. He was a musician, collector and broadcaster who has left a rich legacy.

Ennis spent some time working with the Irish Folklore Commission, travelling the country collecting music, songs and stories. The material that he collected is part of the National Folklore Collection in UCD.

To mark the anniversary, ITMA presents a flavour of the type of work that he undertook. This is a version of the song ‘Coinleach Glas an Fhómair’ that he collected from Síle Ní Ghallchóir (Síle Mhicí) in Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal, 1943.

Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair

Aitheantóir: Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann
CBÉ/NFC 1282:245-246
National Folklore Collection Identifier

Scríobh Ennis ar nodaireacht an cheoil ‘(go sínte, binn)’ agus sa Laidin ‘Con anima’ [go croíúil]. Mhínigh sé an dá réiltín : ‘sleamhnú ó C go F ins gach cás’.

Ag deireadh nodaireacht an cheoil don amhrán seo scríobh sé [deire leis na sé chínn ar bhreacas a gceolta ó Chití Ní Ghallchobhair (21).]

Ennis wrote in Irish with the music transcription of this song (‘slowly, sweetly)’ and in Latin ‘Con anima’ [in a lively fashion]. He explained the two asterisks as sliding from ‘C’ to ‘F’ in each case.

Under the music notation for this song he wrote that this was the final song of the six songs he transcribed from the singing of Cití Ní Ghallchobhair (21).

Ceól as Gaoith Dóbhair (Márta 1944)

(Dóbhar Láir)

Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann
Conntae: Tír Chonaill Barúntacht:
Paróiste: Gaoith Dóbhair
Ainm an Sgríobhnóra: Séamus Mac Aonghusa, Fionnglas Co. Bhaile Átha Cliath
Do sgríobhas síos :na h-amhráin so Mí Mhárta 1943
Ó bhéal-aithris Shíghle (Mhicí) Ní Ghallchobhair
Aos: 82. Gairm-bheatha: Bean tighe
atá in a chomhnuí i mbaile fearainn: Dóbhar Láir, Tír Chonaill
agus a saoluíodh agus a tógadh i: Machaire Ghlaisce, Gaoith Dóbhair
Do chuala (sí) na h-amhráin seo 60-80 blian ó shin ó n-a h-athair (Aos an uair sin….) a bhí in a chomhnuí an uair sin i Machaire Ghlaisce.

Ní amhránaidhe fíor n-a cuid nótaí anois í – níl a ceól cruínn anois.

Ennis entered information in relation to Síle Mhicí on the standard label issued by the Irish Folklore Commission, Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann. He gives information regarding Síle’s address, occupation, age and date of collecting this and other songs. He also noted that due to her age her singing was no longer exact.

Fear a bhí ar Chonnlaigh Ghlais an Fhóghmhair, agus chonnaic sé an ghiorrsach seo

Ennis wrote from Síle that the song is about a man who was on the green stubble fields of autumn and he saw this girl.

Ar Chonnlaigh Ghlais an Fhóghmhair mo stóirín tráth dhearc uaim
Ba dheas do chosa ‘mbróga is ba ró-dheas do leagan súl
Do ghruaidhe ‘s deise ná rósa ‘s do chuirlín ‘bhí tana dlúth
‘Sé mo nua gan muid ár bpósú ar bórd luinge ‘triall ‘un siúil.

Tá buachaillí na h-áite ag athra’ ‘gus ag írí teann
Is tá lucht na gcocaí árda ‘déanú fáruis le mo chailín donn
Gluaisí (muid thar sáile) Rí na Spáinne* Féil’ Pádruic nó fá Shamhain úr
‘S go gcruachfainn** féar agus fásach agus bheinn ar láimh le mo chailín donn.

Gura slán do’n bhliain anuraidh, ní raibh tuirs’ orainn ‘na dhéidh ná cumhaidh
Níor órduigh Rí ná duine fidil a bh’againn ná cláirseach ciúin
Bhí cuachaín as Béal Muilinn ann, agus cuach bheag eil’ as Conndae’n Dúin
‘Sí ‘n ainnir a thug buaidh uilig orthú a’ bhean dú’ bhain dú mo chiall

* Dubhairt Sighle an dá rud
** (?) “cruaithinn” a dubhairt sí.

Buíochas le Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann agus Ríonach uí Ógáin.

With thanks to the National Folklore Collection and Ríonach uí Ógáin.

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Leo Rowsome (1903–1970) was a third generation uilleann piper.  His musical and pipe making skills were inherited from his grandfather Samuel Rowsome from Ballintore. Co. Wexford and his father William who established the family pipe making and repair business in Dublin.  One of six musical children, Leo was to play a pivotal role in the revival of uilleann piping in Ireland as a pipe maker, performer, teacher, organiser, advocate & publisher. He performed extensively in Ireland and abroad, and broadcast on both radio and televsion.  His recording career began in the era of the 78 rpm disc and  Leo recorded with a number of 78 rpm record companies and on vinyl with Claddagh and Topic Records. 

The Rowsome piping tradition continues through fifth and sixth generations of the family in both playing, pipe making and publishing. 

Material and references to Leo Rowsome feature throughout the ITMA Collection and have been the focus of two previously published digital features.

Leo Rowsome King of the Pipers, 78rpm Disc Recordings, 1926-1944 [Sound recording playlist]

Leo Rowsome on the Bill: Concert Posters, 1940s-1950s [Image gallery]

Today 20 September 2020, as well as the digital publishing of the 1936 Tutor, we are also delighted to feature below a written contribution from Leo’s daughter Helena Rowsome Grimes. 

When my father, played happily at my wedding on 10 August 1970, little did I know that he would die suddenly six weeks later.  I spoke with him from Belfast on the night before he travelled to Riverstown, Co. Sligo, where he was to adjudicate The Fiddler of Dooney Competition.  Noticing that he didn’t sound well, I asked him to try and get someone to go in his place, to which he replied “I wouldn’t let them down.”  That, and a “Cheerio” were his last words to me.  

That was the nature of the man, who lived for and by the uilleann pipes.

Through his work as performer, teacher and maker of the uilleann pipes, Leo has been credited with saving the instrument from possible extinction.

In his workshop at the back of his family home, he repaired and refurbished instruments by the old masters, including those of his own father, William, ensuring their preservation for posterity.  

Leo recorded on 78 rpm extensively for HMV, Decca and Columbia records. In forming Claddagh Records, Garech de Brún and Ivor Browne (both pupils of Leo’s) thought it to be essential that a complete long-playing record should be made of Leo’s piping, and so “Rí na bPíobairí” became the title of Claddagh’s first vinyl album. The first album proved to be a great success and that was followed by the piping of another of Leo’s former pupils, Paddy Moloney, playing with The Chieftains on their first Claddagh’s album.

Leo was a global ambassador for Irish traditional music. He was the one who was asked by the Irish Government to entertain diplomats and visitors  to Ireland. Always on time, well dressed and charismatic, with his pipes shining and in perfect tune, he was a true professional. In his performances from Dublin to Fontainebleau, Covent Garden or Carnegie Hall, Leo brought the uilleann pipes to a wide audience, and in doing so earned huge respect for the music he played and for the uilleann pipes.

He appeared in a number of films, including Nora O’Neill (1934); Irish Hearts (1935); Broth of a Boy (1959); Home is the Hero (1959) and The Playboy of the Western World (1961).

There is no doubt that one of Leo’s greatest contributions to traditional Irish music was his appointment as uilleann pipes teacher in Dublin’s Municipal School of Music, at a very young age. It was the renowned Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin RIP, who asked me the cleverest of questions: “How did your father get a job teaching Irish music in a classical music institution” at the age of just seventeen”?

Samuel Rowsome and his wife, Mary were themselves clever in sending their three sons, William, Tom and John to learn the theory of music from a German teacher of music, Frederick Jacobowitch, who lived near their Ballintore home, in the Ferns area of Co. Wexford at that time. Then, in true tradition, William passed that knowledge on to his son, Leo who became an expert in the theory of music, and notated on manuscript all the tunes for his pupils, who themselves benefited greatly from Leo’s instruction. Another factor was that Leo was a kind man who presented himself well, had a great sense of decorum and knew how to communicate with people from all walks of life.   

Leo Rowsome revived the Pipers’ Club (Cumann na bPiobairi Uilleann) in 1936, having called thirty of his senior pupils to attend a Siamsa Mór in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. He became President of the Club and in 1946, the Club moved to Aras Ceannt, 14 Thomas Street, Dublin. Leo and Tom Rowsome, together with their colleagues and friends from Cumann na bPíobairí Uilleann were adamant that a national organisation for the promotion of Irish traditional music should be formed. Leo began writing to musicians country-wide to alert them.  Much work was done, and mileage covered by Leo’s brother Tom in what was known as his “Comhaltas” car!  It was from the “Club” that Cumann Ceoltóirí na hÉireann was formed, which lead to the formation in 1951 of Comhaltas Ceoltoirí Éireann. 

Na Piobairi Uilleann, the organisation for the promotion of the uilleann pipes was formed in 1968 and Leo, with Seamus Ennis were its first patrons.  Its current CEO, Gay McKeon was a pupil of Leo’s. 

Ensuring that the Rowsome tradition of piping and music-making was passed on to his family to be safe for future generations, Leo left an enormous legacy of archival and commercial recordings.  He continued his father’s work by completing his Tutor for the Uilleann pipes and dedicating it to him. [now digitised and available online from ITMA]

I had the privilege of having a book of my father’s reels and jigs The Leo Rowsome Collection of Irish Music – 428 reels and jigs from the pen of master piper, Leo Rowsome published by Waltons to commemorate the Centenary of his birth in 2003. The tunes in the book are Leo’s own versions, handed down to him by his father, grandfather and uncles. The book which is dedicated to my parents also contains some of Leo’s own compositions. 

Leo’s daily schedule was a busy one: He worked making pipes, reeds, carrying our repairs in his workshop every morning, until he took the bus to Dublin’s Municipal School of Music on Chatham Row in the afternoons, where he taught until 9 or 9.30 p.m.  On arrival home, he would be encouraged by my mother to write a few more tunes before supper – It is that collection of reels and jigs, some of Leo’s own compositions, that I had published by Waltons in 2003. In that collection, ironically, the last tune he wrote was a jig – Goodbye and a Blessing.

Leo’s wife, Helena was a fantastic support to him in every aspect of his work. A musician herself with a good singing voice, she worked as a Primary School Teacher in a local school where she also was involved in choral work after school.  She had a deep appreciation of Leo’s talents and always did what she could to ensure that he had peace to complete those wonderful sets of uilleann pipes in his workshop at the back of the family home on Dublin’s north-side.

Leo and Helena had four children. Leon (1936-1994) was a superb uilleann piper and Liam (1939-1997) a genius on the fiddle. Liam and Tommy Potts playing together were, without doubt, the Menuhin and Grappelli of Irish traditional fiddle playing. My twin, Olivia teaches piano and music in our families continues to endure.

Piping in the family reached its 5^th generation, with Leon’s son, Kevin, and is now in its 6^th generation with his daughters and their cousins playing pipes. 

Thankfully, pipes made by Leo and his father, William, are in the hands of some of today’s excellent uilleann pipers world-wide.

Leo’s unique set of uilleann pipes, the set he began making in 1922 and played for his entire professional life, is now part of the Irish national collection and patrimony at The National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, where they are on display for the entire world to see.  Gifting Leo Rowsome’s own handmade set of pipes to the people of Ireland fulfils a guiding principle of Leo’s, i.e. that the cultural heritage of the uilleann pipes belongs to everyone.

On Leo’s 30^th Anniversary, Mr Justice Vivian Lavan (a former pupil of Leo’s) gave a superb address at his graveside. I quote:

My first meeting with Leo was in the Pipers’ Club, Thomas Street, Dublin, where he held his Saturday evening classes. Even to my youthful and untutored eye, I knew that I was in the presence of a true professional. There he was in his bow tie, carrying his avuncular air, exhibiting a charm and courtesy – traits which endured for the years I knew him.

Like many other pipers, I joined the ranks of his pupils in the Municipal School of Music in Chatham Street. As a pupil I witnessed the true professional work. Leo had an unfailing and unflappable ability to each and to encourage from the very youthful to the more mature!  His teaching method was always one to one – never master to neophyte. His encouragement to try again, if the performance was less than ought to have been expected – and after that encouragement, he would take an empty manuscript and transpose on these some apposite and suitable piece of music to whet the pupil’s appetite. My years as such a pupil were a shared delight.  The second part of his teaching took place in the Pipers’ Club in Thomas Street on a Saturday evening. As in law, so also in the Pipers’ Club, there was strict order of precedence, from the youngest to the most senior. There boys of my vintage were to rub shoulders with some who were later to become household names – such as Paddy Moloney, Garech Browne, Liam óg O’Flynn and Des Geraghty. Those Saturday evenings some 45 years later are still firm in my memory for the commitment to the preservation and dissemination of Irish music, and the practice and playing of the uilleann pipes, which Leo gave. In this endeavour, he was ably supported by the Seerys, Tuohys, Crystals, McClouds, Pat Noonan and Tom McCabe, my uncle, and all of the others who in those dim, difficult and distant days had the vision to develop the organisation and structure of Irish music generally and of uilleann piping in particular. I began then to understand the contribution which Leo had been making to the popularisation of the uilleann pipes in the decades from the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Vivian Lavan (1944-2011) died on 17 August 2011. He was enrolled as a pupil of Leo’s at the School of Music 1957-1960. 

Text written by Helena Rowsome Grimes, Nicholas Carolan [previous features] & Grace Toland.

Presented by Grace Toland.

September, 2020

When ever the role of women involved in Irish traditional music is discussed, Mrs. Kathleen Harrington’s name frequently comes to the fore. Although there were numerally few women actively involved in playing traditional music, the few who were publicly active, were universally respected. The names of Aggie Whyte, Bridie Lafferty, Mrs. Crotty and Tilly Finn spring to mind. Undoubtably there were many others who only played at home but the musicians named above were the ones I was privileged to encounter.

Growing up in Sligo

Kathleen Harrington née Gardiner was born into a very prominent musical family at Corhober, Ballymote, Co. Sligo, on 14 July 1897. Her father, Séamus Gardiner, played the fiddle and flute and taught music in the locality, including training the local fife and drum band in the United Irish League Hall in Ballymote. Michael Anderson the piper from Lisananny, Ballymote, Co. Sligo, mentioned in Francis O’Neill’s Irish music and musicians (1913), was a first cousin.

It was only natural that the Gardiner children took to music. Mary Gardiner (Mrs. Sheridan who married and settled locally in Ballymote, Co. Sligo), Lucy Gardiner (Mrs. Rowland), and James Gardiner, all played fiddles. James emigrated to Scotland and played in a céilí band for many years. Her brother John Joe Gardiner played fiddle and flute was perhaps the best known of the family.

At that time, the Sligo style was predominant in music circles. Kathleen, and her brother John Joe, played with all the great musicians in the area. They were contemporaries of Michael Coleman, James Morrison and Paddy Killoran and had close connections with them over the years. This included receiving private acetate recordings containing music and greetings from James ‘Lad’ O’Beirne and Paddy Killoran.

Life in Liverpool

Kathleen and Lucy Gardiner went to work in Liverpool. While there, they stayed with the McNamara family, a music loving family originally from Co. Clare. Their son, Seán McNamara also played the fiddle and later played with the Liverpool Céilí Band. The Gardiner sisters became involved in the activities of the emigrant Irish community in Liverpool playing music at céilidhe and gatherings. It was at a céilí that Kathleen met her husband, Seán Harrington. Seán was at that time a volunteer in the Liverpool IRA. She herself became a member of Cumann na mBan during that period in England. When Kathleen and her husband returned to Dublin she resumed playing traditional music with her husband’s encouragement.

Katheen Harrington’s sister, Lucy married and settled in Galway where her sons, Oliver and Raymond, became renowned accordion players. They later spent years in London where they were an important part of the vibrant traditional music scene there in the 1950s and 1960’s.

Mrs. Harrington was a good fiddle player and unusually at the time for women, had recorded a solo fiddle 78 rpm disc recording for HMV in 1938, and a recording for the short lived Irish Recording Company (IRC).

The Gardiner Traditional Trio

Kathleen Harrington recorded with her brother John Joe Gardiner who was an extraordinary musician, equally proficient on fiddle and flute. They recorded as the Gardiner Traditional Trio in 1938 with John Joe on flute, Kathleen on fiddle and Moya Acheson from Dundalk on piano. John Joe was a contemporary of Michael Coleman and his brother, James. John Joe Gardiner taught fiddle players Paddy Killoran and James Morrison before they emigrated to the USA and they kept in touch over the years.

Mrs. Harrington and the Kincora Céilí Band

Apart from her 78 rpm disc recordings, as a solo musician, and with the Gardiner Trio, Kathleen was also known throughout the country as the leader of the Kincora Céilí Band.

p>The Kincora Céilí Band was formed after the foundation of the Ballinakill Céilí Band, the first céilí band to broadcast and record. Recordings issued by record companies of these two fine groups are a testimony to their brilliance. Their combination of flutes and fiddle in the Kincora Céilí Band produced a sweet and melodious sound reminiscent of the Ballinakill Céilí Band and undoubtedly these two bands must rank amongst the greatest groupings of Irish traditional musicians.

Mrs. Harrington founded the Kincora Céilí Band in the late 1930s. The Kincora Céilí Band was in typical Sligo style with fiddle and flute to the fore: Kathleen Harrington (Sligo), Pat O’Brien (Sligo), Mick Loughman (Kildare) on fiddles, John Egan (Sligo), John Brennan (Sligo) on flutes and Kathleen O’Connor (Dundalk) on piano. Their first public appearance was at a céilí organised by the Scottish branch of the Old IRA in 1937 in the Round Room of the Rotunda, Dublin. The Kincora Céilí Band was subsequently very popular with dancers and music lovers alike.

At a later period in 1940s, after an illness, she handed over the leadership of the band to piper, Seán Seery, but continued playing the fiddle with them. With this changed band they went on to win the All-Ireland Senior Céilí Band Competition title at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann held at Longford in 1958.

The Pipers’ Club and the development of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ)

Mrs. Harrington was also a major figure in traditional musical circles and as a member of the Pipers’ Club committee, was centrally involved in the in the development of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ) in the early years, and in the trade union associated with CCÉ, The Irish Traditional Musicians Association for many years. For most of this period, apart from Mrs. Crotty in Co. Clare who was also involved in CCÉ, Mrs. Harrington was one of the very few female musicians actively involved at a national level.

Because of her national profile as a band leader and her family connections, she was a highly respected individual and much sort after as a musician and an adjudicator at the early fleadhanna.

She was a very active committee member of the Pipers’ Club from when it was located in 14 Thomas Street, Dublin and continued to serve as a committee member when they relocated to Monkstown in 1976.

The Siamsa Céilí Band

Mrs. Harrington’s days of playing with céilí bands was not finished yet. Her brother, John Joe was living in Dundalk and was the figurehead and inspiration for a new generation of musicians. Rory Kennedy with Patsy and Pauline Gardiner formed the Siamsa Céilí Band and were subsequently three times champions of the All-Ireland Céılí band competition (1966–69).

Mrs. Harrington was a prominent and experienced member of the band. The Siamsa Céilí Band included John Joe’s daughters, Pauline and Patsy and his son-in-law, Brian O’Kane. Mrs. Harrington was certainly an asset to the band as she had the experience of competing and winning with the Kincora in the All-Ireland Céılí band competition in 1958.

Members of the band as shown below:

Standing, back row: Brian O’Kane (piano accordion), Kevin O’Callaghan (drummer), Brendan Gaughran (piano) and Rory Kennedy (accordion).

Front row: Patsy Gardiner (fiddle), John Joe Gardiner (fiddle), Kathleen Harrington (fiddle), and Joe McKevitt (flute).

Personality wise, she was a lovely dignified lady, always dressed smartly, invariably with a large stylish hat. Over the years she forged a unique role as a recording artiste, band leader, winning several Senior Céilí Band All-Ireland titles with the Kincora and Siamsa céilí bands, a committee member of the Pipers’ Club and an adjudicator at musical events all over the country.

On a personal level, I would like to acknowledge her generosity and encouragement to me and other young musicians in the 1960s. In her own quiet way, she was a role model for female musicians and in that regard, was universally respected by the musical community.

Kathleen Harrington and other surviving members of the Kincora Céilí Band participated in a get together organised by the author to commemorate the Kincora Céilí Band shortly before her death on 4th November, 1984.

Unpublished recording of Kathleen Harrington

ITMA and Mick O’Connor would like to extend thanks to Harry Bradshaw who has shared an unpublished recording of Kathleen Harrington to mark #IWD2022.

Recorded circa 1949–50, Kathleen is accompanied by piano, double bass and banjo mandolin.

Acknowledgments

Mick O’Connor would like to thank the extended Harrington and Gardiner families, and in particular to Brian and Patsy O’Kane née Gardiner, for their continuous support and encouragement over the years.

Special thanks to Harry Bradshaw for his generosity in supplying an unpublished recording of Mrs. Harrington playing Bonnie Kate and the Boys of the Lough.

Images used are courtesy of Mick O’Connor, ITMA Photographic Collection, and Independent Newspapers.

Blog editor: Grace Toland

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Elizabeth (Bess) Cronin, ‘The Queen of Irish Song’ as Séamus Ennis called her, was probably the best-known Irish female traditional singer of her time. Collectors came from far and near to hear and record her singing. Séamus Ennis collected her songs for the Irish Folklore Commission in the mid-1940s, and again, with Brian George, for the BBC in the early 1950s. American collectors also recorded her: Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1951, Jean Ritchie and George Pickow in 1952, and Diane Hamilton in 1956.

Bess, who was my grandmother, was born on 30 May 1879, the eldest of five children of Seán ‘Máistir’ Ó hIarlaithe and Maighréad Ní Thuama. Her father was headmaster in the school of Barr d’Ínse (hence the epithet ‘Máistir’, schoolmaster), in the Fuithirí (Fuhirees) area of West Cork, near the Cork-Kerry border. Bess had four sisters and one brother, as well as two half-brothers by the Master’s first marriage. In her mid-teens, however, Bess was sent to help out on the farm of her uncle, Tomás Ó hIarfhlaithe (Tomás Bheity), and his wife, who were childless. It was during those formative years, first with her parents, then with her uncle and aunt, that she acquired most of her songs.

In a recorded interview with Alan Lomax, Bess recalled how she had learned most of her songs:

Well, I learned a lot of them from my mother; and then I learned more of them from … We had … Well, we used to have lots of servants, you know. There’d be servants at the time. You’d have one now for, say, five or six months, and so on; and maybe that one would leave and another one would come. There’d be some new person always coming or going. Or a girl, cousins and friends, coming along like that and all, you know anyway?

On another occasion, Bess recorded how she first came to learn the song called Mo Mhúirnín Bán.

She was asleep in bed one night when she was woken by a strange noise, which she thought at first was the sound of ghosts! She hid under the bedclothes but poked her head out after a while and listened: the sound was that of the women below churning butter! Her mother had to attend a funeral the next day, and had to have the butter churned and ready for collection before she left the house. An elderly neighbour had come to the house that evening (unknownst to Bess) and she and the other women spent the night sewing and then churning, with the old woman singing songs all the time. Bess heard her singing:

Ní sa chnoc is aoirde a bhíonn mo bhuíon-sa
Ach i ngleanntán aoibhinn abhfad ó láimh;
Mar a labhrann a’ chuach faoi chuan san oíche ann …

She jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, and told the startled women what had been going through her head upstairs in the bed. She then insisted that the old woman teach her the song, which she duly did, there and then,

The old woman recited the song three or four times, and Bess had it before the breakfast, along with many more (d’fhoghlamaíos seó acu uaithe an uair chéanna), but some of these she later forgot (do chailleas ’na dhiaidh san cuid acu).

In 1946, Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Delargy), Director of the Irish Folklore Commission, conceived a plan to send collectors to the various Gaeltacht areas of the country, in order to record (in written form and in sound) samples of the story-telling and folklore of those areas, in particular, where the Irish language was felt to be in danger. Beginning in 1947, under the supervision of Seamus Ennis, the first field trips for song-recording were undertaken. The pioneering nature of this scheme deserves to be emphasised: the BBC, for example, did not undertake extensive field operations until the advent of portable tape recorders in the early 1950s.

The 1947 ‘expedition’, however, had been undertaken in cooperation with the BBC, whose Director of Recorded Programmes, R.V.A. (Brian) George — himself a Donegal-man and a singer — ‘was largely responsible for persuading the BBC to take the initiative’ of establishing its own archive of folksongs and folkmusic. The results of the Irish trip were sufficiently successful to convince the authorities in London that much material still remained to be recorded and the result was a five-year project for systematic field recording throughout Britain and Ireland, which was undertaken between 1952 (when Seamus Ennis was recruited from Radio Éireann) and 1957. (Seamus was with the Commission from 1 June 1942 until 1 August 1947, when he went to Radio Éireann, where he was Outside Broadcast Officer.)

These CBÉ and BBC field trips recorded songs from Bess Cronin in May and August 1947 and at various dates subsequently, up to August, September and November 1952. Something of the excitement of these recording sessions can be felt in the descriptions of them that Bess included in the letters she wrote to my father at the time:

‘The Old Plantation’, Tuesday, 25th Nov., 1949.

… We were watching and waiting all the week, and no one coming. We were nearly after forgetting about them. We heard Seamus came to Macroom on Wednesday: tomorrow week. Mick was in town, and Johnny was gone with them, and the old Mrs Lynch came down with Jocey (as Seamus calls her). He couldn’t ask questions, but they said the party were gone out to Keeffe’s place. We were waiting on.

In 1951 the great American folksong collector, Alan Lomax, began the collecting that was to result in the publication of the Irish volume in his Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music (New York, 1955), which contained songs recorded from Bess, amongst many others. Lomax had been introduced to Bess by Séamus Ennis and he recorded songs from her in both English and Irish. He also had interesting conversations with her, snatches of which are reproduced on the recording. When asked, for example, where and when she sang, Bess replied:

I sang here, there and everywhere: at weddings and parties and at home, and milking the cows in the stall, and washing the clothes, and sweeping the house, and stripping the cabbage for the cattle, and sticking the sciollán’s [seed potatoes] abroad in the field, and doing everything.

It is interesting to note, however, that not every song appealed to her, and in fact she surprised one BBC collector (Marie Slocombe) by singing the opening verse of Lord Randal and no more. When asked if she had the rest of the song, the following conversation ensued:

MS — ‘Do you remember any more, what happened (in the song)?’
BC — ‘No, no, no, I don’t. I often heard it. I often heard it.’
MS — ‘Where?’
BC — ‘I often heard it.’
MS — ‘You haven’t heard it all.’
BC — ‘I often heard it, but I never learned it, no. I don’t know, I didn’t care for it, or something. I didn’t bother about learning it, but just that I had that much, now.’

In addition to these other collectors, of course, there was also the material collected by my father, Donncha Ó Cróinín, on his regular visits home from teacher-training college in Dublin, and by my uncle Seán Ó Cróinín, who, from 1939 to the year of his death, in 1965 (with a break during the War), was full-time collector for the Irish Folklore Commission in Co. Cork.

The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin

‘Tis twenty long years since this book first appeared’ could be the opening line of a Bess Cronin song (perhaps sung to the air of ‘Tis ten weary years since I left Ireland’s shore’). It is hard to believe that two decades and more have passed since The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin was first published, but although the original edition went through two print runs, it sold out quickly and is now exceedingly hard to find, either in the second-hand bookstores or online.

The first edition contained everything relating to the songs that I was able to find among the surviving paper and printed records, from family memorabilia and from sources such as the Irish Folklore Commission archives (now the Department of Irish Folklore in University College Dublin) and the recordings of her singing made by the IFC, the BBC and by various American collectors. The two CDs of Bess’s songs, both in Irish and in English, that accompanied the book offered a representative selection of her song repertoire and of her singing style. The intention was to offer the interested reader — as distinct from those who simply wanted to hear Bess’s singing, without regard to anything that might have to do with her own family background or the origins of her songs — something approximating to a complete dossier of information concerning the surviving parallel written tradition of the songs that she herself had picked up by ear from the singing of her family, friends and neighbours.

I first became involved in the production of the book and the accompanying CDs after my father Donncha passed away in 1990. Among his surviving papers were transcripts (some hand-written, some typed) of various songs, mostly in Irish, which he had made from the recordings that he had to hand in the years before his death. (He was, for whatever reason, never aware of the treasury of recordings that Jean Ritchie and George Pickow had made.) According to a letter that he wrote to me (dated 2 June 1989), most of these recordings had been put together for him in the 1950s and ’60s, by Leo Corduff, then technical assistant in the Irish Folklore Commission, from original IFC acetate disks or from whatever BBC recordings were to hand. These originally acetate or reel-to-reel recordings were subsequently transferred to miniature cassette tapes, with a corresponding further decline in their audio quality.

The most significant modern advance on all previous efforts to put together a collection of Bess Cronin songs was represented by the decision to acquire the services of Harry Bradshaw (then working in Radio Teilifís Éireann) to re-master all the recordings chosen for inclusion in the publication, and to recruit the expertise of Nicholas Carolan (then director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive) and his young colleague, Glenn Cumiskey, in order to put together a representative selection of the re-mastered recordings and arrange them in the two accompanying CDs.

At the end of one of the several launches that took place to mark the original publication of The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin (this time in Cúil Aodha, near Bess’s home place), I was approached by a man who identified himself as Seán Ó Muimhneacháin, of Cúil a’ Bhuacaigh (parish of Kilnamartra, Co. Cork). He produced a small brown envelope that contained an old school copybook, the last few pages of which were filled with handwritten songs by Bess Cronin. Seán explained that the copybook had been borrowed many years previously by Bess’s good friend, John O’Connell, but was forgotten and never returned. It had come down, however, through the hands of a distant relative. Now, through Seán’s generosity, the copybook that had somehow survived all those years was finally returned, and from it I have been able to add six more items to the original collection of 196 songs, four of them different versions of songs that were already in the collection, while in the case of two songs the texts are appearing for the first time.

The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin Traditional Irish Singer. 2nd rev. ed. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2021) with 2 accompanying CDs is now available to purchase online from ITMA or in person at 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.

ITMA would like to thank Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Sam Tranum and the staff at Four Courts Press for their assistance in preparing this blog.

For more information on this, and other projects at ITMA, please stay in touch by signing up to our monthly newsletter.

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Jerry O’Brien’s Accordion Instructor for the 10-Key and 19-Key Irish-Style Accordion: Containing a Selection of Irish Jigs, Reels, Hornpipes, Polkas, Highland Flings and Waltzes / Arranged for Accordion, Violin, Flute, Bagpipes and Banjo by Jerry O’Brien. Roxbury, Massachusetts: E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, 1949

Accordion player Jerry O’Brien, a native of Kinsale, Co Cork, came to Boston in 1921, and as accordionist with the recording group O’Leary’s Irish Minstrels was a leading exponent and teacher of Irish music in the city. In 1928 he also made one solo 78 rpm recording for the Columbia company of New York before the Great Depression of 1929 brought most Irish-American recording to a halt. In a period of rising prosperity after the Second World War he began recording solo again, this time for the Irish-American Copley label of Boston, and also in duet with a young local star pupil Joe Derrane. The Copley label had been set up in 1948 by Justus O’Byrne DeWitt, son of an Ellen O’Byrne DeWitt who had been involved in the recording industry in New York since 1916. O’Brien also designed for the company the O’Byrne DeWitt Irish Professional Accordion.

The success of O’Brien and Derrane’s Copley recordings gave rise to two Boston book publications by E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, both compiled by Jerry O’Brien and with a repertory heavily influenced by gramophone records. The first was this collection, his accordion tutor and tune book of 1949, and for which James Morrison’s 1931 tutor for the Globe accordion (see below), an instrument which O’Brien had played, was doubtless an exemplar. O’Brien’s second publication was an Irish tune book of 1952 and is also available below.

This tutor is primarily for the two-row accordion in D and C sharp, i.e., one of the two ‘press-and-draw’ systems used by accordion players in the Irish tradition. The system taught here (sometimes known among players as the ‘outside-in’ system) is now virtually obsolete, but it is still played by a very loyal minority of players of the Irish accordion. Prominent current players include Joe Derrane of Boston, whose music is featured in the book. The music and the musical ethos embodied in the tutor is, however, still very much alive in the Irish tradition today, thanks largely to its successful revival by the group De Danann in the 1980s.

These tunes were set from a copy of Jerry O’Brien’s tutor kindly donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in 1989 by accordion player Frank Murphy of Syracuse, New York.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 23 May 2013

About 1940 Colm Ó Lochlainn began the publication in Dublin of an undated series of penny Irish-language songsheets entitled An Claisceadal (‘choral singing’).

By 1941 eighteen numbers had been published, produced by his Three Candles Press, and the series continued into the 1940s until it ended with the publication of sheet number 36.

These sheets were the latest manifestation of a number of influential Irish-language song publications by Colm Ó Lochlainn which bear the title of An Claisceadal. This was originally the name of an informal choral group of Irish-language enthusiasts which had been brought together in Dublin in 1928 by Ó Lochlainn and by Fionán Mac Coluim, a Gaelic League organiser from Kerry. The singers were accompanied on piano by a Sligo music student Michael Bowles (Mícheál Ó Baoighill), later director of music on Radio Éireann and conductor of the National Orchestra of New Zealand. In the early 1930s Ó Lochlainn began publishing a series of booklets of song texts sung by the group. These were taken up enthusiastically by Gaelic League branches, and the songs they contain became generally popular and widely sung.

Colm Ó Lochlainn was a polymath: a Dublin printer, type designer and publisher, a political activist, an Irish scholar and Irish-language enthusiast, an editor of publications and journals, a singer and musician.

Colm Ó Lochlainn’s Irish-language songsheet series was clearly modelled on the old tradition of cheap printed street ballads. In contrast to street balladsheets, the Claisceadal sheets are printed on strong paper and on both sides – usually carrying two songs per sheet – and they also give the melody for each song, in staff notation. Each sheet was relatively small (12 x 19 cm). The sixty-nine songs of the series, some of them collected by Ó Lochlainn himself, are from the then living traditions of the gaeltachtaí (Irish-speaking districts), notably those of Conamara, Mayo and Munster. They are mostly light cheerful songs (‘amhráin mheidhreacha’): lullabies, dandling and other children’s songs, spinning and other work songs, and love songs. The melodies are strong and regular, and many are also dance tunes. Some of the music notations seem to be in the hand of the famous traditional musician, singer and music collector Séamus Ennis, who worked for Ó Lochlainn in the years about 1940.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 19 June 2013

Competitive dancing in Ireland is probably as old as dancing itself in the country, but the first substantial evidence for it comes from the 19th century. Dancing masters frequently danced against each other for the control of teaching territories, and men and women for community prestige. With the establishment of the Gaelic League in 1893 and its competitive cultural festivals which included solo and group dances, dancing competitions became much more organised. Professional dancing schools were set up and dancing costume began to evolve.

The Irish Examiner (formerly The Cork Examiner), was founded as a nationalist newspaper in Cork in 1841. It was one of the earliest Irish newspapers to use photographs. Many of its oldest photographic plates were destroyed in a serious fire in the newspaper’s premises in 1927, but the many surviving glass negatives in its archive document a wide range of Irish social life in Munster in the first half of the 20th century. They include coverage of Irish competitive dancers.

The selection of Irish dancing images presented here were researched by ITMA staff in the premises of The Irish Examiner in 1992. They are reproduced with the kind permission of The Irish Examiner in whose copyright they belong.

For picture sales contact The Irish Examiner +353 (0)21 4802393 or 4802208

Nicholas Carolan, 1 February 2009

The flute is one of the best-known of Irish traditional instruments. Historically the playing of the flute was associated with north Connaught but it now holds broad appeal across the island of Ireland and abroad. Irish traditional players tend to favour the ‘simple system’ wooden flute rather than the Boehm (Böhm) flute which features in other musical traditions.

The photographs presented here from the ITMA collections range in date from the 1930s to the present day.

With thanks to photographers Tony Kearns, Liam McNulty, Paul Eliasberg, Bill Doyle and Lisa Shields for permission to publish the images. ITMA would welcome further information on any of these images and if possible would like to add to the collection by copying images of other flute players or their instruments which you may have.

Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2016

Essentially, everyone who learns an Irish traditional tune is a collector of the music, and most interested people will have a memorised collection, even if they don’t sing or play an instrument. But what is normally meant by the term are those dedicated individuals who amass over time large numbers of songs and melodies and preserve them on a variety of paper media or on sound or video recordings. They may partly be motivated by personal or commercial considerations, but most collectors are altruistic, driven by a wish to preserve and share something that they themselves enjoy and value. Some may in time publish items from their collections.

The collectors featured in this gallery from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive range from those of the 18th and 19th centuries who of necessity collected with pen and paper and had the rare skill of being able to jot down melodies at first hearings, to those modern collectors with the no less valuable skill of operating audio and video technology to faithfully convey the reality of live performance. A debt is owed to all of them for enabling people now and in the future to experience the past of the music, and for providing materials for its ongoing re-creation.

Also here while it is still active is a link to a recent RTÉ ‘Nationwide’ programme (this programme is no longer available on the RTÉ Player) which featured the work of the collectors Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie on the occasion of their recordings being made available through the Clare County Library here. An ITMA feature on their Irish collections can be found below.

With thanks to Colette Moloney, Ríonach uí Ógáin, Peter Browne, & Lisa Shields.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2015

Leo Rowsome (1903–1970) was a third generation uilleann piper. His musical and pipe making skills were inherited from his grandfather Samuel Rowsome from Ballintore. Co. Wexford and his father William who established the family pipe making and repair business in Dublin. One of six musical children, Leo was to play a pivotal role in the revival of uilleann piping in Ireland as a pipe maker, performer, teacher, organiser, advocate & publisher. He performed extensively in Ireland and abroad, and broadcast on both radio and televsion. Leo recorded with a number of 78 rpm record companies and on vinyl with Claddagh and Topic Records.

This image gallery contains 8 posters advertising Leo in concert in Ireland and Britain during the 1940s and 1950s, as well as some unique family photographs and an interesting piece of performance contract correspondence. Posters in the archival world are classed as ‘Ephemera’ . Like flyers and concert programmes these paper mementoes are often the only archival record of many concerts and events which tell the earlier story of traditional music and entertainment in both Ireland and abroad.

The Rowsome piping tradition continues through fourth and fifth generations of the family in both playing, pipe making and publishing.

We are indebted to Leo’s daughter Helena who donated these posters and photographs to ITMA and gave permission to share them online. Publishing this gallery inspired us to also feature a selection of Leo’s piping in an audio playlist of his 78 rpm disc recordings from 1926–1944.

We would like to thank Helena Rowsome for the images and also the donors of the 78 rpm discs which make up this tribute to the King of the Pipers Leo Rowsome.

Early forms of sound recording were ‘acoustic’, that is, the sounds produced by singers and musicians were directed into a horn and cut mechanically by a vibrating needle into a groove on a cylinder or disc. The resulting playback sound was constricted and relatively unnatural. But in the mid-1920s the introduction of electric microphones and ‘electrical’ sound recording brought a great increase in fidelity of sound. It also enabled a much greater sound dynamic to be captured, and this had a particular advantage in recording large ensembles like dance bands.

Larger Irish-American bands, of the kind that had been playing in dance halls in the eastern cities since the late 19th century, took advantage of the new medium, and the recordings they made began appearing from 1926. They featured the full band ensembles, as in their performances in the halls, and also the band vocalists and instrumental soloists. The selection presented here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive represents ensembles from New York, Boston and Chicago, which comprised mainly Irish-born musicians playing traditional music. Combinations of instrumental sounds never before heard in Irish music were heard on these recordings, which give us our first insights into large Irish ensemble playing.

By way of contemporary contrast and contextualisation, the selection concludes with an ‘Irish’ song by the famous Irish-American Bing Crosby and a rendering of one of the most famous Irish melodies by what was possibly the most famous of the American big bands.

With thanks to record donors Jim Brophy, John Cullinane, Ciarán Dalton, Vincent Duffe, John Loesberg, Mrs Walter Maguire, Dan Maher, Matt Murtagh, & Kieran Owens.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 December 2011

The barndance is in origin both a musical form and an accompanying social ballroom dance which became popular in England and north America in the late 19th century. Its ancestors were the European polka and schottische social dances and their distinctive music of the mid-century. Like them, the barn dance changed over time and space and exists in a number of varieties. Its early music was composed by professionals or consisted of existing melodies adapted by them to the new fashion. Usually in 2/4 or 4/4 time and strongly marked in rhythm, with an emphatic ending to each section, the barndance seems originally to have been danced by couples in lines who would advance in sequence and dance complete waltz turns. In the 20th century the term would be applied to quadrille-derived square dances, or to dances danced in barns – in this latter sense it seems to have been used also in the 18th century as a term for country dances.

Although basic research on the topic remains to be done, barndances are likely to have come into Ireland at the time of their first popularity through commercial sheet music and the activities of professional dance teachers. In time they were danced and played traditionally, mixed in during a night’s dancing with older forms. As a dance form, the barndance is now almost obsolete in the Irish tradition, as are the related schottisches, flings, etc., and the distinction between these forms is now being lost. But their musical forms live on in the instrumental tradition because of the attractiveness of their melodies. While barndance melodies begin to appear in collections of Irish traditional music in the late 1920s, they had earlier and more influentially begun to be issued from the early 1920s on 78rpm commercial discs recorded by Irish emigrant musicians in New York and other American centres of Irish settlement.

These discs – from which a selection is presented below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, along with some later recorded in Ireland – contain both ballroom melodies imported into Ireland and popular Irish song and dance melodies pressed into service for the new dance, and possibly some tunes from contemporary American-printed collections. This mixture undoubtedly reflects musical practice in the home areas of the musicians earlier in the 20th century, and in contemporary Irish-American dancehalls. The discs influenced local repertory in Ireland as they began to be heard widely there from the 1920s; in more recent times Irish traditional composers with an awareness of these discs began a new practice of barndance composition.

With thanks to record donors John Brennan Family, Jim Brophy, Éamon de Buitléar, Jim Carroll & Pat Mackenzie, Ciarán Dalton, Vincent Duffe, Christy Hand, Dan Healy, John Kelly Family, Máire Killoran, John Loesberg, Caoimhín Mac Aoidh, Dermot McLaughlin, Mrs Walter Maguire, Dan Maher, Tom Munnelly, Éamonn Ó Domhnaill, Ed Reavy Jnr, & Áine Sotscheck.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 June 2010

Acetate discs were originally used in recording studios from the 1930s to the early 1950s, before the introduction of tape recording, for making test copies of recordings. They consisted of aluminium plates covered with a thin layer of lacquer, and sound was cut directly onto the lacquer. They were only intended for temporary use and became inaudible after many playings. Acetates were also used in radio work, and some commercial companies recorded performers on acetate disc for a fee.

The eight acetate recordings presented above come from the collection of the late John Brennan, a Ballisodare, Co Sligo, flute player resident in Dublin, and they were donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in 2008 by his son John who lives in Denmark, per Peter Sorenson.

John Brennan was friendly with the Sligo fiddle players James ‘Lad’ O’Beirne (1911–80) and Martin Wynne (1913–98), who were resident in New York and whose playing is featured on the discs. Lad O’Beirne, who had emigrated there in 1928, had a homemade acetate disc-cutting machine, and this was doubtless the original source of most of the recordings. Martin Wynne came to the United States in 1948, and seems to have made the first two of these recordings with an unknown pianist in London before emigrating. Lad O’Beirne accompanies Wynne on piano on the latter’s New York recordings. The New York-born fiddle player Andy McGann (1928–2004) is also to be heard on one of the recordings, in duet with O’Beirne on fiddle and accompanied on piano by Jerry Wallace (1929–91). All of these musicians were influenced by the famous New York-based Sligo fiddle player and recording artist Michael Coleman (1891–1945), as can be heard in the repertory and style on the discs.

These recordings seem to have been made in the late 1940s and in 1950. The discs have been heavily used and their sound quality is now poor. The first six have been remastered to the highest level possible by Harry Bradshaw for ITMA; the other two recordings are less audible but are included for their historical and technical interest.

Do you have other acetate discs of Irish traditional music? ITMA would welcome their donation or the opportunity to copy them.

With thanks to record donor John Brennan and to Peter Sorenson for his good offices.

Nicholas Carolan, Harry Bradshaw & Danny Diamond, 1 December 2009

Leo Rowsome (1903–1970) was a third generation uilleann piper.  His musical and pipe making skills were inherited from his grandfather Samuel Rowsome from Ballintore. Co. Wexford and his father William who established the family pipe making and repair business in Dublin. One of six musical children, Leo was to play a pivotal role in the revival of uilleann piping in Ireland as a pipe maker, performer, teacher, organiser, advocate & publisher.  He performed extensively in Ireland and abroad, and broadcast on both radio and televsion.  His recording career began in the era of the 78 rpm disc and it is from this period that we present 12 tracks in this audio playlist.  Leo recorded with a number of 78 rpm record companies and on vinyl with Claddagh and Topic Records. The labels represented in this selection from 1926–1944 are Columbia, Decca and HMV.  The tracks span the range of Irish traditional music dance rhythms as well as airs, and are predominantly solo recordings.

The Rowsome piping tradition continues through fifth and sixth generations of the family in both playing, pipe making and publishing.

The curation of this audio playlist was inspired by the donation of a set of posters and photographs featuring Leo by his daughter Helena.  The posters and photographs are featured in an image gallery below as well as some performance related documents.

We would like to thank Helena Rowsome for the images and also the donors of the 78 rpm discs which make up this tribute to the King of the Pipers Leo Rowsome.

The famous Sliabh Luachra fiddle player and travelling fiddle-master Pádraig O’Keeffe (1887–1963) from Glountane, near Castleisland, Co Kerry, at first followed in his father’s footsteps as the principal teacher in the local national school, but in 1920 abandoned conventional school-teaching for a more bohemian lifestyle.

He had inherited music from his O’Callaghan mother’s side of the family, and over the next four decades he taught hundreds of pupils, fiddle especially but also accordion and other instruments, moving in a wide circuit within striking distance of his home. An eccentric and notably witty character with a gift for musical variation, he left an indelible stamp on the music and folklore of the region, and is an example of how an individual musician may almost create a local music style.

In his teacher-training, O’Keeffe would have learned the rudiments of staff notation and tonic solfa, but for his own teaching purposes he devised more intuitive tablature systems. For the fiddle he employed the four spaces of the music staff to correspond with the strings of the instrument, and with numerals indicating which fingers were to be pressed down. For the accordion he used numerals for the keys to be pressed and in- and out-symbols to indicate the direction of the bellows. Hundreds of the notations he left with pupils have been preserved in private hands, and two volumes of facsimiles have been published (Dan Herlihy, Sliabh Luachra Music Masters vols 1 & 2, Herlihy, Killarney, 2003 & 2007). But his music has not yet been comprehensively collected.

The O’Keeffe fiddle and accordion manuscripts presented here below as scans have been kindly donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by accordion player Paud Collins from Knockacur, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry. The manuscripts belonged
to Paud’s brother Jerh a former fiddle pupil of O’Keeffe’s. Their brother Dan
was an accordion pupil of O’Keeffe’s.

The fiddle manuscripts are in Pádraig O’Keeffe’s own hand, while the accordion manuscripts were copied for her brothers from O’Keeffe’s originals by Paud Collins’s sister Tess Drudy (who did not herself read the tablature).

Interactive music scores of the fiddle & accordion manuscripts are available below.

The four sets of ITMA-Collins O’Keeffe facsimile manuscripts and the interactive music scores derived from them constitute the largest body of O’Keeffe’s music that is publicly available to date.

With thanks to Paud Collins, and to his son Denis Collins who was instrumental in the making of the donation.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 October 2013

Grace Toland, 2 April 2020: Provenance information updated by Paud and Denis Collins.

About 1940 Colm Ó Lochlainn began the publication in Dublin of an undated series of penny Irish-language songsheets entitled An Claisceadal (‘choral singing’).

By 1941 eighteen numbers had been published, produced by his Three Candles Press, and the series continued into the 1940s until it ended with the publication of sheet number 36. The entire series is reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and the music is available in our Interactive Scores section.

These sheets were the latest manifestation of a number of influential Irish-language song publications by Colm Ó Lochlainn which bear the title of An Claisceadal. This was originally the name of an informal choral group of Irish-language enthusiasts which had been brought together in Dublin in 1928 by Ó Lochlainn and by Fionán Mac Coluim, a Gaelic League organiser from Kerry. The singers were accompanied on piano by a Sligo music student Michael Bowles (Mícheál Ó Baoighill), later director of music on Radio Éireann and conductor of the National Orchestra of New Zealand. In the early 1930s Ó Lochlainn began publishing a series of booklets of song texts sung by the group. These were taken up enthusiastically by Gaelic League branches, and the songs they contain became generally popular and widely sung

Colm Ó Lochlainn was a polymath: a Dublin printer, type designer and publisher, a political activist, an Irish scholar and Irish-language enthusiast, an editor of publications and journals, a singer and musician. For more on Ó Lochlainn see below.

Colm Ó Lochlainn’s Irish-language songsheet series was clearly modelled on the old tradition of cheap printed street ballads. In contrast to street balladsheets, the Claisceadal sheets are printed on strong paper and on both sides – usually carrying two songs per sheet – and they also give the melody for each song, in staff notation. Each sheet was relatively small (12 x 19 cm). The sixty-nine songs of the series, some of them collected by Ó Lochlainn himself, are from the then living traditions of the gaeltachtaí (Irish-speaking districts), notably those of Conamara, Mayo and Munster. They are mostly light cheerful songs (‘amhráin mheidhreacha’): lullabies, dandling and other children’s songs, spinning and other work songs, and love songs. The melodies are strong and regular, and many are also dance tunes. Some of the music notations seem to be in the hand of the famous traditional musician, singer and music collector Séamus Ennis, who worked for Ó Lochlainn in the years about 1940. For more on other Claisceadal publications click below.

With thanks to Aifric Gray, daughter of Colm Ó Lochlainn, for permission to publish the songsheets, for copies of photographs, and for other help. The collection of sheets was donated to ITMA by Nicholas Carolan; other Claisceadal publications have been kindly donated by Kate O’Dwyer, Maebh Ní Loinsigh, Máire Ní Dhonnchadha, Laurie Uí Raghallaigh, Chalmers Trench, Bríd Hetherington, and Dáibhí Ó Croinín.

ITMA would welcome the donation of other materials of this kind which are not yet in its collections (check our catalogues here), or of their loan for copying.

Colm Ó Lochlainn (1892–1972)

Colm Ó Lochlainn was born in Dublin as William Gerard O’Loughlin to an Irish-speaking father who was a Kilkenny businessman-printer, and a Limerick mother from a family of printers. Having studied Irish in University College Dublin under Eoin Mac Néill from 1910 to 1916, and acted with the Theatre of Ireland, Ó Lochlainn taught in Patrick Pearse’s school St Enda’s and was at the time deeply involved in the Independence movement, especially as a publisher and printer. After the 1916 Rising he continued his Gaelic studies, graduated MA, continued his involvement in printing and publishing, and from 1933 to 1943 was an assistant lecturer in Irish and librarianship in UCD. In 1926 he founded the Three Candles Press in Dublin, which would become for decades a leading Irish imprint as well as a general printer, and which specialised in history, biography, topography, bibliography, music and Irish studies. Ó Lochlainn travelled and studied printing techniques on the Continent and designed an Irish-language type-font. From about 1928 to 1957 he was also editor, printer and publisher of the bibliographical journal The Irish Book-Lover. Co-founder of An Óige, the Irish youth hostelling organisation, in 1960 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt.Celt, from the National University of Ireland. He was married to Ailish McInerney; they had three children.

In music Colm Ó Lochlainn is remembered particularly for his two famous collections of English-language songs Irish Street Ballads (1939, reprinted 1946, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1978, 1984) and More Irish Street Ballads (1965, reprinted 1968, 1978, 1984), which were the chief source-books for the 1960s revival of interest in Irish traditional song. He himself was a singer, often appearing with his sister Úna on national radio in the 1920s, and a musician on piano, uilleann pipes, warpipes and harp. In the 1960s he introduced the traditional song series As Zozimus Said on the new Irish television service. He was also interested in Scottish Gaelic songs and edited and published a collection: Deoc-Sláinte nan Gillean: Dórnan Óran a Barraidh (1948). He was also the author of Anglo-Irish Songwriters since Moore (n.d., post-1947), later Song-Writers of Ireland in the English Tongue (1967), and occasionally composed song words and melodies. His Irish-language song publications are considered below.

For more detail on Colm Ó Lochlainn see Beathaisnéis vol. 4, Diarmuid Breathnach & Máire Ní Mhurchú eds (Dublin, 1994), pp. 132–4; Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002 vol. 7, James Maguire & James Quinn eds (Dublin & Cambridge, 2009), pp. 648–9; and The Three Candles: A Bibliographical Catalogue, Éamonn de Búrca ed. (Dublin, 1998).

Other Claisceadal Publications

Almost all of the many publications by Colm Ó Lochlainn bearing the title of An Claisceadal are undated, which makes the establishing of even a relative chronology difficult. Confusingly, the first twenty-eight songsheets reproduced above carry a copyright date of 1930 and the last eight a copyright date of 1940, although a 1941 Three Candles catalogue and other evidence make it clear that they were only being produced from about 1940. The earlier copyright date may refer to the establishment of the Claisceadal group.

From about 1932 Ó Lochlainn edited and published under his imprint of Cóartha (later Comhartha) na dTrí gCoinneall, the Sign of the Three Candles, a larger song series also entitled An Claisceadal which includes the same songs as the songsheets, among others. This series was in the form of twelve small (9.5 x 16 cm) cheap booklets, each of 16 pages (the last with an eight-page supplement). They contain song texts mainly, with only occasional melodies in tonic-solfa notation. All are undated with the exception of the eleventh, which is dated 1936. This series was also produced in hardbound forms.

Another publication entitled An Claisceadal 1, edited by Ó Lochlainn and J.F. Larchet and published by Comhartha na dTrí gCoinneal is a small (10.5 x 16.5 cm) sixpenny collection of twelve songs with staff notation.

It is undated but was advertised as available in 1933. This collection was also published by the Dublin firm of Piogóid/ Pigott in the same and in a larger (19 x 28 cm) two-shilling format, both undated.

A number of the Claisceadal songs were also published separately in sheetmusic form, arranged by various hands with the cooperation of Colm Ó Lochlainn. Published variously by the Three Candles Press, by Piogóid/ Pigott and by the Dublin firm of McCullough, they seemingly appeared from the early 1930s into the 1940s.

In 1941 a large (21.5 x 34 cm) double-sided sheet entitled An Claisceadal, with nine song texts, was produced by Comhartha na dTrí gCoinneall as an aid to community singing at the Oireachtas festival of that year.

In 1983 Micheál Bowles began the publication of a series of songs from the repertory of An Claisceadal group in The Irish Times, and he later edited these in two volumes entitled Claisceadal (vol. 1: Glendale Press 1985; vols 1 & 2: At the Sign of the Anchor 1986).

All of these Claisceadal publications are in the ITMA collections and are available to visitors.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 August 2010

ITMA regularly collects printed and digital programmes from festivals and events which feature Irish traditional music and musicians. As well as a rich source of information and photographs, they are also a diary of the traditional music year and in some cases the only record of a local event or musical performance by an individual or group.

In February 2010 ITMA uploaded here a first tranche of printed feis programmes dating between 1910 and 1963. We are now enriching this online collection with an 1898 Belfast Feis Ceoil programme and those of feiseanna held in Cork, Carlow, Dublin, Letterkenny and Drogheda, 1911−1943.

This second tranche continues to provide ‘a fascinating picture of contemporary Irish social life, as well as details on many competitors and adjudicators, famous and unknown; on music shops and music publishers; and on the music, song and dance specified for performance’. We urge you to look through the names of competitors to find for example a relative adjudicated by Eamonn Ó Gallchobhair (vocal music), Miss Kitty O’Doherty (instrumental music) or R. Mac Gabhann (dance) in St. Eunan’s College, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal 29−30 June 1940. The many advertisements show the vibrancy of the local business economy in 1940s Drogheda including the Eamonn Mac Aodh Ceilidhe Band with ‘eight members, own amplification [and] moderate terms.’ Do you know the uilleann piper who won the Rowsome Challenge Cup in the Mansion House in Dublin in 1941? And which Irish War Pipe Band took home the £5 prize in Carlow in 1913? Was it: Piobairi Airt-Mic-Murcoda, Inis-Corthaid; Goresbridge Pipers’ Band; Tullamore Pipers’ Band; Brownstown War Pipe Band or the De Lacy War Pipe Band from Ferns?

ITMA would be delighted to hear from relatives or individuals who can tell us more about the people named in these programmes or the events themselves. Contact us at info@itma.ie If you have or know of similar event programmes, ITMA would be grateful to have the opportunity to scan these to add to our collection.

Grace Toland, Maeve Gebruers & Seán Caverly, 1 October 2016

The rare and undated songsters reproduced here were published in the first half of the 20th century by the Dublin firm of Nugent & Co at 45 Middle Abbey Street, and were compiled for the company by Denis Devereux, a singer and printer who had been involved in the Independence movement as a friend of Arthur Griffith.

All but two come from the family collection of the singer Gerard Crofts, and were purchased at auction by the Irish Traditional Music Archive at the Adams-Mealy ‘Independence’ sale of 19 April 2011.

Printed on flimsy newsprint and sold mostly for a penny or twopence, the original songsters were not intended for long-term use and few have survived. They contain patriotic and popular songs of their time, almost all in English with a few in Irish. Some of the songs had been popularised on gramophone record and on radio by singers such as Jimmy O’Dea, Tony Reddin, Richard Hayward and Delia Murphy in the 1930s; others date from the early 1800s.

Gerard Crofts (1888–1934, pictured above) was a well known tenor from Capel St, Dublin, who frequently sang at concerts and on radio and who made gramophone records for the Aeolian Vocalion, Regal, and Beltona labels. He had joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914, and was imprisoned after fighting in the GPO in 1916. His friends included Sean McDermott, Éamonn Ceannt, and Peadar Kearney, writer of the Irish national anthem.

Also included here is The Irish Blackbird Songster, an undated 19th-century songster crudely printed by the John F. Nugent Co of 35 New Row West, Dublin, which seems to have been a forerunner of Nugent & Co of Middle Abbey St. It comes from the ITMA Leslie Shepard Collection. Erin’s Call Song Book was donated to ITMA by Matt Murtagh.

ITMA would welcome the donation of other materials of this kind which are not yet in its collections (check our catalogues here), or of their loan for copying.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 June 2011