Larry Redican (1908-1975) was a central figure in the traditional music scene of New York City from the 1930s to 1970s. Originally from Dublin, his parents were from Roscommon and steeped in music. Larry himself learnt fiddle from the famous Frank O’Higgins before emigrating to the US in 1929. Over the following decades Larry helped form the New York Ceili band with many musical friends Andy McGann, Jack Coen, Felix Dolan and Paddy O’Brien when Paddy lived in New York City. Luckily Larry made recordings of musical sessions with his friends in New York in the 1950s and 60s as well as sending and receiving private recordings with personal greetings and music from the Pipers Club in Dublin. He also was a close friend of Ciarán Mac Mathána, who privately made some of the recordings below for him, and a vital link to facilitating Ciarán’s recordings in the US for Radió Éireann in the early 1960s.

Larry’s grandson, Larry Jr, has kindly donated his grandfather’s tape collection to ITMA and this playlist represents a selection of those recordings capturing both the vibrant music scene in New York at the time and also recordings made in Ireland and sent on to Larry. Hope you enjoy the music.

Pádraic Mac Mathúna, July 2023

This final batch of tracks from the recording session of Séamus O’Mahony in 1952, predominantly feature popular tunes like The Rambling Pitchfork, as well as pieces or set dances associated with dancing, such as The Blackbird and The Three Sea Captains.

On the track featuring the well-known hornpipes The Kildare Fancy and The Harvest Home, O’Mahony’s intricate, dexterous left-hand is complimented by a fluid skilled bow-hand. His customary lavish tone and nostalgic vibrato is evident on his rendition of the song-air Teddy O’Neill.

For those with very perceptive ears, listen closely to Bonaparte’s Retreat as O’Mahony seems to provoke an excited reaction from a canine listener around the one minute mark!

However, the most unusual item in this recording session remains Sarsfield’s March performed energetically here by the father and son combination. This unique setting was learnt from a travelling musician from Wexford who visited the O’Mahony household in Mitchelstown in the early 20^thcentury and it could possibly be termed a descriptive piece.

ITMA was delighted to receive a copy of a manuscript belonging to Séamus O’Mahony in which a beautifully written transcription of this setting of Sarsfield’s March appears complete with piano accompaniment notated by traditional singer Máire Ní Scolaí (1909—1985).

For those of you seeking more information on this remarkable fiddle player and his extraordinary life, ITMA would recommend reading Brendan E. O’Mahony’s memoir and reflections on his parents’ relationship The Last Word published in 2013.

This is the fourth and final blog in the series about Séamus O’Mahony. Please follow the links below to read more about, and listen to, previous recordings.

Séamus O’Mahony: A Hidden Gem in ITMA / “Caill‑taisce’ sa Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann

Séamus O’Mahony: A Hidden Gem in ITMA. Part 2 / “Caill‑taisce’ sa Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann. Uimhir 2

Séamus O’Mahony: A Hidden Gem in ITMA. Part 3 / “Caill‑taisce’ sa Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann. Uimhir 3

Written & Researched by:

Liam O’Connor

With thanks to:

Brendan E. O’Mahony, Séamus O’Mahony’s son, for permission to make an outstanding recording from 1952 available to the traditional music community.

The O’Mahony Family for photographs used in this blog.

Kathy Mirza for her co-operation in 1998 in allowing ITMA copy the 1952 reel-to-reel recording of Séamus O’Mahony in the Fr. Killian Curran Collection.

Seán Keegan, DKIT, who kindly restored the recordings to concert pitch and to the speed at which it was originally played.

ITMA Staff.

The first track we’ll share in today’s blog is a 3-part version of the well-known jig Cherish the ladies.

Some written sources describe this as a “Munster Jig”. Indeed, versions of the tune feature in works by the Munster collectors P.W. Joyce, Chief O’Neill and Canon Goodman.

Having published a more elaborate 6-part version in O’Neill’s 1001: The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), Chief O’Neill attributed the original 2-part tune to the 18^thcentury Limerick composer Walker ‘Piper’ Jackson in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).

Joyce notated a 2-part version from the playing of his neighbour Ned Goggin, the professional fiddle player in the village of Glenosheen, Co. Limerick during the mid-19^th century.

On the second track, O’Mahony plays two well-known reels: The Teetotaller and The Heathery Breeze. Again, these are widely published and widely recorded tunes. For example, both were published in O’Neill’s 1001: Dance Music of Ireland (1907).

For some listeners, O’Mahony’s rhythmic nuances in the second part of The Teetotaller may be reminiscent of rhythmic subtleties heard in Tommie Potts’s fiddle playing.

On the third track, O’Mahony
plays another well-known slow air An Chúilfhionn.  Described by Chief
O’Neill as “the Queen of Irish Airs” (1913), it is one of the most written
about airs in the Irish canon. Despite sharing the same title, many published
melodies vary significantly from one another. For example, Bunting published
“An Coolan or The Lady of Desert” in 1840 and it is significantly different to
the version P.W. Joyce published in 1909. Considered “ancient” by Bunting,
Grattan Flood (1906) even speculated that the original tune was composed in the
13^th century.

Regardless of its genesis, it is now one of the most
popular airs in the Irish tradition and O’Mahony’s version here is indicative
of what has become the most commonly-performed setting.

Tommie Potts can be
heard playing a very similar version to O’Mahony’s on Tommie Potts:
Traditional Fiddle Music from Dublin (RTÉ, 2012).

This is the third in a series of four blogs about Séamus O’Mahony. The fourth and final blog will be published in December 2019.

Séamus O’Mahony: A Hidden Gem in ITMA / “Caill‑taisce’ sa Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann

Séamus O’Mahony: A Hidden Gem in ITMA. Part 2 / “Caill‑taisce’ sa Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann. Uimhir 2

Written & Researched by:

Liam O’Connor

With thanks to:

Brendan E. O’Mahony, Séamus O’Mahony’s son, for permission to make an outstanding recording from 1952 available to the traditional music community.

The O’Mahony Family for photographs used in this blog.

Kathy Mirza for her co-operation in 1998 in allowing ITMA copy the 1952 reel-to-reel recording of Séamus O’Mahony in the Fr. Killian Curran Collection.

Seán Keegan, DKIT, who kindly restored the recording to concert pitch and to the speed at which it was originally played.

ITMA Staff.

On the first track, Séamus or Jimmy as he was known locally, can be heard playing the well-known set-dance The Ace and Deuce of Piping. P.W. Joyce published the melody in Ancient Irish Music (1873) in which he explained the title:

The words ‘Ace and Deuce’ (or one and two) mean here the highest pitch of excellence; and as the name indicates, the tune was considered the perfection of music when well played on the bag-pipes, and its correct performance was believed to be a sufficient test of the instrumental skill of a piper.

Joyce notated the melody in 1853 from the whistling of his neighbour John Dolan, Glenosheen, Co. Limerick; a village only 24 km from Mitchelstown, Co. Cork where O’Mahony was raised. The version O’Mahony plays on this recording, 101 years after Joyce notated Dolan’s version, is remarkably similar.

O’Mahony can be heard playing an expressive version of Táimse i m’Chodladh is ná Dúistear Mé, the well-known 18^thcentury ‘Aisling’ (a dream or vision) song, on the second track. His continuous vibrato and dramatic tone are distinguishing features of his approach to air playing.

On the third track, a spirited treatment is given to a march most commonly associated with the song Kelly the Boy from Killane written by P.J. McCall to commemorate John Kelly’s involvement in the United Irishmen’s Rebellion in 1798.

ITMA was delighted that Aoife Nic Cormaic presented tracks of Séamus O’Mahony on The Rolling Wave on the 6 October 2019. Listen to the RTÉ Radio 1 programme here.

We look forward to sharing more tracks with you in the coming months.

Written & Researched by:

Liam O’Connor

With thanks to:

Brendan E. O’Mahony, Séamus O’Mahony’s son, for permission to make an outstanding recording from 1952 available to the traditional music community.

The O’Mahony Family for photographs used in this blog.

Kathy Mirza for her co-operation in 1998 in allowing ITMA copy the 1952 reel-to-reel recording of Séamus O’Mahony in the Fr. Killian Curran Collection.

Seán Keegan, DKIT, who kindly restored the recording to concert pitch and to the speed at which it was originally played.

Even though Séamus O’Mahony lived to reach the grand old age of 91, his name is seldom mentioned in discussions on fiddle playing in Ireland. There are several reasons for this: O’Mahony did not make solo commercial recordings and he grew increasingly reluctant to perform in public or commit to broadcasts in the mid-twentieth century. However, the quality of his fiddle playing evident on the following tracks may prompt the question “How could a musician this good be forgotten?”

Born into a musical family, by the tender age of 13, Séamus and his older brother Edward had earned a sufficiently formidable reputation, as being outstanding young fiddler players, to warrant a biography and full-page photo in Chief O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).

Older brother Edward or Eddie O’Mahony (1896–1962) substantiated his early promise by winning the senior Oireachtais fiddle competition in 1912 before joining the Capuchin Order in 1914 and moving away from playing traditional music. Younger brother Séamus followed in Eddie’s footsteps by winning the senior Oireachtais competition in 1917 thus adding to an already impressive array of medals.

In addition to 16 tracks of solo fiddle playing, ITMA has six recordings made by Séamus with uilleann piper Liam Walsh. Leo Rowsome was another musical partner that Séamus played with on several broadcasts and they recorded together as part of the All-Ireland Trio with Nelius Cronin.

Having developed a reputation as one of the Ireland’s leading traditional musicians, unfortunately for fans of Irish traditional music, Séamus became less inclined to play in public and did not commit to further commercial recordings.

My own personal interest in Séamus O’Mahony arose from reading the liner notes to Tommie Potts’s seminal album The Liffey Banks (1972). Potts, like Chief O’Neill, was not in the business of giving praise too easily. In a very considered note, Potts cited three fiddle players as being “the nearest on the point of influence on” him.

Having read Tommie’s note, I asked myself: “Who was Séamus Mahoney [sic.]? Are there recordings of him? How good was he and why is he not spoken about?”

As it happened, my father Mick O’Connor had been in contact with Séamus O’Mahony in the 1980s while conducting research into Leo Rowsome and in preparation for a history of the Dublin Piper’s Club. Subsequently, he began correspondence with Séamus’s son Brendan E. O’Mahony. Mick has prepared an unpublished biographical article on Séamus for future publication.

In October 1998, Kathy Mirza lent ITMA a reel-to-reel from Father Killian Curran’s Collection which contained a very fine recording featuring Séamus O’Mahony playing in his home in Youghal, Co. Cork, in July 1952 with some accompaniment on piano from his son Brendan. Upon being appointed Director of ITMA, I sought an introduction to Brendan from my father Mick O’Connor to see if there was a possibility of making the recordings accessible to the general public through ITMA’s website. Luckily Brendan agreed to ITMA’s proposal.

A special thanks must go to Brendan E. O’Mahony for being so generous with his own time, for donating other material such as photographs, letters, contracts, newspaper clippings and concert programmes to ITMA thus providing important insights into the extraordinary life of his father. During a recent field-work trip to Cork, Brendan told ITMA staff that his father Séamus brought the fiddle with him on active duty with the Irish Republican Army in North Cork during the War of Independence. Séamus’s wife, Máire also played the fiddle and took fiddle lessons from him in Mitchelstown in the 1920s. “The fiddle,” Séamus wrote to her at the time, “is part and parcel of us, part of who we are.” ITMA plans to continue to develop this project over the coming months and to conduct an interview with Brendan in 73 Merrion Square. Brendan, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, UCC, where he lectured for 35 years, wrote a lyrical, insightful and personal memoir of his parents in his 2013 publication The Last Words.

Upon hearing these recordings, as a fiddle player, I was absolutely blown away by the quality of Séamus’s playing, his command, emotion, skill, intensity, tone, subtle ornamentation, flair and polished execution. The more I listen to it, the more nuances I hear in his music. Hearing some similarities in style, tone, rhythmic character between O’Mahony and Tommie Potts becomes more evident too and gives a retrospective into the development of the latter’s style.

I hope these recordings inspire others to find their own hidden gem/”caill-taisce” from the collections awaiting them in the largest and most comprehensive collection of Irish traditional music in the world here at the ITMA.

In the coming months a total of sixteen tracks will be shared through ITMA’s newsletter and website in order to shine a light on one of Ireland’s forgotten musical figures of the early 20^thcentury.

Bainigí sult as an gceol draíochtúil seo.

Written & Researched by:

Liam O’Connor

With thanks to:

Brendan E. O’Mahony, Séamus O’Mahony’s son, for permission to make an outstanding recording from 1952 available to the traditional music community.

Kathy Mirza for her co-operation in 1998 in allowing ITMA copy the 1952 reel-to-reel recording of Séamus O’Mahony in the Fr. Killian Curran Collection.

Seán Keegan, DKIT, who kindly restored the recording to concert pitch and to the speed at which it was originally played.

ITMA Non-commercial Media Officer, Alan Woods, and Mick O’Connor who contributed significantly to the research on Séamus O’Mahony.

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.

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On Saturday 14 May 2016, ITMA hosted a talk by Dr Reg Hall to celebrate the launch of 2 new CD collections from Topic Records.  It Was Mighty, It Was Great Altogether and the free e-book A Few Tunes of Good Music document Irish music in London from the 1950s to the 2010s.   The 6 CDs in The Voice of the People series were edited by Reg Hall so the occasion also offered a timely opportunity to pay tribute to his lifetime’s work as researcher, musician and collector of Irish music in London over a period of 60 years.  Nicholas Carolan officially launched the collection and introduced Reg to a packed house in the ITMA Reading Room and to those who were joining us online via the ITMA YouTube channel. In the following hour, through sound, story and image, Reg brought us on a rich and memorable journey to the world of Irish music in London. 

ITMA would like to thank Dr Reg Hall for permission to reproduce this presentation on its website.

Irish Folk Dance Music: for Violin, Flute, Guitar, Banjo and Accordion / Compiled and Arranged by Jerry O’Brien. Roxbury, Massachusetts: E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, 1952

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, and their repertory, 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 his accordion tutor and tune book of 1949, also available on the ITMA website at the link below, 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.  This is O’Brien’s second publication, a tune book of 1952.

This tune book, though advertised as being suitable for several instruments, is heavily influenced by the expressive possibilities and repertory of 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. That system (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 music repertory embodied in Jerry O’Brien’s books 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 tunebook kindly donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in 1995 by dancer Ed Reavy Jnr of Philadelphia.

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

Allan’s ‘Irish Fiddler’, Containing 120 Reels & Jigs, Hornpipes & Set Dances, Selected from All Sources, Arranged by Hugh McDermott

The undated Glasgow publication Allan’s ‘Irish Fiddler’ has been an entry-level tunebook for aspiring fiddle players of Irish traditional music for over 60 years now. A cheap publication which has been widely distributed, it contains a substantial body of popular tunes, and is still available. Anyone who has absorbed its contents and learned to read its notations is well equipped to make progress in the music. In spite of the ‘120’ tunes mentioned on its title-page, the collection actually contains 131 melodies in 121 numbered sections. Interactive music scores for the 131 are presented here, along with pdf versions suitable for printing.

The origins of the collection are something of a mystery. Its first date of publication is not now known; the earliest association date the Irish Traditional Music Archive has been able to discover is April 1953. Although the book has been extensively used for decades, very few libraries hold copies; it is a perfect illustration of a common publication that was below the radar of most librarians. With its high proportion of tunes made current from the 1920s onward on gramophone records by Irish-American star performers like Michael Coleman and James Morrison, the collection seems to have been compiled in the mid-20th century. The identity of Hugh McDermott is likewise now a mystery. Was he an Irishman living in Scotland, or a Scot of Irish ancestry? Given the dance-music orientation of his collection and the appropriateness of his markings for fiddle fingering and bowing, he was probably an active fiddle player who provided music for feis or ceili dancers.

Mozart Allan, publisher of the collection and member of a music-publishing family active in Glasgow since the 1820s, was a prolific publisher of Scottish and general popular music in the 20th century. This present collection was followed up by the firm’s publication of Allan’s ‘Irish Pianist’ (Piano Part of the Irish Fiddler) with the 131 tunes split into two separately published parts edited by Ian MacLeish and arranged for piano and piano-accordion. It is similarly undated but may possibly be a publication of the late 1980s (Part 1 was purchased by ITMA in January 1989, Part 2 in July 1990). The Mozart Allan firm has ceased trading within the last decade.

With thanks to the Breathnach family, donors of the ITMA copy of the book, and to Reg Hall, Paddy Glackin, & Almut Boehme, Head of Music, National Library of Scotland Rare Books and Music Collections, for information. ITMA would be glad to learn more about Hugh McDermott and the different versions of his collection.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 1 March 2014

The images presented in this gallery illustrate the collecting work of Sidney Roberston Cowell on the Aran Islands in the 1950s, and the wider context in which she collected. More information on this topic, and on these images, can be found in the accompanying blog:
Sidney Robertson Cowell records in the Aran Islands and Conamara, 1955-56

ITMA was delighted to hear in April 2022 that it had been awarded a Community Heritage Grant from the Heritage Council for its project “Physical to Digital: A Complete Scanning Solution for the Irish Traditional Music Archive.” This funding has enabled ITMA to purchase a state-of-the-art specialised large format archival scanning system. Presented below is a collection of LP covers which have been digitised for Heritage Week 2022 using this new scanner.

The scanner which was manufactured by I2S a French company who specialise in image capture and processing is A2 in size. This machine enables ITMA to scan a range of large-format materials which we have been unable to do in-house in the past. Materials like large-sized sheet music, posters, LP covers, a wide range of manuscripts, printed books, periodicals and images. This specialised equipment will future-proof the safe in-house digitisation of all this material for many years to come.

Watch the behind-the-scenes video which documents the installation of this new state-of-the-art scanning system and read our Heritage Week blog here.
Heritage Week 2022 – ITMA Scanner – YouTube

The ITMA LP Collection

The Irish Traditional Music Archive has over 4,100 LPs in its collection.

The 1950s was the first full decade in which the new long-playing vinyl discs (LPs) were on sale. Being easily scratched or warped, the discs were sold in stiff cardboard sleeves, unlike their predecessors, the 78 rpm discs, which normally came in printed paper bags (and sometimes in cardboard ‘albums’ like photograph albums). The cardboard sleeves gave record companies the opportunity to use graphic design to set up favourable associations for the music on the records and thus attract customers. The typical disc was 12 inches in diameter (some were 10) and the sleeves provided a large image surface for artists and photographers. (Nicholas Carolan, 1 October 2011)

The LPs presented here are from a collection recently donated to ITMA by the Mac Ionnraic Family. They mostly date from the 1970s and 1980s with one published in 1968 by Gael Linn – Trup, trup, a chapaillín. The collection includes recordings of Irish and English language songs as well as instrumental music. Many of the artists and groups popular at the time are represented in this collection including Clannad, De Dannan, The Black Family, Moving Hearts, etc.

The selection presented here is only the tip of the iceberg, with this new large-format scanner ITMA hopes in time to scan every LP cover in its collection!

Another gallery of LP sleeve designs from the 1950s is available below.

With thanks to the Mac Ionnraic Family.

The family photographs of those involved in Irish traditional music are often a valuable informal record of the music as seen from the inside, and preserve images and memories of events, activities and organisations that would otherwise be forgotten. This is the case with a selection of images recently donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by Síle Quinn-Davidson of London and Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in memory of her father James Quinn, and reproduced here.

James Quinn (1915–1960), born in Briarfield, Ballinasloe, Co Galway, was an uilleann piper and piccolo player who was prominent in Irish music circles in London in the 1940s and 1950s. Left-handed, he played a set of pipes made for him by Leo Rowsome of Dublin, and made his own reeds. Having gone to work in Kilburn, London, as a young man, he took part in many house sessions there with other traditional musicians from the 1940s, and also played in Irish dance halls such as The Hibernian on Fulham Broadway and The Banba in Kilburn. With his wife Susan (née Doherty) from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, a singer with a large repertory of Irish songs learned from her grandmother, he kept an open house for musicians, playing music particularly with uilleann piper Tommy Coley from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, fiddle player Tom Sullivan from Cork, London-born uilleann piper Pat Goulding, and fiddle player Julia Clifford from Kerry. Following a routine operation James Quinn died in his mid-forties. A huge funeral procession accompanied his coffin to the Mail Train at Euston Station, led by warpiper Larry O’Dowd, and he was buried in Abbeyknockmoy, Co Galway.

His daughter Síle, a stepdancer, was one of the first pupils of the Ted Kavanagh School of Dancing in Cricklewood, and was a prizewinner at Bethnal Green Feis. Music continues in the present generation of the Quinn family: in Briarfield, accordion player Gary, singer Norrie, and banjo and mandolin player Kieran, and in Dublin, singer and guitarist Michael Quinn.

With thanks for images and information to Síle Quinn-Davidson, Galway, and Jimmy Shields, London

Nicholas Carolan, 1 February 2010

Postscript

Since this web page was first put up, we have received a scan of another photograph of James Quinn by donation from Reg Hall, the well known London musician and music historian who has been closely involved with Irish traditional music activity in London since the 1950s. Reg only saw James Quinn once, in the Ceilidh Club in Cecil Sharp House one Sunday afternoon in the mid-1950s. He clearly remembers him singing and playing the pipes at the same time; the song was She Moved through the Fair.

Reg’s photo, now the last one in the sequence, was taken in The Bedford Arms pub, Arlington Road, Camden Town, London, c. 1956. He received it from the late Tony Martin, but it is by an unknown photographer. It shows, left to right, Tommy Maguire almost hidden (accordion), Michael Gorman (fiddle), Paddy Breen (flageolet), Margaret Barry (banjo), James (aka Seamus, Jim) Quinn (uilleann pipes), & Tony Martin (fiddle). The man in front may have been named Liddy.

With thanks for photograph and information to Reg Hall.

NC, March 2010

For as far back as we have evidence, singing traditional songs and playing traditional music in public houses have been part of Irish culture, especially on fair-days and other communal occasions and among Irish emigrant groups abroad. This trend grew with increased prosperity from the 1960s, until it is nowadays taken by newcomers to the music that pub sessions are almost synonymous with the practice of Irish traditional music.

The selection of photographs of playing the music in pubs presented here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive come from a variety of social occasions, from the rare fleadhanna ceoil of the 1950s to the more common festivals and summer schools of more recent decades. From the circumstances of the events, the pictures are usually snapshots taken on the fly, and more considered studies of pub sessions are uncommon and usually stiff and unconvincing.

With thanks to donors of photographs Maura McConnell, William Mullen, Tom Maree, Liam McNulty & Mark Jolley, and also to Fáilte Ireland for permission to reproduce photographs from its collection. ITMA would welcome indentification of musicians unknown to it in these photographs. Contributions please to info@itma.ie.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 December 2014

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.

Anne Gannon is the earliest known person to make tape recordings of Irish traditional music in Ireland as a private individual, entirely on her personal initiative and unsupported by any institution. This playlist presents highlights from her collection, which is now a unique archival treasure.

In fact, the Anne Gannon collection has a double distinction: as well as being the birth of tape recording by private individuals in Ireland, it also contains a unique musical expression of the connection between Ireland and Argentina
Anne Gannon was born in Carrigeen, Legan, Co. Longford, in 1915—which makes her the spirited centenarian that she now is. In 1954 she returned home during a period of working in the USA with a reel-to-reel recording machine that she’d acquired in New York. She immediately began making recordings of local traditional musicians, foremost among them her father, Bernard Gannon, an accordion player who had been born among the Irish-Argentine diaspora in Argentina in 1881. As a young man, he had inherited a farm in Carrigeen, and moved to Ireland, where he settled down and raised a family. Anne was the seventh of 17 children. (She later became Anne Byrne when she married, and settled in Ardagh, Co. Longford.)

All his life, Bernard Gannon continued to play on his accordion the Argentine music that he’d picked up in his youth and brought with him to Ireland. Later he added Irish tunes to his repertoire; these he picked up from local musicians, particularly from his brother-in-law, the fiddle player Christopher ‘Kit’ Kelly. Of the many recordings that Anne made, perhaps the most fascinating are those of the infectiously happy Argentine polkas and waltzes of her father, who performed with impressive elegance and skill, despite his advancing years. These are the only recordings made in Ireland of the folk music played among the sizeable Irish diaspora in Argentina in the 19th century
The other musicians featured in our playlist are also local to the collector’s home area in Co. Longford. ‘Kit’ Kelly—an uncle of the collector—here plays a hornpipe, ‘Kit’s Dream’, that he himself composed. Fiddle player Joe Callaghan is the fine musician after whom the Edgeworthstown branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann is now named. The duet Jim Dolan (uilleann pipes) and Mike Keena (fiddle) were also notable figures in the strong local music tradition.

Recently, in her 100th year—and more than 60 years after recording her first tape—the pioneering collector Anne Gannon donated her unique collection, as well as her original tape recorder, to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

ITMA would like to express its profound gratitude to the collector Anne Byrne (née Gannon) and her daughter Úna; and also to Trish Finnan, Anne Greene, and Tom Greene.

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

The period 1948 to 1960 was a transitional period for the recording and publishing of all kinds of music, including Irish traditional music. In 1948 the introduction of commercial tape recording opened up new possibilities for the recording of performers on location as well as in studio. In the same year the introduction of commercial LPs – long-playing microgroove discs – allowed the publication of extended pieces of music and themed collections of music. Both innovations enabled new small companies to enter the record market. By 1960 coarse-groove 78rpm discs had practically become things of the past after being standard sound carriers for more than half a century.

The medley of 1950s recordings presented here reflects the transition in Irish music. It includes productions of Irish-American companies like the Copley company of Boston, which began the period as a 78 publisher and ended it with singles, EPs and LPs, and the similar Dublin company of New York. In Britain and Ireland long-established companies like HMV and Beltona also moved from obsolete technologies to new ones, and new niche companies like Comhlucht Ceirníní Éireann of Dublin were able to publish material like Irish-language choral singing that had not hitherto been represented on record.

Active performers of the period, American- and Irish-based, ranged from earlier 78 stars like the Sligo fiddle player Paddy Killoran, the Belfast singer Richard Hayward and the McNulty Family group from Roscommon, to emerging singers and musicians like accordion players Joe Derrane from Boston and Jerry O’Brien from Cork, singers Connie Foley from Kerry and Ruthie Morrisey from New York, Seán Maguire from Belfast (here heard as a guitarist and singer) and the innovative Tipperary accordion player Paddy O’Brien. New ceili bands like that of Co Dublin uilleann piper and fiddle player Jack Wade were heard on record for the first time with new line-ups of old ceili bands like the Ballinakill of Galway. Also new were Irish-language singers like the Dublin Claisceadal group and harper Mary O’Hara of Sligo, who was at the beginning of a decades-long career.

With thanks to Aodán Ó Dubhghaill, Dublin, and Eileen O’Brien, Tipperary, for permissions; to Brendan Dolan, Archives of Irish America, NYU, New York, for information; and to record donors Jim Brophy, Éamon de Buitléar, Bernard Croke, Vincent Duffe, Reg Hall, Dan Maher, Eddie Mongey, Jimmy O’Brien Moran, Matt Murtagh, Philip Ó Fathaigh, Caoimhín Ó Marcaigh, & Tony Regan.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 June 2011

Four Irish EPs of music of oral tradition are reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

EP discs – ‘extended play’ microgroove recordings playing at 45 rpm – were introduced in the early 1950s by the American company RCA Victor to compete with the earlier LPs of the rival Columbia Records. The discs typically had two tracks on each side and ran for some 12–15 minutes. Material from previously issued 78s were issued on EPs, and also new recordings. Because of the relative costs involved, LPs were sometimes issued in installments on EPS. The discs were also used to break new performers who might not justify for a record company the expense of an LP. These considerations obtained also in Ireland.

Four Irish EPs of music of oral tradition are reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. The singer, actor and writer Richard Hayward (1898–1964) of Belfast had recorded Ulster songs, many of the Orange tradition, on 78s from the 1930s, and was still well known in the microgroove era. Eileen Donaghy (1930–2008) of Coalisland, Co Tyrone, on the other hand only came to fame in the late 1950s. She was a popular singer who mixed occasional traditional songs into her repertory, but all of her best-known songs, whatever their classification, have entered oral tradition. Ceili bands, ensembles formed first in the late 1920s, were in their heyday in the 1950s. The Tulla Ceili Band, which began life in rural Co Clare in the mid-1940s, made its first 78s some ten years later. Fred Hanna’s Ceili Band of Portadown, Co Armagh, had an urban strict-tempo style and was influenced by similar Scottish ceili bands of the period.

With thanks to record donors Vincent Duffe, Mrs Walter Maguire,& John Paul McKenna.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 October 2012

The Northern Ireland actor, broadcaster, film maker, concert singer, travel writer and dialect collector Richard Hayward (1892–1964) was also a popular singer. He had a successful career recording traditional and popular Ulster songs on 78s from the 1930s into the 1950s, and later on vinyl discs. His recordings spanned the different English-language song traditions of the North, with a leaning towards the humorous, as well as comic sketches and recitations, but he was the leading singer in his time of Orange lyrics and ballads. These described and celebrated the activities of the Orange Order, a Protestant organisation founded in Co Armagh in 1795. A selection from Hayward’s more than 30 recorded Orange songs are presented here.

Hayward, born in Lancashire, was brought to Ireland at the age of two and was reared in Larne and Belfast. He took an early interest in Irish traditional songs and published a book of song texts Ulster Songs and Ballads of the Town and the Country in London in 1925, following this with two undated songbooks with music published in Glasgow: Ireland Calling and Orange Standard. He was also a player of the Irish harp and published The Story of the Irish Harp in Dublin in 1954.

On his recordings, Hayward was careful to negotiate the Orange and Green divide and to soften the more extreme songs, as can be seen from his very first 78, recorded in London for the Columbia Company in January 1929. This featured on one side a comic favourite ‘The Ould Orange Flute’ and on the other ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses’, a Napoleonic ballad associated with Irish nationalism. As well as the playlist of Orange songs and his first 78 reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, there is also a copy of Hayward’s famous comic political sketch ‘Hands across the Border’, made in 1934 with the Dublin comedians Harry O’Donovan and Jimmy O’Dea.

With thanks to Paul Clements (author of Romancing Ireland: Richard Hayward 1892–1964, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2014) and Bill Dean Myatt (author of The Scottish Vernacular Discography 1888−1960, Hailsham: City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, 2013).

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 December 2014

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.

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

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

Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile introduces the story of how American folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell documented traditional music in the Aran Islands and Carna in 1955 and 1956 and shares a detailed itemized catalogue of the audio recordings in multiple digital formats. She also presents lists of women music collectors from Ireland and the United States of America.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Sidney Robertson Cowell (1903-1995)
3. Sample photographs and recordings
4. Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6
5. Women Collectors
6. Irish women ethnomusicologists/folk music collectors
7. US women ethnomusicologists/folk music collectors
8. Additional Resources on the work of Sidney Robertson Cowell
9. Notes
10. Works Consulted

Introduction

I remember well the moment I first heard of Sidney Robertson Cowell. It was a sunny Sunday morning in May 2000, a few weeks before my final year exams in Music at Oxford, and I was listening via longwave to Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s weekly programme on RTÉ Radio One. He was interviewing Dáibhí Ó Cróinín about his new book, The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin. In the course of tracing evidence of his grandmother’s singing, Prof. Ó Cróinín learned of two American women collectors who had recorded traditional music in Ireland in the 1950s. Their names were Jean Ritchie and Sidney Robertson Cowell. My ears pricked when I heard that both women had visited my home, the Aran Islands.

By October 2000 I was in the Department of Music at University College Cork beginning my postgraduate research on the music of the Aran Islands. I called on Prof. Ó Cróinín in the History Department at NUI Galway and he handed me a stack of letters: his correspondence with the Library of Congress, which holds the majority of Sidney Robertson Cowell’s archive. He must also have helped me connect with Jean Ritchie and her photographer husband George Pickow because, by March 2001, I was sitting in their kitchen in Port Washington, Long Island. Over a pot of tea, they told me they had stayed in my grandmother’s guesthouse when they spent a week in Aran in November 1952 (though I now wonder if perhaps they actually stayed in the guesthouse next door, Kilmurvey House). Sadly, they did not bring any sound recording equipment to Aran, but George took some wonderful photographs. Their Irish archive of photographs and recordings is held at NUI Galway and further Irish materials are available at the Library of Congress.

From Long Island I took a train to Washington D.C. and paid the first of many visits to the Library of Congress. There, I learned that Sidney Robertson Cowell had recorded in Árainn, Inis Meáin, and Carna in the summers of 1955 and 1956 and that only a portion of her Aran recordings were released commercially on the 1957 Folkways album Songs of Aran. I photocopied as much as I could afford and arranged return visits later as research funds permitted. I remember ten long days in April 2007 consulting materials relating to Sidney and her composer husband Henry Cowell at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound and Music Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

In 2011 I moved to the University of Notre Dame to begin turning my research on music collectors and the practice of collecting music in Ireland into a book with the help of their postdoctoral NEH Keough Fellowship. In 2012 I had the privilege of becoming the first Irish person to hold the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies (since renamed) hosted by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Living for over a year in the same country and eventually in the same city as the archives themselves was a boon to my work. I could consult expert staff and primary materials in the Library’s American Folklife Center and its Music Division in the morning and in the afternoon take the Metro to the Ralph Rinzler Archives in the Smithsonian Institute to view their Folkways holdings, some of which have since been digitized. The magic of being part of the Library of Congress for a while never got old. On my early morning commute – early to avoid the heat and humidity after sunrise – I would climb Capitol Hill from Union Station saying to myself: “I can’t believe I work here!”

Over twenty years since first learning of Sidney Robertson Cowell’s visits to Ireland, I can now share two new resources to help make her work known to a wider audience. The first is a chapter about her Irish collection in my monograph Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2021). The second is a digital catalogue that shares metadata on over 200 individual tracks of music she recorded in Ireland. The catalogue is being published here for the first time.

Sidney Robertson Cowell (1903-1995)

Narratives of the practice of folk music collecting are often captivated and even moulded by the personalities of individual collectors – most often male collectors – such as Alan Lomax or Séamus Ennis (see also). Though these male agents have dominated the storytelling to date, the contribution of women collectors is nonetheless present in archives and needs further investigation. As we find new opportunities to engage the legacies of women collectors, our understanding of the practice of music collecting as it occurred throughout the world, and of the music it documents, is enriched greatly. It is a restorative act – for the women themselves, the communities with whom they collaborated to document music, the source material they generated together, and the music itself.

Sidney Robertson Cowell was a pioneer in the field of folk music collecting for a number of key reasons: the breadth of cultural milieux with which she engaged; her methodology informed by a distinct independence of mind and spirit and a sustained commitment to ethical practices; and her voluminous and vivid writings full of reflexivity and insight into her fieldwork. Some of her work was published in articles and a handful of albums for Folkways Records, and it has been analyzed and contextualized via lectures and online presentations produced at the Library of Congress and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Much of her collecting focused on song and she had a special interest in melismatic singing that, in Ireland, drew her to sean-nós song in particular. The pièce-de-resistance of her Irish collection is her rich documentation in writing and recordings of the Irish practice of lamentation, caoineadh or keening.

I had a fine time in Ireland and hope to return there this summer. No electricity – two wheeled carts and jaunting cars, bicycles, and barrows. No cars on the islands. Daily rain; peat fires; hot water bottles. I went fishing in the tiny curraghs, and came away with 4 lobsters as a parting gift – all alive. […] You should have seen me in fishermen’s boots and sweater on a bicycle on Aranmore!

Sample photographs and recordings

Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6

I produced the Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6 with the help of a month-long Visiting Fellowship at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies at NUI Galway in 2018. The catalogue details metadata associated with original, duplicate, and missing audio recordings that span five archives in three countries. In so doing, it provides an innovative model for linking a wealth of metadata with relevant archival material in multiple institutions. This initiative encourages current and future inter-institutional collaboration as each institution expands their digital content provision. Ultimately, it can facilitate the development of music resources that are imaginative, comprehensive, historically accurate, culturally relevant, user-friendly, scalable, and transferable.

The Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6 includes references to recordings known to have been made but that are now missing, recordings mentioned in field diaries. Including such missing items in the catalogue provides a more accurate reflection of the extent of the recording effort and may help to identify tapes uncovered in the future. Performances on the missing tapes include: Seán Choilm Mac Donnchadha and his sons Cóilí and Micheál of An Aird Thoir, Carna, and Colm Ó Caoidheáin of Glinsce singing in August 1956; and John Beag Johnny Ó Dioráin’s potential performance of Casadh an tSúgáin that same month.

The catalogue also identifies original recordings and duplicates held in multiple institutions, a distinction that can help direct reproduction requests promptly and guide the generation of new resources in future. It appears that Sidney’s original 1955 tapes were sent to Folkways Records and are now held by the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. The 1956 originals are likely to have gone to Folkways too; the relevant tracks span the Ralph Rinzler Archives and the Library of Congress, with much primary duplication occurring in one institution or the other.

The holdings of the BBC represent primary duplicates of a selection of tracks from the 1955 recordings. Each chosen by Séamus Ennis, these duplicates were made during the period when the BBC held the original tapes for safe-keeping while Sidney rejoined Henry on his European tour of Summer 1955. To maximise discoverability, the reference numbers used by the British Library Sound Archive to manage access to their secondary duplicates of the BBC holdings are also distinguished along with the tracks published on Songs of Aran. The holdings of Ireland’s National Folklore Collection most likely represent bootlegs drawn from the album Songs of Aran. Finally, the Notes field of the catalogue contains additional contextual information drawn from archival materials and my analysis of the entire collection.

The catalogue is made available on this webpage in multiple digital formats, under a CC-BY license.

1. Excel file (click to download)
2. CSV file (click to download)
3. Linked data
   1. A visualisation of the information in a ‘tree’ structure, which links to
   2. Full Catalogue, presented as a linked alphabetical index
   3. Turtle file of the data in the catalogue (click to download)

It is also available from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections at the Smithsonian Institute.

How to Reference the Catalogue

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile. Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6. Digital catalogue in .csv and SKOS formats, Irish Traditional Music Archive, 2021, https://www.itma.ie/blog/sidney-robertson-cowell.

Women Collectors

Online Presentations on Sidney Robertson Cowell

Catherine Hiebert Kerst. California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell. W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection (AFC 1940/001), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Nicole Saylor. “Folk Music of Wisconsin 1937.” Website featuring a web page highlighting the ethnographic fieldwork of Sidney Robertson Cowell (1903-1995) in Wisconsin. Mills Music Library’s Helene Stratman-Thomas project, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004), http://csumc.wisc.edu/src/collector.htm.

Articles on Sidney Robertson Cowell

Sheryl Kaskowitz. “Government Song Women: The forgotten folk collectors of the New Deal.” Humanities 41, no. 2 (Spring 2020).

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile. “In Search of America: Sidney Robertson Cowell in Ireland in 1955-56.” Journal of American Folklore, 126, no. 500 (Spring 2013): 174–200.

Radio Documentary: The Banshee and The Tiger

Produced by Claire Cunningham of Rockfinch Productions and presented by pianist Guy Livingston, The Banshee and The Tiger focuses on the life and music of Henry Cowell, and includes discussion of Sidney Robertson Cowell and their time in Ireland in the mid-1950s. It also shares recordings of performers from the Aran Islands made by Henry in New York in 1934 and by Sidney in Aran in 1955 and 1956. This radio documentary was first broadcast on RTÉ Lyric FM’s The Lyric Feature on 25 January 2018 and won a Bronze Medal in the Music Category at the International New York Festivals Radio Awards in 2018.

Notes

Her first name, Sidney, is used here instead of the surname Cowell to avoid confusion with her husband and because the discussion spans her professional life during which she was known by two names – Sidney Robertson and Sidney Robertson Cowell.

The terms ‘folk music collector’ and ‘ethnomusicologist’ have been used to describe Sidney’s work, though she herself eschewed the term ‘ethnomusicologist’ to distinguish herself from those working within academic institutions. She is often called an ‘ethnographer’ to reflect the comprehensive scope of her descriptions and the remarkable detail and fluidity of her writing.

Credit

Written & researched by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, April 2021

How to Cite Webpage

Ní Chonghaile, Deirdre. Sidney Robertson Cowell records in the Aran Islands and Conamara, 1955-56, Irish Traditional Music Archive, 2021, https://www.itma.ie/blog/sidney-robertson-cowell.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments section in my book shares the names of all those whose generous assistance enabled the research. Here I thank those who directly aided the work on the catalogue and this webpage: Treasa Harkin, Rónán Galvin, ITMA; Alma Ní Bhroin; Katie Ortiz; Max Smith; Scott B. Spencer; John Moulden; James P. Leary; Jim Hardin, Margaret Kruesi, Kelly Revak, Todd Harvey & Paul Sommerfeld, Library of Congress;

Jeff Place, Stephanie Smith & Cecilia Peterson, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage; Patrick Egan; Nicola Stathers; and the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies for hosting work on the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings Catalogue in 2018.

Permissions

Sidney Robertson Cowell and Henry Cowell archival material reproduced by kind permission of the David and Sylvia Teitelbaum Fund, Inc.

Photograph of Jean Ritchie and George Pickow in Aran in 1952, reproduced by kind permission of Dáibhí Ó Cróinín.

Works Consulted

Ainm.ie, National Irish-language Biographies Database, https://www.ainm.ie/

Henry Cowell Papers, JPB 00-03, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/muscowel.pdf

Jean Ritchie and George Pickow Collection, AFC 2008/005, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af016008

Moses and Frances Asch Collection, 1926-1986, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., digitized collection: https://sova.si.edu/record/CFCH.ASCH

Sidney Robertson Cowell Collections at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

American Folklife Center

AFC 1959/004, Sidney Robertson Cowell Irish Sound Recording Collection; see “Finding Aids to Ireland and Northern Ireland Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture” https://www.loc.gov/folklife/guides/Ireland.html

AFC 1940/001, W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection https://www.loc.gov/collections/sidney-robertson-cowell-northern-california-folk-music/about-this-collection/

Music Division

ML31 .C78, Sidney Robertson Cowell collection, 1901-1992
Online guide https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu010010
PDF guide https://findingaids.loc.gov/exist_collections/ead3pdf/music/2010/mu010010.pdf

Breathnach, Diarmuid and Máire Ní Mhurchú, Beathaisnéis a Dó 1882-1982 (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar, 1990), 31-32.

Carolan, Nicholas. “American Women Collectors in 1950s Ireland.” Lecture presented at the Inishowen International Folk Song & Ballad Seminar, Ballyliffin, Co. Donegal, March 18, 2011.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson. “The Recording of Folk Music in California.” California Folklore Quarterly 1, no.1 (January 1942): 7-23.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson. “Old Harp Singing.” In Old Harp Singing by the Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, edited by Moses Asch, 1-5. Folkways FW02356, 1951.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson, ed. Songs from Cape Breton Island. Ethnic Folkways Library FE4450, 1955.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson, ed. Wolf River Songs. Monograph Series of the Ethnic Folkways Library FE4001, 1956.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson, ed. Songs of Aran. Ethnic Folkways Library FE4002, 1957; Ossian OSS16, 1989.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson. “Henry Cowell and Ireland.” Memorandum, Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Collections, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 1977.

Cowell, Sidney [Robertson]. “The Cowells and the Written Word.” In A Celebration of American Music Words and Music in Honor of Wiley Hitchcock, edited by Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, and Carol J. Oja, 79-91. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1989.

Day, Sara and others, eds. American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States. Washington D.C.: The Library of Congress in cooperation with the University Press of New England, 2001 (A companion American Women website was released in June 2003 on the Library’s American Memory site at http://memory.loc.gov.).

Filene, Benjamin. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Graves, Alfred Perceval. “Mrs C[harlotte]. Milligan Fox.” Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society 3 (original volume 16) (1919 (1967)): xi-xii.

Hardin, James. ‘‘How Can I Keep From Singing? Seeger Family Honored at Library of Congress Tribute.” Information Bulletin Library of Congress 66, no.4 (April 2007), http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0704/seeger.html (accessed 8 September 2009).

Johnston, Sheila Turner. Alice: A Life of Alice Milligan. Omagh, Co. Tyrone: Colourpoint Press, 1994. p.113.

Kaskowitz, Sheryl. “Delight in What it is to be an American: Sidney Robertson on the Road, 1935 to 1937.” Lecture presented at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, November 3, 2016,  https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-7736/

Kaskowitz, Sheryl. “Government Song Women: The forgotten folk collectors of the New Deal.” Humanities 41, no. 2 (Spring 2020), accessed June 12, 2020, https://www.neh.gov/article/government-song-women.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert, ed. “Cataloging Folk Music: A Letter from Sidney Robertson Cowell.” Folklife Center News (Fall 1989): 10-11.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Sidney Robertson Cowell and the WPA California Folk Music Project.” Sonneck Society Bulletin 20, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 5-9.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “New Deal Woman: Sidney Robertson Cowell and the WPA California Folk Music Project.” Lecture presented at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., March 5, 1997a.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “The Ethnographic Experience: Sidney Robertson Cowell in Northern California.” Library of Congress American Memory Project, online presentation, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 1997b, accessed October 25, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/collections/sidney-robertson-cowell-northern-california-folk-music/articles-and-essays/the-ethnographic-experience-sidney-robertson-cowell-in-northern-california/.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Outsinging the Gas Tank: Sidney Robertson Cowell and the California Folk Music Project.” Folklife Center News 20, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 6-12, accessed October 25, 2019, http://www.loc.gov/folklife/news/pdf/FCNxx1.pdf.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “A ‘Government Song Lady’ in Pursuit of Folksong: Sidney Robertson’s New Deal Field Documentation for the Resettlement Administration.” Paper presented at the American Folklore Society meeting, Quebec City, Québec, October 18, 2007.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Return to the Appalachians: Maud Karpeles and Sidney Robertson Cowell Retrace the Steps of Cecil Sharp.” Paper presented at the American Folklore Society meeting, Long Beach, California, October 17, 2015.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Sidney Robertson Cowell and the WPA California Folk Music Project, 1938-40.” Lecture presented at the Library of Congress, May 9, 2017a, accessed October 25, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-7963.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Return to the Appalachians: Maud Karpeles and Sidney Robertson Cowell Retrace the Steps of Cecil Sharp.” Paper presented at the International Council of Traditional Music conference, University of Limerick, July 14, 2017b.

Kerst, Catherine Hiebert. “Collecting Songs in an Era of Suspicion: Sidney Robertson Cowell Documents the Musical Culture of Many “Foreign” Groups in New Deal California.” Paper presented at the American Folklore Society meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 21, 2017c.

Leary, James P. The Mid-West: A Surprising Vitality. Unpublished paper, n.d.

Mac Con Iomaire, Liam. “Deora Aille – Máire Áine Ní Dhonnchadha agus a cuid amhrán,” In Léachtaí Cholm Cille: Foinn & Fonnadóirí XXIX, ed. Ruairí Ó hUiginn, 7-36. Maigh Nuad: An Sagart, 1999.

McCarthy, William. “Evelyn Kendrick Wells.” In Bridging the cultural divide: our common ballad heritage, ed. Sigrid Rieuwerts and Helga Stein, 265-272. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000.

Milligan, Alice. “Mrs C[harlotte]. Milligan Fox.” Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society 3 (original volume 16) (1919 (1967)): vii-xi.

Moreddu, Camille. “The impact of Sidney Robertson’s musical formation in her collecting methods and her definition of American folk music.” Paper presented at the International Council of Traditional Music international conference, University of Limerick, July 14, 2017.

Ní Chonghaile, Deirdre. “Séamus Ennis, W. R. Rodgers and Sidney Robertson Cowell on the traditional music of the Aran Islands.” In Anáil an Bhéil Bheo: Orality and Modern Irish Culture, edited by Nessa Cronin, Seán Crosson, and John Eastlake, 67-86. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Ní Chonghaile, Deirdre. “‘In Search of America: Sidney Robertson Cowell in Ireland in 1955-56.” Journal of American Folklore, 126, no. 500 (Spring 2013): 174–200.

Ní Chonghaile, Deirdre. Catalogue of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Ireland Recordings 1955-6, digital catalogue in .csv and SKOS formats, Irish Traditional Music Archive, 2021, accessed June 2, 2021, https://www.itma.ie/blog/sidney-robertson-cowell.

Ní Mhunghaile, Lesa. “‘To open treasures so long locked up’: aidhmeanna agus cur chuige Charlotte Brooke ina saothar Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789).” In Léachtaí Cholm Cille XL: Foinn agus Focail, ed. Ruairí Ó hUiginn, 47-62. Maigh Nuad: An Sagart, 2010.

Ó Drisceoil, Proinsias. Áine Ní Fhoghlú (1880-1932) mar bhailitheoir amhrán sna Déise. Unpublished paper presented at Comhdháil ar Litríocht agus Cultúr na Gaeilge, Scoil na Gaeilge, Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh, 18 October 2008.

O’Sullivan, Donal. “The Irish Folk Song Society,” in Music in Ireland: a symposium, ed. Aloys Fleischmann, 296. Cork: Cork University Press, 1952b.

Patterson, Michelle Wick. “Looking for America.” The Journal of Music 2, no.2 (June/July 2010): 24-28.

Rahkonen, Carl. The Real Song Catchers: American Women Pioneers of Ethnomusicology. Unpublished paper presented at the Women in Music Roundtable at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Austin, Texas, 14 February 2003.

Saylor, Nicole. “Folk Music of Wisconsin 1937.” Website featuring a web page highlighting the ethnographic fieldwork of Sidney Robertson Cowell (1903-1995) in Wisconsin. Mills Music Library’s Helene Stratman-Thomas project, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004), https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AWiscFolkSong

Spencer, Scott B. ed. The Ballad Collectors of North America: How Gathering Folksongs Transformed Academic Thought and American Identity. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012.

uí Ógáin, Ríonach. “Is í an fhilíocht anam an cheoil: Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, Amhránaí Roisín na Mainiach,” in Bliainiris 2, ed. Liam Mac Cóil and Ruairí Ó hUiginn (Ráth Chairn, Co. na Mí: Carbad, 2002), 84-107.