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The flower of Dunaff Hill : and more traditional songs sung in Inishowen / compiled and annotated by Jimmy McBride

Foreword — The songs — The singers — The photographs — Another man’s wedding — As I roved out — Ballintown Brae — The Banks of Newfoundland — The Banks of Sweet Dundee — The Bay of Biscay O — The Bedford Van — The Black Horse — The Blackwater Side — I’m Bidding Adieu — The Blind Beggar’s Daughter — The Bonnie Green Tree — Burnfoot Town — Cailin Deas Cruite na mBo — Captain Colster — Charming Buachaill Roe — The Coalmine — Cottage with the Horseshoe O’er the Door — Dan Curley — Darling Son — Deep Sheephaven Bay — Duggan’s Dancing School — The Evergreen — Erin’s Lovely Home — Erin’s Lovely Shore — Fair Randalstown — The Fair Town of Greenock — Paisley Officer * — Father McFadden — Father Tom O’Neill — The Flower of Corby’s Mill — The Flower of Dunaff Hill — The Flower of Sweet Strabane –Friar Hegarty — Garvagh Town — General Owen Roe — Glenswilly — Going to Mass Last Sunday — Green Grass it Grows Bonnie — The Hiring Fair — The Holland Handkerchief — The Isle of Doagh (1) — The Isle of Doagh (2) — Jimmy Leeburn — Johnny Bathin — Kathleen Casey — The Leinster Lass — The Lady Fair — A Little Too Small — London City — Loughrey’s Bull — My Lovely Irish Rose — The Lurgy Stream — The Maid of Bonnie Strathyre — McGinty’s Model Lodge — Bulroy Bay — November Keady Fair — Paddy Stole the Rope — The Rangey Ribs — The Rattling Railway Boy — The Sailor Boy — The Rose of Glenfin — The Shamrock Shore — She Tickled Me — The Shirt I Left Behind — The Smashing of the Van — The Sow Pig — The Titanic — Treat My Daughter Kindly — Welcome Home — The Wee Woman in Our Town — The Year of Seventy One — Bibliography

Currently viewing

My parents reared me tenderly / Jim MacFarland and Jimmy McBride

The bonnie labouring boy — John Reilly the fisherman — The girl I left behind — Erin’s lovely home — My parents reared me tenderly — False lover John — My charming blue eyed Mary — The maid of Culmore — The girl from Glenagivney — The jacket so blue — The shifting apron — The old reserves — The rose of Glenfin — Bold Sean and the tinker — The blazing star of Drung — Erin is my home — The bright silvery light of the moon — The green fields of Americay — Nora Lynch — Derry Jail — Ballyliffin Town — Falkirk Fair — Sweet Isle of Doagh — The green fields of Annagh — The collier lad — The Cloontagh boys — The shamrock shore — Moville — The next market day — Pat O’Donnell, the son of old Grainne — Pat O’Donnell, Newgate’s dreary prison — Caoineadh ‘n Dalaigh — O’Donnell’s lament — Everyone does it but you — The mincer — The Burnfoot young policeman — The pride of Moville Town — Plearaca na bPollan — The jolly smuggler — The courting coat — My bonnie Irish boy — The Free State farmer — The Buncrana Train — The bonnet so blue — A lament to the Fanad boys — Caroline of Edinburgh Town — Dinsmur of Bonniewood Hall — The Illies still — The Shandrum still — The cool winding banks of the Ayr — The rusty mare — The three O’Donnells — Ceol na dtrí n-Dálach — The royal rats of Carn — Dark Inishowen — The Mary Snow — The high walls of Derry — The wreck of the Cambria — Carndonagh far away

Uilleann piping was a relatively niche pastime in Ireland of the 1970s and, by and large, men more than women, played the instrument. However, as children learning the pipes back then from Mícheál Ó Riabhaigh in the Cork Pipers’ Club, we had no awareness of these statistics. It seemed to us all, both boys and girls, to be the easiest thing in the world to acquire a practice set and get started. Mícheál made sure that anyone who showed an interest was given every opportunity and encouragement to play. Of the eleven musicians in the above photograph, seven were pipers, four of them females: Mary Mitchell, Rosaleen O’Leary, Mary McCarthy and me. The male pipers were Mícheál himself, his son Eoin and my brother Conal, who played for a few years and would have been a fine piper had he not eventually opted for the flute.

The group of young musicians, seen above with Mícheál in 1975, were on a celebratory day out in Killarney when fiddle player and photographer, Domhnall Ó Máirtín, got us to pose with our instruments. We had just won the Ceol na nUasal category of the All Ireland Slógadh finals for the third year in a row and Mícheál was very proud of our achievement. A lot of time and effort had gone into practising for each round of the competition. Our main piece that year was The Fox Chase, with all the sounds of the hunt, barking dogs, galloping horses, horns, bugles and the crying and lament of the poor fox. To mark our victory, the club commissioned a silver medallion from the well-known Cork silversmith, Fred Archer, and presented one to each member of the group.

Looking at this photograph, taken so many years ago in glorious sunshine and with the flowering glory of the Muckross Park rhododendrons in full bloom, I realised with a start that Mícheál Ó Riabhaigh died just one year later in 1976, beannacht Dé lena anam uasal. His unexpected death was a sad blow to all of us who had grown up learning music from him at our Saturday night session. The Cork Pipers’ Club struggled to continue its activities without Mícheál’s guiding passion and commitment, though it did get back on its feet some years later.

Despite its title, the Cork Pipers’ Club was home to traditional musicians of all shades. The weekly Saturday night session in Dún Laoi on Cork’s North Mall was always a hive of musical activity, with pipes, mandolins, whistles, button accordions, piano accordions, bodhráns and fiddles in the mix. This weekly gathering was the centre of our musical lives and all generations met up and played, sang and danced together there.

Certain families had a strong presence and the mammies and daddies were as active as their children in club activities; Ó Riabhaighs, Ó Grádas, Mitchells, McCarthys, Ó Cathasaighs, O’Learys, Guinevans, Ryans and Twomeys. This was probably a factor in why the club was so good at organising excursions, outings and parties, like the one to Killarney mentioned above. One of our most enjoyable club trips was to Captain Francis O’Neill’s birthplace in Tralibawn each summer. We held a concert on a lorry in the middle of a field and it seemed to go on forever because everyone and anyone who wanted the gig got it! Afterwards we would repair to nearby Bantry town, where we would have a meal and a night of music.

I would like to thank Deirdre Ó Máirtín for kindly permitting the use of her father’s photograph for this blog. The above image is taken from Domhnall’s fascinating photographic record of Cork’s musical life in the 60s, 70s and 80s and which the Ó Máirtín family has generously bequeathed to the Irish Traditional Music Archive. It captures a proud moment for Mícheál Ó Riabhaigh, Chairman of the Cork Pipers’ Club, and for all of us lucky enough to have known him and to have benefitted from his great generosity.

The Domhnall Ó Máirtín Collection at ITMA contains 335 black and white, and colour photographs of Irish traditional musicians taken in Cork 1960s–1980s by the late Domhnall Ó Máirtín. The Collection has been generously donated to ITMA by the Ó Máirtín family.

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Terry Rafferty was born in New York in 1934. She was introduced to Irish traditional music when she met her late husband, Mike Rafferty on New Year’s Eve 1951 in Purchase, New York.

They began dating and Mike brought her along to her first music session. They took a train and a bus out to Pat Murphy’s house in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Her first session lasted two days. She fell in love with Mike and the music.

They were married 10 months later, had five children and were together for 59 years until Mike’s death in 2011.

Mike and Terry Rafferty

“Terry found another family in the Irish culture and immersed herself completely.”

Mary Rafferty

She began having sessions at the house and annual New Year’s Eve sessions. They bought a reel-to-reel recorder and recorded all of the house sessions over the years. Another invaluable collection.

1980 was when Terry bought her first video camera. It was heavy and cumbersome, but she persevered and recorded every musician she came across in Ireland and the USA. Pub sessions, festivals, Fleadh Cheoils, house parties, concerts, weddings, funerals – no stopping her, even though it involved holding a heavy camera for hours on end. I remember as a teenager, I wasn’t exactly happy about a video being done, but I couldn’t be more proud and happy that she did what she did back then.

She eventually moved on to a smaller camera and the process of digitalising that collection hasn’t even started yet. Her entire video collection ranges from 1980 until 2010.

Terry & Mike joined the Michael Coleman CCE Club in the Bronx in the 1980’s. She then became the Mid Atlantic Regional Fleadh Secretary in 1989 and she is still currently doing it …

In 1993, she started a CCE branch in New Jersey and called it after Mike Rafferty.

Mary Rafferty, June 2022

View the Terry Rafferty Video Collection here

Mary Rafferty, accordion; Mike Rafferty, flute / Unidentified photographer. New Jersey, 1980s - 1990s. Image courtesy Rafferty family

“From the Bridge: a view of Irish traditional music in New York” is a major digital exhibition from ITMA celebrating New York’s unique and enduring relationship with Irish traditional music. Supported by the Government of Ireland – Emigration Support Programme, it was launched in ITMA on 29 June 2022.

Enjoy a short video on the exhibition launch.

Visit the free online exhibition here

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I knew of Liam O’Flynn before I ever met him, of course. As a young boy in the early 1970s starting to play a few tunes on tin whistle, Mo Cheol Thú and The Long Note on RTÉ Radio 1 were very important in the weekly schedule. Mo Cheol Thú was often listened to in my parents’ bedroom, us children huddling in and Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s soft tones easing us all into a Sunday morning. I have a memory of hearing the clean, clear lines of O’Flynn’s piping on the programme – naturally, I could not have described back then the majesty of his uncluttered flow and the purity of his tone – but his piping did make some sort of impression on that young boy.

Séamus Ennis; LP Cover Seoda Ceoil 2; Na Filí. Source: ITMA Image Collection

I started playing cello when I was seven or eight, and at eleven I got a practice set of pipes and duly phoned the uncle Tomás in Cork to ask where I might go for lessons. He gave me an address for Francie McPeake, “Middle Francie”, as he was known, and there I went for lessons every week for a few years. I was mad keen on pipes by now, absorbing as much as I could, listening and learning at every opportunity.

“Planxty was on the go and Liam’s music haunted and enthralled and moved me mightily. I remember Monday evenings sitting with my father in the kitchen listening to The Long Note and both of us in awe whenever Liam would be on – 'The Humours of Ballyloughlin', 'Johnny Cope', a host of vibrant reels, plangent airs, masterful hornpipes … the bar was set high.”

Neil Martin, 2022

lanxty Promotional Image. Source: ITMA Image Collection

In August 1976, having competed successfully in the Ulster Fleadh the previous month, I got the chance to attend the Scoil Éigse in Buncrana, Co. Donegal and the uilleann pipe teacher was none other than my hero, Liam O’Flynn. It was a life-changing week…we all – and I remember others in the class included Máire Ní Ghráda, Marion McCarthy and Patrick Mollard – learned tunes and technique, but also in my own regard, Liam convinced me to change how I was holding the chanter with my upper hand – he indicated that as things were, there would be problems further down the road, that I was limiting myself technically. I was using the tips of the fingers on my left hand rather than the “flats” of the fingers. This trait I inherited from Francie McPeake, he in turn having picked this up from his own father who, before taking up pipes had played flute and fife, where tips of the fingers would have worked fine. I spent the best part of the next year re-educating my left hand and incorporating into my playing what I had gleaned from Liam that transformative week.

Source: The Liam O'Flynn Collection ITMA

Apart from attending his concerts whenever I could, including various performances of The Brendan Voyage – and indeed one in Derry in which I was a cellist in the orchestra – the next time I saw Liam was in Dublin in 1988, in Slattery’s of Capel Street. Alongside Seán Corcoran and Dessie Wilkinson I was performing there in Cran and playing a good deal of cello as well as pipes. I remember being on stage and seeing Liam at the back of the room, that mixture of surprise, pleasure and trepidation coursing through my veins.

One afternoon a few months later, the phone rang and it was Liam on the other end, asking if we might meet up as he was thinking of starting a group and wondered if I’d be interested in joining him – he wanted to bring cello into his musical world and was keen to see where that might lead. You can imagine my sheer glee and excitement. We met up in Dundalk and agreed that we would give it a go and there began thirty years of friendship and collaboration.

Soon thereafter, Arty McGlynn and Nollaig Casey came onboard and the four of us toured occasionally together over the next few years. One of the first gigs was at a festival in France, performing to two thousand people in the grounds of a chateau. We played ‘Táimse im’ Chodladh’ that night – to be there in that setting, playing that piece, in that company – the memory still gives me goosebumps.

Liam and I continued to perform on and off during the 90s in various set-ups, occasional gigs, the odd skite into Europe, trips into studios (notably making the album The Fire Aflame in Ballyvourney in 1991) and of course some social gatherings too, with a goodly dollop of rascality and diversion thrown into the mix.

The Wheels of the World, reel; The Pinch of Snuff, reel; Micho Russell’s Reel. From: The Fire Aflame / Seán Keane; Matt Molloy; Liam O’Flynn (Claddagh Records, 1992)

The wheels of the world, reel ; The pinch of snuff, reel ; Micho Russell's reel / Seán Keane, fiddle ; Matt Molloy, flute ; Liam O'Flynn, uilleann pipes

The Planxty reunion in the early years of the new millennium was very important to Liam – after all, it was with that magical combination of himself, Christy, Donal and Andy that his life as a professional musician began in the early 1970s. Liam, like his father, had been a schoolteacher and it was no small gamble for him to leave that secure world behind and to head out into the great unknown. So when Planxty reformed for those few years, the sense of coming full circle was of considerable comfort and joy. Their concerts sold out everywhere, generations of adoring fans flocking in their droves to catch them. I was too young to have managed to see Planxty perform in their initial years, so getting the chance to see them live in 2002 carried with it something of history being recreated. They did a long run of gigs in Vicar Street and I remember phoning Liam as I drove into Dublin, asking him if ‘Little Musgrave’ was on the setlist – it was, and at one level, my life was now complete.

“That night, as every night, the anticipation and buzz before curtain-up was palpable and the subsequent electrical charge that shot around the pumped and primed audience as Liam shifted gear from 'The Raggle Taggle Gypsy' into 'Tabhair Dom Do Lámh' could have powered the national grid for a month.”

Neil Martin, 2022

We got to co-operate at a different level in 2004 when I was commissioned to write a large-scale orchestral piece for Liam, ‘No Tongue Can Tell’, a work that opened the Belfast Festival at Queens. That marked a deepening of our relationship on both a professional and a personal level – collaborating at every stage during the composition of a substantial work specifically for him, writing to his strengths to acknowledge his music that I knew so well, but also writing in other ways to push the parameters and challenge us both. We became interdependent over the work’s creation and the trust and bond between us strengthened. A fascinating time that really was and I’m sorry we didn’t get to perform the work more often.

No Tongue Can Tell. Fourth movement. Sheltering Sound / Neil Martin, composer; Liam O’Flynn, uilleann pipes; Ulster Orchestra, instrumental music

No tongue can tell. Fourth movement. Sheltering sound / Liam O'Flynn, uilleann pipers ; Ulster Orchestra, instrumental music ; Neil Martin, composer

Music finds outlets in various ways, and across 2008–9, a number of us found ourselves playing within a short enough timeframe at the funerals of some close friends and family – David Hammond, Liam’s father and Ciarán MacMathúna. We enjoyed, if one can say that, celebrating the lives of those wonderful people through music and decided that there should also be a few outings outside of funerals. We nonetheless and rather wonderfully called ourselves The Funeral Band and had a few most enjoyable gigs. In that posse were Seán Keane, Shaun Davey, Rita Connolly, Arty McGlynn, Noel Eccles, Rod McVey, Seamus Begley, Liam and myself – and Steve Cooney and Dónal Lunny sat in a few times too.

And then there was the quare trip Liam and I, inter alia, made to Romania in the summer of 2009. It was the premiere of a new work by Shaun Davey, Voices from the Merry Cemetery. The overnight train journey from Bucharest up through and over the Carpathian Mountains and almost as far as the Ukrainian border was quite something, the performances themselves unforgettable. We also laughed a great deal on that trip, the exhilaration and enjoyment of it all. But I knew that Liam was hating travel by then – it had become a necessary evil. He’d seen enough of airports and hotels.

Liam O'Flynn and Seamus Heaney. Source: The Liam O'Flynn Collection at ITMA

We had a close mutual friend in Seamus Heaney, Liam and himself of course performing together over more than two decades as The Poet and The Piper. They were two men very much at ease with each other, both on and off the stage, two masters respecting and delighting in each other’s craft, two outstanding artists, volleying on a stage. Seamus’s sudden death in 2013 set the world reeling and Liam and I were to play at his funeral. I travelled the day before to Liam’s home near Athy to rehearse, and as we sat in his music room, we played music for almost an hour without speaking a single word. No words. Just music. That was enough. Liam had lost a very dear friend and a lot of the music we were rehearsing he’d played a mere ten days earlier when Seamus and himself had shared a stage in Derry. The power and emotion of music were never stronger for me than in that rehearsal and at the funeral the next day.

Not long after Seamus’s funeral, Liam was asked to bring together a group to perform a concert in the Abbey Theatre for ITMA, the essential and glorious archive of traditional music in Dublin. The other three he asked were Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Paddy Glackin and myself, and after the pleasure of the Abbey gig, we gave some more concerts and the more we played, the more we enjoyed the whole experience. We had all inter-collaborated in different ways over many years, knew each other well and it was nothing other than a great pleasure to be sitting making fine music together. The last concert this all too short-lived quartet played was in November 2016 in Armagh, in the cathedral there. Liam was not himself backstage … he was very subdued and his weight loss was most noticeable. Paddy and I shared our anxieties and sadly within a few months, his terminal illness had been diagnosed. And shockingly, around the same time, Mícheál became gravely ill too.

Taisce 2013: Liam O'Flynn, Paddy Glackin, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and Neil Martin / Source: ITMA Field Recording Collection

Liam bravely faced into his illness in the full knowledge that there was no road back, and when I visited him at home, he talked a number of times about his childhood days and how happy they were. Liam’s father, also Liam, was from Kerry and the O’Flynn family would often head there for a summer break. Liam’s father drove a motor-bike and this was their mode of transport on those trips back west – Liam senior up front, his wife Masie riding pillion, and in the side car Liam and his siblings, Maureen and Mícheál. An essential stop on the way there was at Gleann na nGealt (The Glen of the Mad People), a magnificent and expansive glen out towards Dingle. There, Liam senior would recount the local lore and myth of the place, of the healing powers of the water and the watercress in the glen, and young Liam found this mesmerising. As Liam then in his illness recounted this to me, his eyes were dancing with happiness and delight at the memory. The very finest and happiest of days, he would say.

I wanted to write a piece of music for Liam at that time, not to write something afterwards to mark his death as such, but rather to celebrate him in life, and I felt it essential that he got to hear it. So, armed with the image of a young Liam stepping out of the side car, standing there in his short grey-flannels, agape at the beauty and power of Gleann na nGealt, I wrote ‘The Boy in the Glen’. I composed it with Paddy Glackin in mind to play it and one Sunday a few months before he died, we visited Liam and his wife Jane and Paddy played the air over a few times for Liam. Sadly, his health deteriorated sharply not long after that and I only got to see Liam again a few times before he died.

“A deeply-cherished memory, that Sunday afternoon. I listen to the phone recording of the piece from time to time, and so enjoy hearing Liam’s voice, just two words to Paddy at the very end - “good man”.”

Neil Martin, 2022

Liam died on 14th March 2018 – and Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin on 7th November. As Paddy Glackin said to me – “half our quartet died this year”

The Boy in the Glen, air / composed by Neil Martin ; West Ocean String Quartet, instrumental music

The boy in the Glen, air / West Ocean String Quartet, instrumental music ; composed by Neil Martin

“In all of this performing and touring across our thirty years, I never once stopped marvelling at Liam’s artistry, his vision, his craft. Being beside him on a stage was a privilege beyond words, sitting often to his left, drinking in that music, being transported time after time after time.”

Neil Martin, 2022

There was an aura, a forcefield to his music, the piping of Leo Rowsome, Wille Clancy and Seamus Ennis funnelled down through him and out to us. He was influenced by fiddle players and singers and flute players too, and indeed by any musician who moved him. And his passions didn’t lie solely within traditional music either – he enjoyed Bach and Haydn and Vivaldi and Elgar and a whole broad cross-section of genres.

He loved horses all his life and was a most able rider – Jane and himself kept a beautiful yard with some very fine mounts indeed. In his day, Liam was a great steady golfer to boot, a low single-handicapper at one stage. (Himself, Paddy Glackin, David Brophy and I had a most wonderful four-ball at Rosses Point in 2015 – it took us days to recover).

Liam was of a curious nature and read widely, often winnowing what he read into short quotes that he would write on cards and place in his music room, condensed reminders that would offer a way to consider certain things afresh. He took his role in life seriously – he was always prepared and he took pride in his craft.

“He cared for the music he inherited and for the musicians that came before him and he never lost sight of the core of it all.”

Neil Martin, 2022

Like gazing up into a clear starlit winter sky, Liam’s music is boundless and in hundreds of years, people will still marvel at it. There was a consistency to it all, a great hallmark of O’Flynn’s that – consistency. The steady piper, the true friend, the golfer who could shoot three or four pars in a row, the reliable collaborator … always there. After Liam died, his occasional musical partner of more than thirty years, the organist Catherine Ennis, along with Paddy Glackin and myself, played some concerts and Liam’s presence was there still, on stage every time we played, his mark indelible on all three of us. Tragically, Catherine died on Christmas Eve, 2020.

My almost whole-life encounter with Liam, stretching out now over five decades, was deeply enriching at many and various levels and it significantly helped me shape my own way of going. I learned a great deal from the man about music itself, and also about the profession of music – about life, really. We shared many great times and I believe we made some decent music. I consider myself very fortunate to have been in his orbit.

“Teacher, treasured friend, generous collaborator, a guiding light and the very finest of company on and off the stage – mo sheacht mbeannacht leat, Willie Flynn, a chara na gcarad. Go dté tú slán, pé áit ina bhfuil tú.”

Neil Martin, 2022

Written by: Neil Martin

Blog Editor: Grace Toland

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First for some background. I am a student in Paris, studying both history (early medieval ages) and archival science in the École Nationale des Chartes. This internship is part of my studies, students must spend two months abroad during the first semester of their 4^th year. How did I find myself in ITMA? Above all, I wanted to do my internship in Ireland as I am writing a thesis on early medieval Ireland. Secondly, I have chosen Dublin because I wanted to meet one of my teachers in TCD (and because I really needed the library for the first reason). And thirdly, I have played the harp for 10 years as an amateur musician. In France we do not have a dedicated institution where music is solely archived. For a while now I have wanted to link my passion of history, archives, and music. So, if you mix all these reasons together, the result could only be ITMA. And I am really happy to have landed here!

Gwendoline’s ITMA office

So what do I do in this gorgeous Georgian building every day? My main task is to describe, catalogue and organise the Irish music manuscripts in the Derek Bell Collection. During my first week in ITMA, I familiarised myself with this eccentric genius. I delved into the archives which had already been processed, listened to interviews given by him and to his music. I also catalogued and scanned the photographs in his collection. It was really nice to put a face to the name, and to really get a sense of his character, how he spoke and how he performed… everything that makes a simple name come alive. As I usually work with early medieval materials, it is a nice change to be able to see and hear the person you are researching.

Digitised material from the Derek Bell Collection

Once I had got a sense of who Derek Bell was, I was able to move on to processing the actual manuscripts. This work is a continuation of work done by Orla Dillon, a student from Maynooth University. (Read Orla’s blog here
for more information on Derek Bell and his collection.) Orla was dealing exclusively with Derek Bell’s classical compositions. My work concentrates on the traditional music manuscripts in Bell’s collection. Firstly, I had to separate music manuscripts relating to Derek Bell’s solo career and music relating to his time with The Chieftains. Sometimes it wasn’t clear how items should be categorised but help from ITMA head archivist Maeve Gebruers was always on hand. The sorting of scores meant that I needed to occupy two large tables in the ITMA Library and during this sorting process it was often hard for ITMA Assistant librarian Róisín Conlon to find me as I was hidden behind piles of music manuscripts!

Derek Bell’s traditional music manuscripts

After this first step, I began to describe and sort manuscripts relating to The Chieftains. What I love about this work is that you never quite know what you are going to find from one day to the next. Sometimes it’s film scores, other times it is untitled fragments of tunes which I can’t identify (in these cases I get help from Seán Potts on the third floor, he identifies the tune by playing it on his tin whistle – yes, this is the first time I’ve seen the tin whistle considered an essential piece of office equipment, and I completely love that!). When working on the Derek Bell Collection, everyday has its surprises: one day you find a score called “The dance of the little stout hippopotamus (in pink pyjamas)”, another day it is “The pig’s journey into a potato”, or you find stamps or drawings of animals… If any of you have an idea as to the origins of these titles, or who “Micky the muc” is, please let us know!

Various manuscripts from the Derek Bell Collection

Today, I am happy to announce that The Chieftains’ section of the music manuscripts in the Derek Bell Collection is sorted and catalogued: 621 excel lines and 2,390+ pages! This also means that approximately half of Bell’s traditional music manuscripts have been organised. I hope the second half of this collection will be sorted and catalogued in the last month (time goes so quickly!) of my internship here.

I would like to thank my new colleagues, especially my office companion Róisín Conlon for her invaluable help in deciphering Derek Bell’s sometimes illegible scrawls!

The Chieftains’ manuscripts in the Derek Bell Collection

by Gwendoline Lemaitre, October 2022

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gallery of images presented below for Heritage Week 2021 comes from the collection of Gráinne Yeats which was donated to ITMA by the Yeats Family in April 2018. Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013) was a professional harper, singer, teacher, arranger, historian and recorded artist. She left an extremely rich collection of printed books, music manuscripts, photographs, slides, lecture scripts, diaries, music arrangements (mostly for the Irish harp), research notes, ephemera, artefacts, and commercial & non-commercial sound recordings.Yeats’ image collection consists of photographs, both in colour and back & white, negatives and a large number of slides, amounting to just over 1,200 items in total. Gráinne’s life-long passion for the Irish harp is very much reflected in this collection. The collection covers a wide range of topics relating to the Irish harp and will be an invaluable resource to all students and enthusiasts of this wonderful instrument.

During a concert tour of Japan in the autumn of 1972 Gráinne and her husband Michael Yeats travelled by train to Fukui city which is located on the Japan Sea coast in the Chubu (central) region of Japan. There they visited the Aoyama harp factory and collected a nylon strung lever harp which had been made especially for Yeats. The gallery includes is a record of their trip to Aoyama on the 9 October 1972. This harp was one of a number of harps that Yeats performed on. It can be heard on the iconic recording published by Gael Linn in 1980 and re-issued in 1992 Féile na gCruitirí Bhéal Feirste 1792: the music collected by Bunting at the historic Belfast Harpers Festival 1792.
The gallery also looks back at the many harp festivals, concerts and events which Gráinne Yeats attended over the years. Below are just a small sample of the many images in the Yeats collection which focus on this aspect of her life. In the course of her career Yeats performed, tutored and lectured extensively in Ireland, Europe and abroad, including a number of tours of North America, Japan, Russia, India and Australia. She was a frequent attendee at international harping events, most notably the World Harp Congress which takes place every three years at different locations around the world. Yeats and Máire Ní Chathasaigh were the first Irish harpers to perform on the Irish harp at the 1993 World Harp Congress in Copenhagen. Some of the other events featured in the images below include: An Churit Chruiterachta, July 1992; ‘Festival for Irish Harp’, Downpatrick, Co. Down, 1988; The World Harp Festival, Belfast, May 1992; O’Carolan Harp Festival, Nobber, Co. Meath, 1992; and the World Harp Congress, Copenhagen, 1993.

Heritage Council Funding 2021

ITMA’s unique image collection now stands at over 21,700 items. Many of these exist in obsolete physical formats only which limits access to this material to those who can visit the ITMA premises in Merrion Square, Dublin. This year (2021) the Heritage Council has awarded ITMA a grant to digitise, preserve and make accessible, to archival best practice, some 4,500+ slides, negatives and photographs from the collections of two highly significant figures in Irish traditional music: Breandán Breathnach (1912-1985) & Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013).

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Nylon-strung harp made for Gráinne Yeats by Kenzo Aoyama of Japan in 1972 / [unidentified photographer]

Wire-strung harp made for Gráinne Yeats by Maldwyn Thomas of Wales in 1973 / [unidentified photographer]

Gut-strung harp made for Gráinne Yeats by Daniel Quinn of Dublin in 1967 / [unidentified photographer]

Wire-strung harp made for Gráinne Yeats by Jay Witcher of California in 1975 / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats with participants and tutors at Downpatrick harp weekend / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats and Mercedes Bolger / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats with harp at the World Harp Congress 1993 / [unidentified photographer]

O'Carolan Harp Festival 1992 / [unidentified photographer]

Aibhlín McCrann, Anne-Marie O'Farrell, Nollaig Casey, unidentified child, Máire Ní Chathasaigh and Helen Davies / [unidentified photographer]

Two wire-strung harps at Stone Circle, Co. Cork / [unidentified photographer]

Unfinished harps at the Aoyama harp workshop / [unidentified photographer]

Micheal Yeats at the Aoyama harp workshop / [unidentified photographer]

Unfinished harps at Aoyama harp workshop / [unidentified photographer]

Unfinished harps hanging in Aoyama harp workshop / [unidentified photographer]

Timber for harp making / [unidentified photographer]

[Kenzo] Aoyama, harp maker / [unidentified photographer]

Unidentified harp maker in Aoyama harp workshop / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats, Ann Heyman and Alison Kinnaird / unidentified photographer

Gráinne Yeats playing an Aoyama harp in Japanese Inn, Fukui / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats tuning harp / [unidentified photographer]

Gráinne Yeats seated at the Thomas harp / [unidentified photographer]

Young harpers at An Chuirt Chruitireachta 1992 / unidentified photographer

Gráinne Yeats seated at harp / [unidentified photographer]

Tony Kearns, Nutan, Colm Keating and Peter Laban have each spent many years taking photographs at the festival and are regular visitors to Miltown Malbay. As part of ITMA’s contribution to the virtual Willie Clancy Summer School for 2020 we published a selection of images from their collections. Also included in this gallery are images from Danny Diamond, Orla Henihan, Liam McNulty and Mal Whyte.