For those of you who are not familiar with the collection, you can read about Dr John Cullinane and his donation to ITMA here. Many people are excited about my appointment to this job (trust me – I am too!), most people ask me: What do you actually do there all day long? I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the experiences I’m having here at ITMA, and explain a bit about my role as a project cataloguer and the tasks involved with working on the CAC. But let me start from the beginning.

The very first day I was given an in-depth tour of the ITMA premises – I had been in ITMA before for different personal research projects, so was already familiar (and in love with!) the building and especially with all the media which has been made available to the public. It was nice to see “behind-the-scenes” and see how, and where ITMA’s wonderful treasures (records, books, CD’s etc.) are stored. On my first day I also had a chance to get myself acquainted with what John Cullinane had already donated to ITMA, and I braced myself for the collection of his 4th accrual (by the way – accrual was a new word for my vocabulary… I am learning new things every day!).

The next morning, battling the rain, Maeve Gebruers, head archivist at ITMA, and myself, headed down to Cork to meet with John in his personal office at the Music Department at University College Cork. I hadn’t seen John in a few years, so it was good to meet again, especially to meet him in his personal research haven, where he has stored his collection for many decades. Of course, stories were shared, photographs and hand-embroidered sashes shown, and, as a passionate dance lover, everywhere I looked I found things of interest that made my dance-researcher heart beat that little bit faster. After carrying 12 big boxes full of material down several flights of stairs, and listening to stories about John’s life as a marine biologist over a shared meal afterwards, it was time to tackle the long journey back to Dublin – me with a very humble heart, as John had gifted me a few goodies along with a set of his published books, which are now decorating my new office and are being referenced regularly as I look up dates and names while cataloguing his collection.

The following day my actual work began. My background lies in primary school teaching and dance research, but I’ve always made a point of complementing my main careers with different small jobs. But like any job, getting familiar with new tasks (and computer systems) takes a bit of time. I work manually, handling the different donated items, while describing and cataloguing them on the computer. The materials are then placed in archival folders and boxes and stored in a specific location at ITMA. All this is documented in a digital file, so that once the collection is made available to the public, the location of specific items of interest can be tracked and brought to the researcher for viewing.

For the first part of this process, I got a loan of – would you believe – clay crafting tools from Maeve. These I used to flatten any creases in paper documents and to carefully remove staples. All metal needs to be removed because of the damage that rust can cause to documents. Plastic folders also need to be removed and replaced by either thin plastic paperclips or Mylar – an inert plastic used by archives (another new word for my vocabulary!) Post-its are removed from the original document and stuck on thin tissue-paper, the glue of the post-it can also cause damage to pages in the long run. All these steps ensure the long-term preservation of documents.

I tackle the collection binder by binder – open it up, see what’s inside, clear the documents of unnecessary plastic and metal, sort through them and place them neatly into archival folders, thereby reducing the overall volume and ensuring long-term preservation. This whole process can take quite a significant amount of time, but it’s very rewarding to see the re-housed collection in labelled folders in archival boxes.

Handling these old documents is not only a very interesting task, it is also a privilege. It offers me an insight into the mind of a passionate collector of dance history. I come across things I myself have collected over the years, but also things I would never have thought of collecting, so I am learning all the time. I see and understand the importance of the different items with regards to the preservation of an art form that is so important for this country, and yet sometimes I feel it’s not validated enough (but don’t worry, I won’t go down that road now…). What I love most about the process, and is something that some people may perhaps find trivial, but I cherish tremendously, are John Cullinane’s personal notes.

John spends many months describing his collection for ITMA before their transfer to No. 73 Merrion Square. In these Word documents, he offers a lot of additional information to the items he has donated. It ranges from factual to humorous, very often offering more information on a specific date, meeting, dancer, competition etc., and is often annotated with small personal anecdotes about his relationship to the item or any similar context. Very often I find myself laughing out loud – his humorous way of explaining or describing situations is a very valuable insight into his personality, his way of thinking and researching, and his way of seeing things. I very much appreciate this insight into the man behind this collection.

A recurring theme in these personal notes is his frustration with undated documents. Providing each item with a date is such an important thing in any field relating to history. I can literally sense John’s frustration of having undated documents through the notes attached to material! Now this is something we can all learn from – next time we write a story, a post, or a letter: always write down a date!

While handling the material – and if my office-roomie isn’t around – I listen to interviews with John Cullinane, and conducted by him with other dancers. By doing this, I hope to get a better sense of the man and his way of thinking. This will improve my understanding of the material and inform how best to preserve his collection for the benefit of future users.

It is certainly not an easy task, especially as I become more and more aware of the magnitude of his work, and the impact it has had across several continents. It is my hope that in making this collection accessible that people will realise and truly understand the great work that John Cullinane has achieved in documenting the origins of Irish dance and its development over the years to where it is now. There is so much more to Irish step dance than the simple glitz and world cup… and, who knows, perhaps it might also even inspire people to document their own journey and leave a mark on the wonderful world of Irish dance history.

Next month I’ll be telling you about a new challenge I’ve been currently facing, and I hope to let you look over my shoulder as I work. Until then – see you soon, take care, and stay safe!

by Stephanie SK Marbach, September 2022

The Cullinane Archive Collection will be made available to the the public when all transfers and processing is complete.

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The musicians presented here on video are Co Meath concertina player and dancer Caitlín Nic Gabhann, accompanied on guitar by Caoimhín Ó Fearghail of Co Waterford (who also plays flute here), and joined on some tracks by fiddle player Ciarán Ó Maonaigh of Co Donegal. They were recorded by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff at the Frankie Kennedy Winter School / Scoil Gheimhridh in Gaoth Dobhair / Gweedore, Co Donegal, in 2012.

The Frankie Kennedy Winter School, set up in memory of the late Belfast flute player and unique among Irish traditional music schools in spanning the turn of the year, came to a natural end in 2013–2014, after 20 annual schools. It is being replaced this winter by a new event Scoil Gheimhridh Ghaoth Dobhair (http://www.scoilgheimhridh.com). This will feature music concerts, classes and sessions, Irish-language classes, films, etc., in six venues around Gweedore from 27 December 2014 to 1 January 2015.

With thanks to the musicians for permission to use their performances.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 December 2014

For all of its forty years to date, the Willie Clancy Summer School has featured traditional dancing of all kinds in natural association with instrumental music and song, following in the footsteps of Willie Clancy himself. Exhibition solo step-dances and set-dancing have been to the fore in concerts, classes and workshops, and in recent years old-style step-dancing from Clare and elsewhere, Conamara sean-nós dancing, and two-hand dancing have been added to the bill of fare.

Reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are documentary dance videos recorded by ITMA staff at the School in the early years of the new millennium, from 2001 to 2008. Included are old-style step-dancer Céline Tubridy from Co Donegal, Aidan Vaughan from Miltown Malbay with an exhibition of Clare battering, Margaret Wray from England with a solo set dance, Mick Mulkerrin from Glasgow and Co Meath and Mairéad Casey from Co Longford with a two-hander of Conamara sean-nós, and the Dublin-based set-dance group Brook’s Academy, which drew its inspiration from the Summer School and has gone on to teach hundreds of dancers in the headquarters of Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin over the last thirty years. Appearing here are Terry Cullen, Mary Friel, Sighle Friel, Pascale Gaudry, Vincent Heywood, Irene Martin, Terry Moylan, Mary Murray, Eileen O’Doherty, Jerry O’Reilly, and Gerry Ryan. Musicians include Michael Tubridy, Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich, Timmy O’Connor, Bobby Gardiner, and the Mulcahy Family.

With thanks to the dancers and musicians, and to the organisers of the Willie Clancy Summer School.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2012

The revival of interest in sean-nós (old-style) step dancing which has been on the rise since the late 1980s has been driven mainly from Conamara in Co Galway. This loose, partly improvised, solo exhibition form is of uncertain origin and antiquity, but it contrasts with the rigidity and programmed control normally associated with Irish solo dancing.

Two leading young Conamara sean-nós dancers were filmed by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff at the 2006–2007 Frankie Kennedy Winter School/ Scoil Gheimhridh Frankie Kennedy in Gaoth Dobhair, Co Donegal: Seosamh Ó Neachtain of An Spidéal and Róisín Ní Mhainín of Rosmuc. They danced to a range of rhythms played on accordion by Colm Gannon of Boston and Conamara at an event of the School entitled ‘An Damhsa’.

ITMA has been recording at the Frankie Kennedy Winter School since 2004–2005, and the results are available for listening and viewing to visitors to 73 Merrion Square, while some recordings have been made available on the website.

With thanks to Róisín Ní Mhainín, Seosamh Ó Neachtain & Colm Gannon for permission to reproduce their performances, and to Scoil Gheimhridh Frankie Kennedy for facilitating the recording.

Nicholas Carolan and Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2013

The videos presented here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive were recorded at a sean-nós (old-style) dancing competition held in the local community hall in Ráth Chairn, Co Meath, on New Year’s Eve, 1996. The adjudicator was Máire Mhic Aogáin of Dublin, and the winner was Seosamh Ó Neachtain of An Spidéal, Conamara. The area of Ráth Chairn, with Baile Ghib, forms a gaeltacht or Irish-speaking district near the town of Navan, one with a strong traditional culture and with particular links to Conamara. This Co Meath gaeltacht was created by the Irish government in the 1930s by the distribution of large landlord estates to migrant farmers from counties Galway, Mayo and Kerry.

The videos were recorded for ITMA by Seán Corcoran of Drogheda. As is the case with all ITMA field recordings, they eavesdrop on the proceedings and are careful not to interfere with their natural course. We think that the musicians belong to the Esker Riada Ceili Band, but have been unable to confirm this as yet.

Buíochas do na damhsóirí as ucht cead a thabhairt na físeáin a fhoilsiú anseo, do Seán Corcoran, agus do Ann Ní Dhonnchadha, Comharchumann Ráth Chairn, as ucht a cabhrach/ With thanks to the dancers for permission to carry the recordings of their performances here, to Seán Corcoran, and to Ann Ní Dhonnchadha of Comharchumann Ráth Chairn for her help.

Nicholas Carolan, Piaras Hoban & Treasa Harkin, 1 April 2015

ITMA are delighted to make available a digital edition of Micheal Tubridy’s A selection of Irish traditional step dances (2018).

The steps in this book come from people who learned their dancing in the old school, in the early part of the 20th century, and this form is generally described as Traditional Irish Step Dancing. It is a form of dancing which is not really competition orientated, even though the odd competition is held, so there is no need for a stiff body posture. The arms may hang loosely by the side, the body be held in its natural upright position, and the legs should always be bent slightly at the knees, to give a bounce or spring or easy style to the step.

Michael Tubridy, from the introduction to the 2nd edition

In 1998 Brooks Academy published the first edition of this book, which used a unique notation system devised by Michael to describe step dances which he and his wife Céline had learned from dance masters Dan Furey (1910−1994) and James Keane (1917−2000). Both men, from Labasheeda, Co Clare, perpetuated an older style of traditional step dancing. Michael and Céline brought this local tradition to another generation through teaching in Ireland and abroad. In 2007 they released an instructional DVD Step Dancing with Céline and Michael Tubridy. In 2018 Micheal published a second edition of the book and another DVD, with a further 9 dances.

Michael Tubridy has generously allowed ITMA to publish the DVD recordings and his notation, and this page brings together the learning tools for all 18 dances from the book.

For each dance there is a video recording at normal dance tempo first, followed by a performance at a slower tempo for learning purposes. Individual steps are isolated and slowed to highlight certain phrases of the dance. Voice-over instructions can be heard from Michael and Céline throughout the videos. Links to the individual steps are available when viewed on the ITMA YouTube channel.

Each dance also has a PDF download of the steps in notation, as it appeared in the printed book. A PDF download of the full book is also available.

ITMA would like to thank Michael Tubridy, and his late wife Céline, for permission to publish this material on its website.

On Saturday 20 July 2013, as part of the Irish national Gathering Festival, a free Riverdance family day of music and dance will be hosted throughout Merrion Square in central Dublin, where coincidentally the Irish Traditional Music Archive has its home. Dancers from the company will provide informal dance instruction and lead an all-comers ceili, with face-painting, bouncy castles, food and refreshments.

The Irish music and dance phenomenon which is Riverdance, as all the world knows, began as a highly acclaimed seven-minute interval presentation of the Eurovision Song Contest of April 1994, which was hosted by Ireland, directed for RTÉ by Moya Doherty, and seen by 300 million viewers. With music composed in traditional moulds by Bill Whelan of Limerick (a former ITMA Board member) and with dancers led by Irish-Americans Michael Flatley of Chicago and Jean Butler of New York, the piece was developed into a theatrical production from 1995 by Moya Doherty and her husband television director and producer John McColgan, and again with music by Bill Whelan. Riverdance: The Show has been performed over 10,000 times during almost twenty years to date, and in multiple companies. Its enormous success has imprinted Irish music and dance on the consciousness of audiences worldwide.

ITMA has documented Riverdance since 1994 by collecting its publicity materials (press releases, flyers and posters, programmes, etc), press cuttings, commercial CDs, videos and DVDs, and magazine articles, academic studies and books, and by creating bibliographic and discographic catalogue records for them. In anticipation of the Merrion Square occasion, a selection of Riverdance images is presented below from ephemeral flyers, posters and brochures, along with covers from videos, DVDs, CDs, and dance magazines, etc

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2013

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

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

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

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

Nicholas Carolan, 1 February 2009

The steps in this book come from people who learned their dancing in the old school, in the early part of the 20th century, and this form is generally described as Traditional Irish Step Dancing. It is a form of dancing which is not really competition orientated, even though the odd competition is held, so there is no need for a stiff body posture. The arms may hang loosely by the side, the body be held in its natural upright position, and the legs should always be bent slightly at the knees, to give a bounce or spring or easy style to the step.
Michael Tubridy, from the introduction to the 2nd edition
In 1998 Brooks Academy published the first edition of this book, which used a unique notation system devised by Michael to describe step dances which he and his wife Céline had learned from dance masters Dan Furey (1910−1994) and James Keane (1917−2000). Both men, from Labasheeda, Co Clare, perpetuated an older style of traditional step dancing. Michael and Céline brought this local tradition to another generation through teaching in Ireland and abroad. In 2007 they released an instructional DVD Step Dancing with Céline and Michael Tubridy. In 2018 Micheal published a second edition of the book and another DVD, with a further 9 dances.

Michael Tubridy has generously allowed ITMA to publish the DVD recordings and his notation, and this page brings together the learning tools for all 18 dances from the book.

For each dance there is a video recording at normal dance tempo first, followed by a performance at a slower tempo for learning purposes. Individual steps are isolated and slowed to highlight certain phrases of the dance. Voice-over instructions can be heard from Michael and Céline throughout the videos. Links to the individual steps are available when viewed on the ITMA YouTube channel.

Each dance also has a PDF download of the steps in notation, as it appeared in the printed book. A PDF download of the full book is also available.

ITMA would like to thank Michael Tubridy, and his late wife Céline, for permission to publish this material on its website.

Irish traditional dance music, in the forms that we know it today, evolved mainly in the course of the 18th century, although some of its forms were older and most of its melodies were composed later, in the 19th and 20th centuries. The same seems to be true of Irish traditional dance and its figures.

It is clear that this 18th-century evolution of both music and dance was influenced, to a degree not yet understood, by ‘country-dance’ printed collections, which combined notated music and instructions for dancing. The earliest such Irish printed collections date from the 1720s, and Irish music publishers continued to produce them for the rest of the century. While they include Irish melodies, they mostly reprint pieces from British-published collections which themselves belong to a printed country-dance tradition going back to the mid-1600s. Versions of some of the native Irish melodies and figures they present are still to be found in the tradition. Some melodies and figures now naturalised in Ireland were imports brought in through these publications.

The prosperity of the last decades of the 18th century in Dublin – when Scottish reels and the jigs of the Limerick composer and uilleann piper Walker Jackson were particular favourites – gave rise to a burst of publishing country-dance collections there. The four sample collections given below (one also containing ‘new dances’) were all published by Bartlett Cooke, a musician, music seller and publisher, and an arranger specialising in Irish melodies, in collaboration with professional dancing masters such as the named ‘Mr Fontaine’ and ‘Tracy’. Cooke was an oboeist during these decades in the Dublin theatre orchestras of Smock Alley and Crow St; he also had a music shop on Sackville St (now O’Connell St) from c. 1794 to 1798.

The first three collections come from an undated bound collection of c. 1800 Dublin-published sheet music which once belonged to a Miss Barnewall, and later to Breandán Breathnach. The fourth item, an ITMA purchase, presents a bibliographical puzzle as the tunes on its title-page do not form a numerical sequence with those on the following pages. But possibly Cooke had a title-page engraved for an already existing sequence of engraved plates, and used it to form the publication. All the pages seem to have come from the hand of the same engraver and are held together with what seems contemporary binding.

With thanks to book donors the Breathnach Family.

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 October 2009

This rare item was printed in Dublin but published from London by the Liverpool-Irish journalist and political activist John Denvir (1834–1916), who produced an Irish nationalist series of historical, political and cultural publications around the turn of the 20th century.

The Guide was probably produced to meet the needs of branches of the Gaelic League of the period in Ireland, Britain and America. The League, founded in 1893, was enjoying great success in the first decade of the new century. Although it was primarily an Irish-language revival movement, social dancing was central to the activities of its branches.

J.J. Sheehan (Seághan Ó Síothcháin), the author of the Guide, was from Athlone, Co Westmeath. He taught dancing in the London Gaelic League and was a member of its committee in 1902. His modest volume, which appeared about October of that year, seems to have been eclipsed by the larger and more elaborate A Handbook of Irish Dances, which was published in Dublin in December. It was compiled by two other members of the London Gaelic League, J.G. O’Keefe and Art O’Brien, and in various reprints it held the field for the remainder of the 20th century.

With thanks to book donors the Breathnach Family and Terry Moylan.

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 February 2009

[O’Keefe and O’Brian’s A Handbook of Irish Dances (2nd ed., 1914) is available here.]

The book Dances of Donegal Collected by Grace Orpen, published in London in 1931, is the first published collection of Irish traditional dances from one locality, as distinct from earlier general collections that included dances from different regions.

It is essentially a tutor for couple and group dances in the then living tradition, and it provides music for each dance along with dance notation and verbal description and instruction. The music is arranged for piano but some of the melodies were originally played on fiddle and concertina. Like some other Irish dance collections of the period, it has connections with a contemporary interest in exercise and physical education.

Grace Orpen (1905–66), the compiler and editor of the collection, was a member of a family from Carrickmines, Co Dublin, which regularly spent summer holidays in the Dunfanaghy area of Co Donegal. Her book is still in copyright and is reproduced here with the generous permission of the Somerville-Large family, who are the copyright holders. Her son Bill Somerville-Large has kindly provided this further information on Grace Orpen and the background to her book.

Grace Somerville-Large (née Orpen)

Grace Anne Orpen (1905–66) was born in Carrickmines, Co Dublin and was the second daughter of Charles St George Orpen and Cherry Darley.

The Orpen family spent regular summer holidays in Donegal from 1915 to 1939, mostly in the Dunfanaghy area, where they rented Marble Hill from 1917 to 1927. In Marble Hill they regularly held ‘kitchen dances’, to which neighbours from the surrounding area would come. Among them was David McElhinney whose son, also David, played the fiddle. David’s eldest daughter, Jenny, was a great dancer and remembered dancing all night and putting her head under the pump before going to work at Marble Hill the next morning.

Jenny married Harry Stewart, a farmer, who was killed in a farm accident. Jenny set up a guesthouse to which the Orpens went from 1927 to 1938. There were no more kitchen dances, but Grace would hum a tune and ask Jenny to name it. She had all the names. “And I’ll lult [sic] it for you”, she would say. She would even dance to her own lilting.

Grace and her cousin Mary (Bunny) Orpen went to Donegal and wrote down Jenny’s airs. They were helped with the harmonisation of the airs by Herbert Exshaw, organist of Stillorgan Church of Ireland church, who also used to spend holidays with the Orpen family in Donegal.

Grace trained as a PE teacher in Bedford College of Physical Education and worked in England for a while before getting the job as PE teacher in Alexandra College, Dublin. In 1931 and 1932 the Ling Society asked Grace to teach Irish dancing at their Summer School in London, during a week of folk dancing.

Grace’s book, Dances of Donegal, was on sale during her two years at the Irish Countrywoman’s Association Summer School, 1931–32. It was subsequently on sale at the Country Shop, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, which acted as an outlet for the market of the products of Irish Craftworkers. Dances of Donegal sold out and was not reprinted.

Grace married Philip (Paddy) Somerville-Large in 1933 and was mother of Bill Somerville-Large. She died in 1966.

The above information has been contributed to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by Bill Somerville-Large, following conversations between Grace’s sister, Kathleen Delap, and their brother-in-law, Chalmers (Terry) Trench.

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 2009

The extraordinary vogue for Irish set-dancing that has been in full swing since the 1970s, and shows little sign of abating, has been going international in recent years. Irish dancers have been travelling on organised set-dancing holidays to Spain and elsewhere, and dancers abroad have been eagerly taking up the Irish set-dances.

These dances, performed mostly in square formations by four or more couples, are in fact localised Irish versions of 19th-century ballroom dances that were originally European.

Among these ballroom dances, the most popular was possibly the quadrille. This was also a square-formation dance – usually performed in five distinct figures by ‘sets’ of from four to eight couples – which had its roots in 18th-century pageant and ballet dances. Developed in France in the early 1800s, it spread quickly throughout Europe. Local tradition in Limerick attributes its introduction there to soldiers returning from the Napoleonic wars after 1815, but the quadrille and its music was most likely brought to Ireland at about the same time by the existing city networks of professional dance teachers and music publishers.

A selection of Irish-related quadrille music from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive is presented here. The pieces are undated but were published in Dublin or in London in the 19th century.

The early music published for the quadrille in Ireland normally reflects its European structures. The melodies themselves can be tunes composed abroad by such well known professionals as Louis Jullien, or Irish national tunes arranged for the new dance. As quadrille-dancing gained in popularity in Ireland, the process of localisation continued. Quadrilles were adapted to Irish traditional reels, jigs and hornpipes, and other dance-music forms, throughout the country, and some of the imported tunes entered oral tradition. The ballroom dance movements themselves were adapted in a wide variety of ways to smaller indoor venues, and were generally known as ‘set-dances’. Such local dances fell out of popularity in the course of the earlier 20th century, but were generally remembered and were available for enthusiastic revival from the 1970s.

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 October 2010

In 1914, the second edition of A Handbook of Irish Dances: with an Essay on their Origin and History, available here, was published in Dublin by M.H. Gill and Son. As with the first edition published in 1902, the dance manual gives instruction for 26 figure dances, taken mostly from the teaching of the London-based Kerry dance master Patrick Reidy, and Tadhg Sheáin Ó Súilleabháin from Glenbeigh, Co Kerry. The descriptions of these dances and their publication were the work of two prominent members of the Gaelic League of London: James George O’Keeffe (1865–1937) and Arthur Patrick O’Brien (1872–1949).

Art was born in London to a prosperous and established family, his father John Francis O’Brien being a native of Cork. He studied civil and electrical engineering and after working abroad returned to London in c. 1899. Late-Victorian London was the home of a variety of Irish cultural revivalist organisations such as the Southwark Irish Literary Club (founded 1883), the Irish Literary Society (1892), the Irish Texts Society (1896) and the Gaelic League of London (1896). Art O’Brien joined the Gaelic League of London in 1899, and gaelicised his name to Art Ó Briain… ‘thenceforth becoming a regular attendant at the classes and other gatherings’. At such gatherings, Art would have met one of the London League’s exhibition dancers Seamus O’Keeffe (James George O’Keeffe). A native of Kanturk, Co Cork, Seamus was steeped in the language, literature and dance of his native area. He was educated in Blackrock College, Dublin, and moved to London in 1885 to work as a civil servant in the War Office. As a member of the Irish Literary Society and the Gaelic League of London, he taught Irish-language classes. With the League, he and Kathleen O’Brien of Limerick taught step dancing classes in Madame Geree’s Ballet Dance Parlours in Leicester Square, and with Liam O’Looney of Cork performed exhibition dances. London-based dance master Patrick Reidy introduced a repertory of group dances or ‘ceili’ dances such as ‘The Siege of Ennis’ and ‘The Walls of Limerick’ which were easier to learn. O’Keeffe and O’Brien visited Kerry following the Ballyvourney Feis in 1899 to add to their social dances and meet an increased demand for such dances. The role of the Gaelic League of London in introducing the concept of Irish ceili dancing is documented in the article ‘The Beginnings of Ceili Dancing: London in the 1890s’ available here. The popularity of such social dancing within the Gaelic League movement may well have provided the impetus to share and publish a description of the dances in 1902.

Art O’Brien was to play a substantial role in nationalist politics following the outbreak of the First World War as a member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in London, and in founding the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain (1920–21). His political career was however marred by financial controversy and he removed himself from political life until 1933, but remained President of the Gaelic League of London until 1935. Under Sean T. O’Kelly he was appointed Irish Minister to France and Belgium 1935–1938. He died in Dublin in 1949.

James George O’Keeffe was a respected and prolific editor of Irish-language texts as a member of the Irish Texts Society and Scoil Ard-Léinn na Gaeilge, publishing for example Táin Bó Cuailgne from the Yellow Book of Lecan with John Strachan and Buile Suibhne. In 1914 he was appointed a financial advisor for the British War Office in the United States and was awarded an OBE. in 1918. He died in Richmond, Surrey in 1937.

The second edition of the Handbook which we have digitised and made available on the ITMA site does differ from the 1902 edition but not in terms of the basic dance instructions. Of note also in the 1914 publishing is the use of Ireland’s first national trade mark ‘Déanta in Eireann’, reflective of the cultural and political nationalism of the period. The symbol was introduced in 1906.

ITMA thanks the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin Ireland for permission to upload the article by Art Ó Briain, ‘Gaedhil thar Sáile: Some Notes on the Gaelic League of London’ in The Capuchin Annual (1944), pp. 116–126, and also thanks Dr Brian Kirby, Provincial Archivist of the Irish Capuchins, for his help.

Grace Toland & Maeve Gebruers, 1 April 2016

Perhaps in the course of a night’s dining and drinking, one of the Brownes challenged Jack to dance home from Castle Browne to Morristown.

And so he did! He danced his way along the eight miles with accounts claiming he was escorted on the journey by friends, backers and a musician, while in another account he accompanied himself on fiddle, dancing and playing simultaneously. He changed his step every furlong (1/8 of a mile) and there were “heavy wagering on both sides”. He reached his home and won the bet. But, whether from exhaustion or a weakened body that then caught a disease, Jack passed away a few days later at Morristown Lattin on the 7^th July 1731.

“I’ll make you dance Jack Lattin” became used as a threat in Kildare and like I had mentioned above, James Joyce (1882—1941), quoted it in Ulysses when Leopold Bloom is about to be punished by a number of elegantly-dressed Dublin society ladies for sending them anonymous obscene postcards. Castle Browne, the starting point of Jack’s dancing wager, is now known as Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school for boys. James Joyce boarded at this college between 1888 and 1891 and it is quite possible that it was here he heard the story of Jack Lattin.

Less than two years after his death, a tune called ‘Jack Lattin’ began to appear in publications, the earliest mention occurring in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 2-5 June 1733:

At Madame Violante’s Booth in George’s-Lane, on Wednesday next, being the 6th of June, 1733, for the benefit of Mr. Walsh and Mr. Cummins, Dancing-masters, will be performed a Grotesque Opera, call’d Harlequin Triumphant; or the Father deceiv’d; a new Entertainment call’d the Tavern Bilkers; with the humourous Farce of Scapin; with Variety of Dancing and Musick, particularly several Concerto’s on the Harp, and Jack-Latin on the Pipes, by two of the best Masters in this Kingdom. 

‘Jack Lattin’ appears to have had become enormously popular within a very short time. In 1734, Dublin music collector, John Neal published his 3^rd collection of country dances that were popular in Ireland at the time. This list of 56 dances were mainly of Scotch country dances, however, it included three Irish tunes: The ‘Humours of Trim’, ‘Larry Grogan’ both double jigs and ‘Jack Lattin’ a three-part reel.

An 1807 account of Jack Lattin claimed that he not only composed the tune named after him, but also danced to it on his journey from Castle Browne to Morristown. How true this is or who was the original composer, we’ll never know. However, we can assume it was almost certainly a fiddler who knew Jack was an accomplished dancer of reels.

Solo dancing from this time was percussive, improvised and appeared as stage dances. In June 1736 it was danced in Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, the first time solo by a man and the second time by a couple, while there are also accounts from 1786 of it being played for the Rince Fada which would suggest it was a well-known tune amongst the musicians of Ireland at the time. In 1804 the famous Tipperary piper O’Farrell, published his tutor and collection of music ‘for the Irish or Union Pipes’, and included ‘Jack Latten with Variations’.

The tune, with variations, was still in circulation in the late 19^th century in South Leitrim,  as collected by Stephen Grier (1880’s).

Donegal fiddle player, Cathal Ó Curráin, recorded the original 3 part Jack Lattin reel for me and listening to it as I retraced his footsteps, I tried to imagine how Jack himself would dance to this tune. A line in Sean Donnelly’s research also caught my attention and played a role in the creation of my dance for Jack. It was a remark by Queen Victoria while being entertained by an Irish step dancer during a visit the Duke of Leinster’s house at Carton in the early 1800s. She commented

‘the steps are very droll.’

droll: humorous, especially in an unusual way

This really made me laugh! I imagined Jack dancing the roads with great energy and devilment, teasing those who bet against him with his effortless and witty steps. I also thought Jack would appreciate it more that I focus on his great feat (and great feet!) rather than the tragedy that befell him.

Drawing inspiration from this along with the tune, my surroundings and the historical sites, I formed the bones of a dance for Jack, partially structured but with much space for spontaneity and craic on the day.

On the 6th of November 2020 I returned to Kildare in the company of Cathal Ó Curráin, and in memory of Jack Lattin I danced “From Castle Browne to Morristown” and lived to tell the tale.Edwina Guckian, November 2020

Míle Buíochas

Alan Woods, Liam O’Connor & Grace Toland at ITMA

Seán Donnelly – researcher

Micheál Ó Ruairc – camera

Victor Tzelepis – camera & drone

Cathal Ó Curráin – fiddle

Kevin Murphy – Local history section Kildare County Council

Fr. Michael Sheils and the staff at Clongowes Wood College

Constance & Pamela Cassidy and Edward Walsh at Morristown Lattin

Seamus Cullen – researcher

Fr. John Quinn – collector & researcher

Emmett Gill – Na Píobairí Uilleann

Earlier Irish writers, such as William Carleton of Tyrone in the 1830s, had included impressionistic descriptions of dancing and dancers in their fictional works, but Joyce was the first to make a scientific classification of the types of Irish dances performed in the early nineteenth century and to analyse their characteristics. As an observant musician who had played for dancers from his childhood, he was well positioned to distinguish the various types and their salient features.

Joyce’s earliest published observations on dance were those first conveyed to his friend George Petrie in the early 1850s, presumably in writing. Petrie incorporated them verbatim in his notes to some of the dance tunes in his Ancient Music of Ireland volume of 1855. Although earlier collectors had taken little note of dance tunes, Petrie thought them ‘of equal interest’ to any other kind of Irish melody. He knew that he was breaking new ground in providing a description of their related dances, and acknowledges his own inability to do so had it not been for Joyce ‘whose words I shall in every instance use’. Although Joyce’s observations were made of Munster dances, Petrie believed that they applied equally to the dances of the other provinces of Ireland. His transcriptions of Joyce’s words partially survive in manuscript.

The principal kinds of the dance music of Ireland, Petrie says, are the

Common or double jig
Single jig
Hop jig
Reel
Hornpipe
Set dances of different kinds
Country dances of different kinds.
These dance-types are then described by Petrie, using Joyce’s notes on the number of participant dancers, the parts of the foot used, the various movements and steps employed, and the appropriate dance terminology with its meaning.

A facsimile edition of the Ancient Music of Ireland of 1855 and its unfinished successor of 1882 will be found here; the pages relevant to dance are pages 49–53, 58–62, 64–5, 92, 114 and 167 (in 1855) and pages 18–19 and 25–6 (in 1882). Joyce’s notes on each dance-type will also be found above by clicking on each dance-type name. They are provided in searchable text, in facsimile from the Petrie volume, and (when they survive) in facsimile from Petrie’s manuscript transcription.

Joyce himself published some notes on dance tunes in the preface to his Ancient Irish Music of 1873 (notes which he later quotes in the preface to his Old Irish Folk Music and Songs of 1909):

The Dance tunes that prevailed in the Munster counties, twenty-five or thirty years ago [in the 1840s], were chiefly the Reel, the Double Jig, the Single Jig, the Hop Jig, and the Hornpipe. The Reel was in common, or two-four time. The Double Jig was a six-eight time tune, the bars of which usually consisted of six quavers in two triplets. The Single Jig was also six-eight time; but here the triplet of the Double Jig was generally, though not invariably, represented by a crochet followed by a quaver. The Hop Jig, or as it was also called, Slip Jig, or Slip Time, was a nine-eight time tune. The Hornpipe was in common, or two-four time; it was played not quite so quickly as the Reel, and was always danced by a man unaccompanied by a partner. All these dance tunes, except the last, took their names from the manner in which they were danced. Besides these, there were ‘Set Dance’ tunes, i.e. tunes with some peculiarity of time, measure, or length, which required a special sort of dance, that had to be learned and practised for each particular tune. A Set Dance was always danced by a man without a partner. On the subject of the Munster dances I may take advantage of some other opportunity to make a few observations.

He also gives a pendulum method in the preface to indicate the time in which each tune, including the dance tunes, was to be played, observing that ‘I will venture an opinion that our song tunes are generally played and sung too slowly: while, on the other hand, the dance music is often played too fast; and in both cases the sentiment of the air is injured – sometimes utterly destroyed’.

In his A Social History of Ancient Ireland, first published in 1903 in two volumes, Joyce returned to the subject of Irish dance in a chapter on ‘Assemblies, Sports, and Pastimes’, but in this case not the dancing of his childhood but dancing in ‘ancient Ireland’, which he defines as ‘Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Invasion’ and ‘back only as far as there is light from living record – history or tradition’. He rightly says that there is no early evidence that the ancient Irish ‘danced to music, or danced at all’, but then unfortunately goes on to say that there is ‘very strong negative evidence that they did not’. It was not then understood that dancing is a human universal. The often-repeated statement that dancing was unknown in ancient Ireland owes much to this source, and to the sources that Joyce quotes here. The section on dancing, from the revised 1913 edition of the Social History, will be found in searchable text and facsimile here.

In his A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland of 1906, a one-volume condensed version of the two-volume work, Joyce deals briefly with dance on p. 501: ‘There is no mention of dancing in… any other ancient Irish record; and there is good reason to believe that the ancient Irish never danced at all – in our sense of the word’.