This month’s playlist offers an unique opportunity to hear rare recordings made by the late Tom Davis. Tom was a familiar figure at Irish music events for over 50 years since the 1960s, recording music, song and conversation at fleadhs, concerts and private houses. His recording equipment was high quality and over these years he amassed thousands of tapes featuring both well known figures and lesser known musicians and singers. Tom’s widow Eleanor has generously donated Tom’s large collection to ITMA, where work has commenced on exploring and cataloging what is an invaluable resource for the Irish music community. This playlist just offers a glimpse of the breath and quality that Tom’s life’s work has made to Irish music.  – Pádraic

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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My name is Catriona Gribben, I am 21 years old and come from Gaoth Dobhair in County Donegal. As a final year BA Hons Music & Audio Production student at Queen’s University Belfast, I had the opportunity to undertake a part-time placement as one of my modules.

I was looking for somewhere I could use my skills in both music and audio, as well as my other passion, the Irish language. A fellow Donegal musician suggested ITMA and I knew it would be the perfect match. Not only would it offer me the ideal opportunity to be immersed in Irish music and song, but the fact there is a Recording Studio in the building meant that I would be able to put some of the audio production skills I had been learning into action. Keen to make contact with ITMA, I sent my CV and was thrilled to be invited to Dublin to discuss projects and areas of work that would be suitable for me as an intern. This visit was invaluable as it allowed both parties to prepare a structure for the internship which would be mutually beneficial. I was motivated to make the most of my experience at the ITMA but at the same time offer something concrete and worthwhile in return.

Since a very young age, I have always been passionate about Irish traditional music and its preservation. I was delighted and inspired to be in 73 Merrion Square which is such a treasure trove of Irish heritage. My weekly visits reminded me of my rural Donegal roots. I have always felt privileged to have been brought up in a place steeped in Irish culture, music and heritage where the Irish language is so vibrant. I feel particularly grateful to have been raised in Gaoth Dobhair because, although neither of my parents are originally from there, it has hugely influenced the person I am today. I know that my upbringing there gave me opportunities and gifts that I would not have gained elsewhere, like my fluency in the Irish language and my love of traditional music.

As a young child, I attended singing and tin whistle lessons in An Chrannóg and went to the summer camps all through the medium of Gaeilge. Although many people initially got involved because their school friends were going, I was enamored from the start and knew it was where I wanted to be. 

The classes were, and remain, very popular and most young people locally can say that they went along to these lessons at some point in their childhood. In retrospect, we just accepted it as part of our childhood without thinking about what we were singing or playing, how rare the airs we were singing were, or how important it was that we were learning them. Most of the time the songs were learned phonetically by ear, and it was only later as we grew up that we realised what the lyrics were actually about. 

Learning other instruments came naturally to those of us who persevered with the singing and tin whistle lessons. I tried out most of the instruments for a term or two and decided somewhere along the way that I would focus on the piano accordion. In 2008, after long hours of practise and years of being told ‘na bí ag labhairt i mBéarla!’, a group of young musicians, under the direction of Caitlín Joe Jack, emerged called An Crann Óg. Ever since, we have been collaborating, performing and touring together across Ireland, Scotland, Germany and even the Catskills in New York state. Our ongoing role as a group is to promote and encourage the Irish singing tradition as well as to entertain.

The Gráinne Yeats Collection at ITMA

One of the first projects I worked on in the Archive was the Gráinne Yeats Collection. Gráinne Yeats (1925-2013) was a harpist, singer and researcher from Dublin. The material in this collection was donated to ITMA by the Yeats Family. 

My first task was to sort through and broadly sort the published books and journals in the collection into English language, Irish language/other Celtic languages. After this, I began checking the ITMA online catalogue to see if any of these titles were already in ITMA. I created metadata for the new material and isolated the copies.

Field Recording Experience at ITMA

I was also given the opportunity to do some filming and improve my Adobe Premiere Pro film editing skills. Brian Doyle and Alan Woods invited me to join them on a couple of ITMA field recording trips. The first outing was in October 2019 to the Glenties Fiddle Weekend. This was a brilliant night for Donegal fiddle music and I was able to film performers like Roisin and Ella McGrory from Culdaff on the Inishowen Peninsula. I also assisted Alan Woods with the filming of two fantastic gigs in the Amharclann Ghaoth Dobhair over the course of the Scoil Gheimhridh festival in December 2019. These were performances by FIDIL and Julie Fowlis. 

The Brían Ó Domhnaill Collection at ITMA

A few weeks after commencing my work placement in the Archive, a very interesting project arose which I knew would undoubtedly become very important to me. 

This project was ‘The Brían Ó Domhnaill Collection’ – AKA ‘Brían Danny Minnie Collection’.

Brían, hailing from Anagaire, Co. Donegal, has always been a huge part of the local music scene in west Donegal. Our group has played many sessions with him in his family restaurant, ‘Danny Minnie’s’ and he is well known for his vast repertoire of songs. An important factor of song tradition is understanding the ‘where and when’ of a song. This is where Brían shows his knowledge, as he is teeming with information and stories about all his songs.

Brían has gathered this information together in four large folders, with 500 + songs arranged alphabetically by song title. As a pilot project he left the first folder with ITMA to investigate how the information he collated could be documented and made available to other users. 

My work began on the Brían Ó Domhnaill Collection before Christmas 2019. I set up a spreadsheet and entered all the song titles that appear in the first song folder. I identified the photocopied book and CD sources he had been using by searching in the ITMA collection and then asking Brían about any obscure articles or books that were not found in ITMA. After this, I began the process of scanning all the original manuscripts and typescripts that were included in the folder.

Sometimes the song was the version from a specific singer at a session or often it was a song that he had jotted down from memory. Like many singers, he added additional verses to songs. There are many instances within this folder where Brían creates new versions of songs by manually cutting and pasting verses from different songs with similar themes. I later found out that he did this in order to make a song longer for competitions and even just for his own amusement.

When I began to go to events like Oireachtas na Gaeilge, I would watch people going up, singing short enough songs, they might only have had a couple of verses! They would be in competition with people from Connemara and people from other areas who would have eight or nine verses to their songs, and I would say to myself, well where did the verses go? 

Other times, maybe you’d find a verse from somewhere else at home and you’d add it in. I remember there was a time at the Oireachtas when competitors sang six songs, they were advised to only sing four verses of each song. So, for example when Annie Eoghain Eamainn and them competed, they would only sing four verses. For this reason, songs became shorter and I would say, the verses were lost.
I wanted to put extra verses to songs to bulk them up. I found different versions of the same songs and picked out verses that I could add, but some verses that I found were in different songs with similar themes. 

So, there’s lots of interesting things going on in the extra verses.

Brían Ó Domhnaill interview 2020, translation by Catriona Gribben

Bádaí na Scadán

In the folder, there was one sleeve that particularly interested me. This was the collective research on the song Bádaí na Scadán. 

There were snippets from articles and what seemed to be a thesis. Brían had even printed off old emails from 2004! Who was Nuala from IT? I was confused to say the least. Up to this point it had been a fairly standard procedure of scanning song lyrics/manuscript or typescript. I was intrigued by the material and felt I had to put the puzzle pieces together.

After some investigations on my part, I discovered he had gathered information from Irish Times journalist, the late Nuala O’Faolain; The Donegal Annual 2000, and Lillis Ó Laoire. I felt like a detective, but what I eventually found was a remarkable story and a heart wrenching tragedy. 

The Inishfree Letters, were a series of letters found in an attic in America in 1981. They were addressed to a Miss Elizabeth Mc Connell, wife of Mr John Dugeon from Ranafast who emigrated to America in the 1820s. The letters were dated 1822-1828 so were over 150 years old when they were discovered.

In one of the letters, Alex Mc Connell writes to his sister, Elizabeth, bearing the awful news of a drowning that happened on New Year’s Eve 1821 on Trágh Éanna. The song tells the story of five young boys who set out on a fishing trip. After a tremendous wave hits their boat, all but one of them is drowned. In the song, Billy Duffy, the boy who managed to stay above water cries out for help. All the bodies were recovered apart from one, a young boy called Fergal. There is a very poignant line that goes;

 A Fheargail a dheartháir má tá tú I bhFlaitheas na Naomh, Iarr fortacht ar an Ard Rí do bhfáil in san chladagh seo thíos

Brother Fergal, if you are in heaven, please ask the High King to find you on this shore

This tragedy gave us the song, Bádaí na Scadán, a song from Ranafast which was first associated with Máire Ní Dhubhtaigh.

I then learned and recorded the song myself in the ITMA Studio.

After working with the songs in the folder for a few weeks, I had numerous questions that I wanted to ask Brían himself, so we arranged for him to come to ITMA for an interview at the end of January 2020.

In the wide-ranging interview, Brían gave great insights into song-collecting. He discusses how and why he started the project, and what the future of the project might look like. Ideally, all the songs would be recorded and made available online. With over 500 hundred songs in the four folders a solution would be to prioritise ‘at-risk’ songs. Brían is genuinely afraid that once his time on earth has passed, these unique old songs will also disappear forever. 

When asked to sing a song at the end of my interview with him, Brían chose a few verses of ‘Tom Glas Coilleadh’ heard from an old woman from Mín Doire na Slua named Cití Mhary Thaidhg. 

In my opinion, Brían Ó Domhnaill’s Collection is of great historical and cultural significance and must be preserved and cherished. Although my time here in ITMA has come to an end, I would like to continue working on this project in the future. This pilot project has been invaluable in setting out the value of such a project but also the time and investment it will take. 

My period of work experience at the ITMA has been of great benefit to me on both a professional and personal level. I have developed many new and important skills such as archiving, recording, interviewing and researching. Furthermore, I believe that as a person I have become more resourceful, driven and confident in my own work which will hopefully improve my employ-ability in the future. 

I owe a debt of gratitude to the staff who work at the ITMA. They were always welcoming and ready to help me achieve my goals. I have felt inspired by their genuine interest and involvement in the work they do to preserve and archive our unique traditional music heritage. 

I would like to thank Brían Ó Domhnaill for coming to ITMA and sharing his in-depth knowledge of the song collection.

I would also like to give a special thanks to Grace Toland, Brian Doyle, Alan Woods and ALL the staff at ITMA, for kindly welcoming me and always providing help in any way that they could, so that I could make the very most of my work placement. 

I would like to thank the Director Liam O’Connor for facilitating this placement in the Archive.

This blog was researched and written by Catriona Gribben.

It was presented by Grace Toland.

May 2020

Interviews with founding and long-time members of the Góilín Singers Club. Conducted by Ian Lynch as part of the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s Góilín Song Project.

Is féile bhliantúil d’amhránaíocht ar an sean-nós i nGaeilge í Sean-Nós Cois Life atá ar siúl i gcathair Bhaile Átha Cliath ó 1992 i leith, agus a mbíonn ceol uirlise agus rince ar an sean-nós bainteach léi freisin. Is í príomh-aidhm na féile ná ‘deis a thabhairt do dhaoine amhráin sa stíl dhúchasach a fhoghlaim agus a chasadh’. Cuirtear ceardlanna agus seisiúin ar siúl chuige sin le linn deireadh seachtaine san Earrach, agus tugtar ardán ansin, neamhspleách ar chomórtas, d’amhránaithe nach gcloistear ach go hannamh san ardchathair. Tá clár Sean-Nós Cois Life 2014 le fáil anseo.

Tá Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann ag taifeadadh ag an bhféile seo leis na blianta, agus cuirtear ar fáil anseo roinnt físeán a rinneadh i gClub na Múinteoirí, Cearnóg Pharnell, BÁC 1, agus i dTigh Hughes, Sráid Chancery, BÁC 7, ag an seisiún scoir a bhíonn ann tráthnóna Dé Domhnaigh. ‘Srach’-thaifeadtaí atá anseo – bíonn foireann na Taisce ag iarraidh gan cur isteach ar nádúrthacht na hócáide ar maithe le hard-chaighdeán físe agus fuaime.

Sean-Nós Cois Life is an annual festival of Irish-language ‘old-style’ singing that has been held in Dublin since 1992, with an admixture of instrumental music and dance. The main aim of the festival is to give an opportunity to people to learn and sing Irish-language songs in traditional style. To this end, workshops and sessions are organised over a weekend in the Spring, and singers who are seldom heard in Dublin are given a non-competitive platform for their art. The programme for this year’s festival is here.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive has been recording at this event for some years, and a selection of videos made in the Teachers’ Club, Parnell Square, Dublin 1, and in Hughes’s pub on Chancery St, Dublin 7, at the Sunday afternoon parting session is presented here from the ITMA collections. The videos are ‘grab’ recordings, as ITMA staff do not wish to interfere with the natural flow of the occasion for the sake of making perfect recordings.

Buíochas leis na hamhránaithe a thug cead dúinn a dtaifeadtaí siúd a chur suas anseo, agus le Antaine Ó Faracháin & Siobhán Ní Laoire.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 April 2014

Having begun in 1993 a programme of audio studio recording, with ancillary video recording, soon after it had moved to new premises at 63 Merrion Square, Dublin (see here for details), the Irish Traditional Music Archive continued with the programme in 1994 and 1995. Again these recordings were made by Aidan McGovern, Glenn Cumiskey and Sadhbh Nic Ionnraic, and interviews were conducted by Nicholas Carolan, with the aim of documenting material and performance technique rather than producing items for publication.

Three performers among those recorded in those years were: Limerick-born and Galway-resident accordion player and repairer Charlie Harris, who has been much influenced by historic Irish-American recordings and who was in those years a long-time member of the group Shaskeen; Eilís Ní Shúilleabháin, a member of a well regarded west Cork family of traditional singers and an Oireachtas prize-winner, who was then living in Co Limerick; and Dublin uilleann piper (and whistle and flute player) Peter Browne, now also well known as a presenter and producer with the national broadcaster RTÉ Radio. A selection of their video recordings is reproduced below, courtesy of the artists.

The full audio and video recordings from which these selections come are available for reference listening and viewing within ITMA.

ITMA is grateful to Charlie Harris, to Eilís Ní Shúilleabháin, & to Peter Browne for permission to bring these recordings to a wider audience than was originally envisaged.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2013

Denis Cox (Donnchadh Mac Coiligh, c. 1882—1962) first came to public notice as a prizewinner in the Feis Ceoil platform competitions of the 1920s, specialising in songs in Irish, and he enjoyed success also at feiseanna throughout Ireland in the same decade. Born in Trim, Co Meath, he spent most of his life in Dublin where he established a successful recital career. A natural baritone sometimes billed as a tenor, he went on to study classical singing and undertake concert tours in Britain, Germany and Italy. He made a short singing film for the Pathé Company and in 1934 represented Ireland at the World Fair in Chicago. Cox taught ‘Gaelic’ singing in the Municipal College of Music in Dublin from 1945, and performed songs in Irish and national songs in English frequently on Radio Éireann until the late 1950s.

From 1928 Denis Cox recorded extensively in London for the Parlophone Record Company, in Irish and English, and some of these recordings continued to be issued into the 1950s. About 1936 he recorded also in English for the Beltona Company. His songs in Irish were the subject of a special Parlophone marketing drive in 1933, when the company published a booklet of the texts of the songs in Irish he had recorded (see related material below).

Cox was generally described by newspapers as an ‘Irish traditional singer’ at a time when sean-nós Gaeltacht singers rarely got a public hearing, and he was even accepted as a traditional singer by the organisers of 1950s fleadhanna ceoil concerts. He was in fact a classically trained singer of traditional songs with a well developed stagecraft and a winning personality, who performed normally with piano or orchestral accompaniment. In his singing in Irish he belonged to a Gaelic League concert tradition of accompanied singing that had grown up since the 1890s.

See also Denis Cox, Songs in Irish in Print, 1933 below.

Do you have other Denis Cox recordings or less worn copies of the Irish Traditional Music Archive recordings presented here? ITMA would welcome their donation or the opportunity to copy them.

With thanks to record donors Vincent Duffe, Reg Hall, John Loesberg, Bernard Sexton, Áine Sotscheck, Geoffrey C. White, & the Franciscan Order, St Clare’s Convent, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, per Sr Mairéad Ní Fhearáin.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2009

A pandemic initiative from RTÉ’s The Rolling Wave, in conjunction with ITMA

This second tranche of copies of cylinder recordings of Irish-language singers made by Rev. Dr Richard Henebry in Co Waterford in the early 20th century, and presented here from its collections by the Irish Traditional Music Archive with some of his instrumental music cylinders, is not for the faint-hearted.

Although they have been expertly remastered for ITMA by Harry Bradshaw, who has recovered sound from them that is inaudible when they are played ‘flat’, they are nevertheless still indistinct and noisy. Not surprising, given that the original cylinders are now more than a century old, are of ‘wax’ composition and were only designed for a limited number of playings. They are now badly worn, and often scratched or cracked. The wonder is that they have survived and can be heard at all.

These recordings differ therefore from the first published tranche of ITMA Henebry cylinder recordings. Those were remade from copper cylinder moulds as the result of a cooperative project between ITMA and the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv and are of a better audio quality. These recordings differ also in containing some fiddle renditions of traditional tunes, some of which may be given by Richard Henebry himself using up unused space on cylinders, and in including some recordings from Irish America. The first tranche of Henebry cylinder recordings is available below, along with information on the whole ITMA Henebry project and links to copies of his books and other recordings.

These new recordings are undated but at least two were made in July 1905, when the first tranche was recorded, and the probability is that at least some of the others also were. Introduced by Henebry himself, two of the singers are the same, Pádraig Ó Néill and Maighréad Ní Néill, and second takes are given of some of the same songs. The uilleann piper James Byrne is playing here again. But there are also new singers to be found from An Rinn, some introducing themselves. A Seán de Henebry, probably Richard’s brother, plays fiddle, and a whistle or piccolo player can also be heard. Among the new singers are William Power and Sylvester O’Murray, and two whose names will be familiar: Nioclás Ua Tóibín and Labhrás Ó Cadhla. But these latter are undoubtedly older relatives of the well-known Waterford singers of these names who were recorded by radio and record companies in the mid- and later 20th century. It is possible that some of these recordings were made by members of the Henebry family using his equipment after Richard’s death in 1916 as some written documentation found with these cylinders dates from 1929 and 1930 (however it is also possible that only the documentation and not the cylinders may be of those dates). Also to be heard here is the Chicago-based uilleann piper Bernard Delaney of Offaly, and an anonymous uilleann pipes and fiddle duet, on cylinders which had been sent to Henebry by Captain Francis O’Neill of Chicago (Delaney can be more audibly heard on Milwaukee O’Neill cylinder copies available here).

In spite of their difficult audio quality, these Henebry recordings have a unique cultural value. They preserve traditional melodies, something not often found in early Irish-language song collections which typically print only verbal texts. They also preserve elements of traditional song style and instrumental style which are beyond the reach of music notation. A declamatory singing style is common in these recordings; it may have been influenced somewhat by the recording process. In the hope that singers and musicians of the present day will hear enough on them to be able to re-create the songs and music, and that people with local knowledge and interested scholars will be able to add information and make transcriptions, even the noisiest of the Henebry cylinders are presented here. Some identifications of songs and singers are tentative, as indicated; additional information would be very welcome.

With thanks to Professor Seóirse Bodley, donor of the original recordings to ITMA; to Henri Chamoux of the Archaeophone Company in France who digitised them; and to Harry Bradshaw who remastered the digitisations.

Nicholas Carolan, Elaina Solon & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2015

During the late 1950s and early 1960s Dr Tom O’Beirne, now of Mohill, Co Leitrim, was a medical student in Dublin and an enthusiast for Irish traditional music. He had acquired a domestic reel-to-reel tape recorder and used it to record musicians in his flat in Rathgar and in the Irish music club that then operated in Church St in the city. He also recorded traditional music from Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s radio programmes on RTÉ, and from the ‘Bring Down the Lamp’ series on RTÉ Television. A selection of these recordings is presented here; Dr O’Beirne’s voice can be heard identifying some of the selections.

Irish traditional instrumental music was growing in popularity in Dublin from the early 1960s – aided by the public performances of groups such as the Castle Ceili Band and Ceoltóirí Chualann, and by radio and television programmes – although it was at the time nothing as popular as were traditional songs and ballads.

Older Dublin musicians, like the accordion player Sonny Brogan and the uilleann piper Tommy Reck, played regularly with older immigrant country musicians, like the flute player John Egan from Sligo, and celebrity players visiting the city, like flute player Paddy Taylor of Limerick & London and the accordion player Joe Cooley of Galway. A new rising generation of Dublin instrumentalists was also to be heard, among them banjo player Barney McKenna, flute and whistle player Dessie O’Connor, and fiddle player Sean Keane. Much of the music then current in the city is to be found in Breandán Breathnach’s first printed collection Ceol Rince na hÉireann (Dublin, 1963)

The technology of tape recording had been introduced commercially in the late 1940s in the United States. But it was only used in the professional domain in Ireland until the later 1950s when domestic reel-to-reel tape machines began to become widely available. Awkward to use and normally depending on mains electrical supply, these held the field until the 1970s when they were generally abandoned for the inferior but more convenient cassette tape recorder.

With thanks to Dr Tom O’Beirne for the donation of his tape recordings and for permission to publish selections from them; to Tom Mulligan of the Cobblestone bar, Smithfield, Dublin, for his good offices; and to fiddle player Jesse Smith for his work in digitising them. ITMA always welcomes the donation of such tape recordings or the opportunity to copy them.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2010

This booklet of texts of songs in Irish recorded by the Dublin-based baritone Denis Cox (Donnchadh Mac Coiligh) was published in 1933, presumably for the general educational market, by the Parlophone Company of London, the recording company which since 1928 had been issuing his many 78s of songs in Irish and English.

This booklet of texts of songs in Irish recorded by the Dublin-based baritone Denis Cox (Donnchadh Mac Coiligh) was published in 1933, presumably for the general educational market, by the Parlophone Company of London, the recording company which since 1928 had been issuing his many 78s of songs in Irish and English.

The 25 songs in the collection are mostly 18th- and 19th-century traditional songs, of the kind that had been popularised by the Gaelic League in their concerts since the 1890s. Originally noted from oral tradition, many of the songs had been published in the periodicals and songbooks of the League, and, after the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, by commercial publishers. The published songs were frequently arranged for voice and piano, or for small vocal groups, by such arrangers represented here as Carl Hardebeck, Vincent O’Brien, and Hubert Rooney (who was Cox’s vocal teacher).

Traditional love songs, political songs, comic songs, praise songs, and religious songs are included in the booklet with some recently composed pieces. Remarkably, the song texts are published without English translations; one, ‘An Fhuiseog’, is a translation from English.

See also Denis Cox, Songs in Irish on 78s below.

With thanks to donor Cáit Ní Chonchubhair.

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 August 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colm Ó Lochlainn (1892–1972)

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

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

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

Other Claisceadal Publications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 August 2010

‘An Draighneán Donn’ (The brown thorntree or sloe-tree) is one of the oldest and most widely spread songs now sung in the Irish language.

It exists in many versions that can individually contain up to 25 or more verses; it exists also in some English and Irish-English macaronic versions, and also in many prose and verse translations into English. A lyric lovesong with an implied narrative, it expresses normally the sorrowful feelings of a young woman who has been deserted.

The song is of unknown origin. It may belong to the 17th or 18th centuries, as its language is relatively modern and the oldest known version of it appears in print in 1789 (see below). It may have been composed in Connaught, on placename and other evidence, but it is found commonly in all the provinces.

Over 150 versions (Irish, English, translations, melodies, etc.) of ‘An Draighneán Donn’ are found in print alone (as distinct from audio and video recordings) in the ITMA collections. As is the case with many other such songs in the collections, these many versions, widely diffused in time and place, provide material for the study of change and transmission in Irish traditional song. The song was the subject in 2000 of an MA thesis by Enda Ó Catháin in the Department of Modern Irish, National University of Ireland Maynooth: ‘An Draighneán Donn’ – ‘Rí na nAmhrán’ (in Irish, ii+262 pp.)

With thanks to book donors the Breathnach Family, Bernard Croke, Máire Ní Dhonncha per Maedhbh Uí Loinsigh, Claire O’Kelly, Eve O’Kelly, Séamus Ó Raghallaigh, Laurie Uí Raghallaigh, Seamus Purcell, & Nellie Walsh, and to Brian O’Rourke for permission to publish.

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 April 2009

Irish popular song and music of many kinds (including national music and traditional music) has been published in sheet-music form in Ireland since the 18th century.

Mainly publication has been in English, but since the early 20th century also in Irish. The lines between Irish popular and traditional song and music are hard to define, and the genres have significant resemblances. Often sheet-music material that is created by known poets and composers for commercial, literary, or other cultural purposes, enters oral tradition and comes to be considered as of anonymous origin.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive accordingly collects Irish popular sheet music as representing a dimension of Irish traditional music. It presents here a selection of these sheets.

With thanks to sheet-music donors Phil Callery, Adrian Gebruers, Bríd Hetherington, Nellie Walsh, and Waltons Ltd.

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, 1 October 2008

Some 700 audio recordings made at the Góilín since the early 1980s can be heard, supplemented with photographs, printed items, singer profiles and video interviews. This is an ongoing collaborative project of the Góilín and ITMA.

Although the Góilín Club has always centrally been about live traditional singing, some printed materials and photographs have been produced over the years as a byproduct of its activities. A selection of these are presented here, with thanks to their copyright holders for permission to reproduce them.

Special thanks to Róisín Gaffney and the Ó Raghallaigh Family.

Carl Gilbert Hardebeck (1869−1945) was a classical pianist, organist and composer, a music teacher and choirmaster, and also a dedicated collector, arranger and publisher of Irish traditional music. Traditional song was his main area of Irish interest, and he edited and arranged for voice and piano several influential collections of Irish-language songs. But he was also responsible for three published collections of instrumental traditional music, and these are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive to mark the 70th anniversary year of his death.

Born in London of prosperous German and Welsh parentage, the precocious Hardebeck was blind from childhood. He received his music education at the Royal Normal School for the Blind, and in 1893 moved to Belfast to establish a music store. When this failed, he devoted the rest of his life to music, living in Belfast until 1919, moving to Cork to take up academic positions before returning to Belfast in 1923, and ultimately moving to Dublin about 1933. His final years were spent in poverty but he remained a keen advocate of Irish music until his death.

Married to an Irishwoman and poet Mary Reavy, Hardebeck became involved with the Gaelic League and Feis Ceoil movements in the 1890s. He learned Irish and devoted his life to Irish traditional music after coming into contact with traditional singers and musicians: ‘I decided to leave all and follow it’. His arrangements respected the nature of the music and are still highly regarded. Hardebeck’s music was published by himself in Belfast and by various London publishers; his other publications and re-publications came from Dublin publishers: Conradh na Gaeilge, Pohlman, Whelan & Son, Sullivan & Co, Pigott & Co, The Sign of the Three Candles, Browne and Nolan Ltd, and Oifig an tSoláthair. The two O’Sullivan-published volumes presented here were republished by Pigott & Co.

With thanks to the Breathnach Family for the donation of the volumes.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 February 2015

A little-known collection of 84 Irish-language songs entitled Songs from Ballyvourney, Co Cork, with Irish Texts and Translations, and presented here in facsimile from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, was described in the mid-20th century as ‘incomparably the finest collection published in our time of Irish songs noted from oral tradition’.

Remarkably, the collection was made by a retiring English scholar of private means, Alexander Martin Freeman, in West Cork in 1913 and 1914, and was published by the Folk-Song Society of London in three numbers of its journal from 1920 to 1921.

The songs were collected by Freeman with care and sympathy from a number of local singers, chief among them being Conchubhar Ó Cochláin (Conny Coughlan) from Doire na Sagart, ‘said to be over 80… but… as active and alert as a man of 40’. Freeman’s approach was ethnographic and scientific, and he provides many valuable insights into the nature and role of singing in the local community. Although his work was written in English, with translations of the song texts into English, music in staff notation and extensive background notes, his choice of a phonetic spelling for his Irish-language song texts has been a barrier to their use and has contributed to their obscurity.

But some items from the Freeman collection have been brought into contemporary circulation, by for example the musician and composer Seán Ó Riada and the singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, currently of the group The Gloaming. Freeman’s field notebooks from Ballyvourney are held in the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin.

For ease of reference, Freeman’s Irish titles and first lines have been rendered into modern standard Irish by ITMA, and can be found here in the catalogue data under each of the periodical facsimiles.

With thanks for advice and assistance to Malcolm Taylor, former Librarian of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London, and to Cathal Goan.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 April 2015

[A consideration of Freeman and his Cork collection by Nicholas Carolan ‘”Out of the Smoke”: A. Martin Freeman’s West Cork Song Collection of 1913–14’ (21 pp.) appeared in November 2015 in a festschrift of essays by various authors for Professor Dáibhí Ó Cróinín of University College Galway, himself editor of a much later collection from West Cork: The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Irish Traditional Singer. The festschrift is entitled Early Medieval Ireland and Europe: Chronology, Contacts, Scholarship (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 723 pp.) and is available for purchase in hardcopy or as pdf downloads of individual essays from the publishers here.]

Lorcán Ua Muireadhaigh [Laurence P. Murray] (1883−1941) was a renowned Irish language scholar, historian and collector, especially in the field of the Irish language traditions of Ulster.

Among the published works of William Forde (1797–1850) the Cork musician, editor and collector, is a selection of 100 Irish airs published in 1841 as part of his 300 National Melodies of the British Isles.

Born in Carlingford, Co. Louth, he was educated in St Malachy’s, Carlingford and St Patrick’s College, Armagh before entering Maynooth as a clerical student in 1901. The influence of the Gaelic Revival and of the exiled Professor of Irish Fr. O’Growney on college life at this time is evident, in the founding of Cuallacht Cholmcille and the Columban Record, now Irisleabhar Maighe Nuadhat. Nearer home at the opening meeting in 1903 of the County Louth Archaeological Society, he met Henry Morris, another substantial influence on his life. Laurence wrote extensively as a student and published in the aforementioned society journals. While academically applauded, he came under disciplinary scrutiny during a period of student discontent in 1907, and was asked to leave Maynooth the following year. He was ordained a priest in St Paul, Minnesota in 1910.

Following the foundation of the Omeath Summer School in 1912, Laurence returned to Ireland annually as part of the staff, and to collect songs, stories and prayers from native speakers. Over a period of seven years, he phonetically transcribed approximately 250 songs from forty people living across seven townlands. From this manuscript collection came his first book Irish Ceolta Óméith: an chéad chuid published in 1920, containing the words of thirty-four songs with notes on the local singers and versions sung.

Another twenty-three songs were published in Amhráin Chúige Uladh: cuid a haon in 1927 with tonic solfa transcriptions of the airs. The second volume was published in 1937 but unfortunately the Irish Traditional Music Archive does not have an original copy of this book in its collection. We would be delighted to receive a copy of the publication as a donation or on loan in order to digitise it and make it available online.

By this time Laurence had returned to parish life in Ireland having refused to sign an oath of allegiance in the United States following the outbreak of World War I. While conducting his duties as curate in Clonfeacle, Co. Tyrone and parish priest in Dunleer, Co.Louth, Fr. Murray continued as a language teacher, researcher, prolific writer and activist, establishing the monthly periodical An tUltach in 1924, and the renowned St Bridget’s College, Ranafast in Co. Donegal in 1925/26.

He died in the parochial house in Dunleer on 25 June 1941.

For more online information on Lorcán Ua Muireadhaigh, please see ainm.ie

References to his work can also be found in the notes to the Doegen Records Web Project: Irish Dialect Sound Recordings 1928−31 published online by the Royal Irish Academy

With thanks to Ciarán Dalton

Amhránaí ar an sean-nós í Sarah Ghriallais as Muiceanach i nGaeltacht Chonamara. Bhuaigh sí Corn Uí Riada ag Oireachtas na Gaeilge i 1984, agus bronnadh TG4 Gradam Ceoil Amhránaí uirthi i 2022. Le dhá thaifeadadh déanta aici, is amhranaí í a bhfuil an-mheas uirthi ar fud an domhain. Anocht tá sí caint le Síle Denvir sa sraith nua Saoithe ó ITMA.

Sarah Ghriallais is a sean nós singer from Muiceanach in the Connemara gaeltacht. Winner of Corn Uí Riada at the 1984 Oireachtas, she was awarded Gradam TG4 Singer of the Year in 2022. Tonight she is in conversation with Síle Denvir in the new ITMA series Saoithe.

Arranmore is an island off the north west coast of Ireland, three miles from Burtonport off the Donegal coast. There are about 400 people living on the island year-round. My mother was born and raised on Arranmore, and although I grew up in Carlow, we spent our school holidays on the island. My parents moved back to the island permanently a few years ago, and my sister Fiona has since moved there with her three girls and her husband Jesse.

Singing is and always has been an integral part of Arranmore life and identity. Unaccompanied singing was hugely popular on the island in the past, especially in the days of the teach earnáil – or the rambling home as it was known. People would gather in each other’s houses and pass the time with stories, dances and songs, spinning yarns and having the craic. These days, you’re likely to hear songs accompanied by guitar, accordion and percussion in the bars on the island, but there are also plenty of amazing unaccompanied singers. People dance a lot on Arranmore too in the way that Donegal people often do – they jive and waltz to anything that’s the right pace.

Luckily, plenty of singers have been recorded on the island over the years. The biggest single collection of Arranmore recordings was made by Hugh and Lisa Shields in 1977.

Hugh & Lisa Shields Recordings 1977

I first heard and discovered these recordings while on work experience in the ITMA in 2010. I was put to work in a room alongside Lisa Shields, who got chatting to me about music and my family. By an unbelievable stroke of luck, it turned out that Lisa had recorded and remembered my grandfather and great-grandmother, who she had spent a fair bit of time with on that trip.

I got to hear recordings of my family, of my ancestors that I hadn’t met. I think that moment changed the course of my life.

There was something strangely familiar about hearing the voice of my grandfather. At the time I had only just started to sing a few traditional songs but finding those recordings ignited my interest in the singing of Arranmore, the songs that my grandfather had, and the other songs people sang that weren’t recorded.

Róise Bean Mhic Grianna – Róise na nAmhrán

I soon became interested in the singing of Róise Bean Mhic Grianna, also known as Róise Rua or Róise na nAmhrán, who my sister Aoife had done extensive research on and introduced me to. I remember the first time I heard her singing. I was in another room and thought it was an old American blues singer. The character of her voice is unique, and she had a large and diverse repertoire of songs. Róise is the most recorded and documented singer from Arranmore, and her recordings have become quite influential on traditional singing all over Ireland.

I could write a lot about Róise Rua from stories that I’ve been told about her, singers I’ve heard speak about her, and songs of hers that I’ve researched. There’s a fantastic Siúlach Scéalach programme about her available online, made by Raidió na Gaeltachta a few years ago that I highly recommend listening to. There’s also a great book about her life called Róise Rua: An Island Memoir, written by Padraig Ua Cnáimhsí and translated by JJ Keaveny (Mercier Press, 2009).

Most of what I know about Róise came from my sister Aoife, from Andrew Early and from one or two other people on the island who knew her. She is fondly remembered by those who knew her as a kind, humble woman, who would often have visitors to her home in Screag a tSeabhac where she lived with her husband Séamie. Róise was a remarkable singer, but it’s thanks to Padraig Ua Cnáimhsí, a former schoolmaster on the island, that she was noticed, and her songs documented and recorded.

Róise was recorded in 1953 by RTÉ and the Irish Folklore Commission. In the early 90s, Cathal Goan went looking for the tapes, planning a radio programme about her for RTÉ, and eventually found them on the roof of the General Post Office (GPO). Audio storage at the time was all physical and bulky, so RTÉ had to make space at some stage in their archives. The recordings had been transferred onto acetate disks and then left on the roof of the GPO on O’Connell Street in Dublin. Some of the recordings were irreparably damaged and some bits of songs were missing, but there was still enough in those tapes to compile a full CD which was released in 1994 by RTÉ – Róise na nAmhrán: songs of a Donegal woman / Róise na nAmhrán [Róise Mhic Grianna] (RTÉ CD178).

When Róise’s recordings surfaced in the early 90s, her singing became quite influential. The kind, humble woman from Arranmore became an important and valuable source of North-West Donegal singing. Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh really championed Róise’s songs, reconstructing some of them using manuscripts and other versions of songs she heard from local singers around Gaoth Dobhair.

One of my favourites of these is ‘Ceol a’ Phíobaire’. In this song, a piper tries to convince his darling to elope with him. He warns her against all other men, the ones with craft and farm jobs, and assures her that she’d be much better off with him and the sweet tones of his music. I found another version of this song in the book Filíocht na nGael, with a verse I hadn’t heard at the end. As I soon found out, the same verse was also recorded by Albert Fry on his album Tráthnóna beag aréir (Gael Linn, 1972; CD reissue 2008)

Wherever Róise learned the song, she had a few verses that she may well have made up herself. She sang the words ‘A mhuirnín dhílis, éalaigh ó” or “my sweet darling, escape-o” as opposed to “is fhaoileann óg’ – meaning fair young maiden. Róise told Seán Ó hEochaidh that it was about a woman who was marrying someone she didn’t want to marry, and that the piper was trying to get her to escape with him instead.

I love thinking about the process that these songs have gone through over the past few hundred years – like a long game of Chinese whispers with plenty of imagination involved. It’s easy to see how the words ‘is fhaoileann óg’ would have morphed into éalaigh-ó, and how that changes the sentiment of the song. The words éalaigh-ó just sing very well too.

I’ve recorded and filmed a song for this project that I learned from Róise’s recordings – it’s a song called ‘Máire Bhán’. ‘Máire Ní Ghríofa’ is the Connemara version of the same song, but this version morphed to be more Arranmore-relevant at some stage along the way, and mentions Oileán Árainn in the first line. There’s a much longer version of the song sung by Teresa McClafferty out on Tory Island too available to listen to on TG4 Cartlann Sean Nóis.

It’s a typical old romantic Irish song and Róise’s version includes all the best tropes – the protagonist tells Máire Bhán that he wouldn’t even ask for any cows with her, such is his true love, then he gets lost in a foggy place, and by the end of the song he’s sick and in need of care from her.

It was specially recorded for this podcast and is the first time I’ve released it.

Other great Arranmore singers and central characters

Biddy Joe O’Donnell, Charlie Rua McColl, Joe Phil Bhig Rogers, Dónal Phaidí Hiudan, Packie Boner, Barney Beag Gallagher & Andrew Early

As you can imagine. Róise wasn’t the only singer on the island at the time, but there were and still are plenty of great singers and songs on Arranmore.

One song that I was told Róise sang a unique version of is ‘Tiocfaidh an Samhradh is Fásfaidh an Féar.’ While Róise’s version wasn’t recorded, others on the island were, including Biddy Joe O’Donnell. Biddy Joe was a professional singer in her day apparently and even sang at funerals as a keener. Something happened at some stage in her life that turned her off singing, however, and she never sang much after that. Even when these songs were recorded, you can hear her saying in one of the recordings that she was worried the other people in the room would laugh at her singing. I think she’s an amazing singer, and I’m so glad that she was recorded.

I love the unusual melody she has for ‘Once I Loved’, and another song she sings – ‘Pleoid Ort a Neidí gan Seanadh’ was another very local song, and mentions a few local placenames like Poll a Mhadaigh.

Popular songs & their place in the community

One of the things I’m always curious to find out about are what songs were popular on Arranmore and where they might have circulated from before the radio came to the island. Some old songs like ‘Níl Sé ‘na Lá’, ‘Tiocfaidh an Samhradh’, ‘Buachaill Ón Éirne’ & ‘Siún Ní Dhuibhir’ were sung by a lot of people, but there were also plenty of songs in English sung on the island.

I was told that the dancehall on the island was run by Phil Neily, a man who was a renowned fiddle player all over Donegal and beyond. The first building at the new pier on Arranmore is where that dancehall was – in the old mill building. Néillidh Boyle was a regular there, as were Mickey and Johnny Doherty, and the door charge would be increased when either of them were in. I was told that at some stage in the night they’d pause the dance and step dancers or singers would be called on to perform.

‘The Factory Girl’, ‘The Flower of Sweet Strabane’, ‘The Maid of Culmore’, ‘The Lowlands of Holland’ and any songs about the Enniskillen Dragoons were big hits apparently. The songs were given their own moment in the night, a good chance to sing to an attentive crowd, and maybe even to be noticed by someone you fancied or to get a sing-along going. By the sounds of things, having a good song was hugely valuable, and occasions like these highlight the role that ballads would have had at gatherings on the island. At the time on Arranmore, a lot of people learned songs from ballad sheets, or just ballads as they were known.

Charlie describes the process people went through when learning songs from ballads in the way he did with that song. There’s another great version of that song from the singing of Mary Connors, a traveller recorded in Belfast in 1952 by Peter Kennedy. Judging by her singing of the song, it seems as though Charlie and herself sang the same lyrics – so Charlie’s memory of them was intact, but he just made up a melody of his own. Having sung and heard enough songs, he imagined the song for himself.

An Bacach Siúl – John Martin

I got chatting one evening to Dr. Johnny Duffy, an Arranmore man in his late 80s who has an incredibly memory – a wealth of knowledge and history. Johnny had been trying to think of a translation for the word vagabond, and he got talking about people who used to visit the island when he was a small boy. He said that there were people who would travel around on their own, calling into houses, maybe begging or selling things, who would often sing songs and tell stories. He said these people weren’t necessarily travellers – as in the ethnic group we have in Ireland, but they were known as bacaigh siúil or a bacach siúil. The word bacach, as in the song bacach síol andaí, means tramp or a lame person, but not in a derogatory way. These people weren’t lame, but some of them were physically disabled in some way that may have prevented them from working at manual labour.

The best known bacach siúl when Johnny Duffy was growing up, he said, was a man named John Martin. John Martin used to travel around selling ballad sheets and singing songs in public, often through a horn that he used to amplify his voice, and could be heard all over the island. He sold ballad sheets printed by the Three Candles Press in Dublin, and he used to sing in the schools sometimes. People would often take him in, and he would always be given food and a bed for the night by anyone he called in to.

I was intrigued by the story of John Martin, and I did a little digging that evening. I searched the ITMA catalogue, and saw a reference to him having been recorded by Séamus Ennis at the cattle fair in Gortahork, in Donegal, in 1954. The archive had a copy of this recording and I was sent it the next morning. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard it first.

Séamus Ennis was working for the BBC at the time. It’s an amazing recording of the entire scene. John Martin was recorded singing through the horn. There are cows mooing, people chatting and laughing, and you can hear that he turned as he sang in different directions. At the end you can hear him laughing a bit. Séamus Ennis interviewed him too, but he didn’t take Séamus Ennis or any of his questions too seriously and he sounded like a real character. The song is the ‘Turfman From Ardee’.

I was delighted to find that these recordings of John Martin existed, but I had a notion that morning to contact Michael Fortune – a brilliant folklorist from Wexford, to see if he might have seen any pictures of him, or if he might know anything about the bacach siúl. The story then took an unbelievable twist.

As it turned out, Michael not only knew about John Martin, but he knew where he was buried and even where the horn was.

In the late 50s John Martin spent a lot of time in Wexford, cycling between villages, selling ballads, singing at fairs or in schools, and sleeping in people’s barns. One morning in the early 60s he was found dead in someone’s barn, so the local community collected the money to bury him, in the corner of a graveyard where they buried unknown sailors who washed up on the shore. He was a loved by all in the community in Wexford, and is fondly remembered by those who knew him. Michael sent me some photos of the grave, which he visited a few years ago. His cousins put the cross on it, and local people still place flowers on bacach siúl’s grave.

These wandering vagabonds, the bacaigh siúl, didn’t just pass around old ballads, as I discovered.

The bards – songwriters & poets of Arranmore

Peadar Breathnach, was a travelling tailor and a prolific songwriter from Glenfin in Donegal who lived from 1825-1870. ‘Amhrán Pheadar Bhreathnaigh’ is a song that he wrote about something that happened to him on Arranmore, and actually took place in the pub in Leabgarrow which is now Jerry Early’s bar. My grandfather sang this song and it seems as though it was recorded by Hugh Shields in 1977, but that the recording was lost from the tapes at some stage. What we still have is a recording of him telling the story of the song, and recordings of some other singers singing it.

From what I can tell, it seems like Arranmore has always had a strong tradition of song writers, and a strong connection with poets and writers from the mainland. My mam remembers Seán Bán Mac Grianna coming in to visit her dad on a regular basis, bringing a few notebooks and a bottle of whiskey with him to go through some of his new songs with Barney.

Songwriting in a traditional form is still going on on Arranmore, whether or not the songwriters are aware of it. The song ‘I’ll Go’, written by Jerry Early and John Gallagher a few years ago, was written about a heroic lifeboat rescue off the coast of Donegal in 1940, when eight fishermen from Arranmore rescued 18 dutch sailors from their ship in the middle of a hurricane. I’ve written a few songs on the same story, and I made a radio ballad about it earlier this year.

To my ears, ‘I’ll Go’ follows similar form and structure to that of a seafaring ballad – maybe along the lines of ‘We’ll Go to Sea No More’. Whether or not Jerry and John knew it at the time, I consider their song to be part of this old tradition of songwriting on the island. After it was written, the song was recorded and produced in a modern style, but if it’s stripped back to the bare bones, it’s a lot closer to a traditional ballad.

Andrew was recorded singing that by Hugh Shields in the Glen Hotel in 1977, in the same place where Róise was recorded 24 years earlier.

Pete Sweeney went to school with my granddad but didn’t continue his education into second and third level. Instead, he turned his intelligence and talent to writing. He was a very prolific poet and wrote a lot of songs, often very quickly. He wrote the lyrics first, I’m told, and would attach a melody afterwards, but would write in rhythmic structures that worked well with old traditional melodies. His songs are absolutely traditional as far as I’m concerned. He wrote songs for other people to sing, and I think that’s a really interesting aspect of songwriting within a community tradition like the one on Arranmore. I think of tradition as a creative process that exists within communities and a community’s shared memory, and Pete was a talented and important channel of that tradition, in my eyes.

Pete was over and back to Chicago a lot throughout his life, alongside many Arranmore people, and he wrote a few songs on the topic of emigration – like ‘Má Théann Tú Go hÉirinn’, as sung beautifully by Domhnaill Phaidí Hiudan, recorded by Hugh Shields.

Unrecorded songs

One of my main interests while doing this work is to find songs on the island that haven’t been documented or recorded either on the island or anywhere else.

There are two songs that I have recorded on the island that were learned by the singers from Róise Rua, but that weren’t recorded from Róise. Who knows why they weren’t recorded – it’s possible that the folklorists thought that one of them was a more modern country song, or that they weren’t interested in English language songs since she had such a unique repertoire of songs in Irish.

The first of these songs is one called ‘The Harp Without the Crown’. I recorded this song two years ago in Early’s bar on Arranmore sung by Madge Green. Madge told me that she learned this song from Róise when she was a small girl. When Róise’s husband would go to Scotland to work as a scythe’s man, she would stay with Madge’s family so that she wouldn’t be at home on her own. Madge told me that Róise would sing all English songs when she would be staying with them and this is one of those songs.

The recording is from a classic night in Early’s bar, on the 26^th of December 2018. Sadly, Madge passed away only a few months after this was recorded. She was larger than life, a great singer and a constant dancer and she’s hugely missed by her family and the community on the island.

The song is probably a fragment of a longer song, but there’s enough in this recording to start the trail of research. I’m only scratching the surface at the moment, but from what I can tell, it’s a distinct and unrecorded song. There are a few songs which refer to a ship which bore the flag of the harp without the crown, but they haven’t got much else in common with this one. The melody is almost exactly that of the ‘Star of Phillipstown’, another song Róise used to sing, which was recorded from her.

This recording of this song was made by Steve O’Connor, a friend of mine who was up on the island to help Myles O’Reilly capture footage of Féile Róise Rua. It was recorded in the bar of the Glen Hotel on the 17^th of May 2019 – 66 years after Andrew sat around the same room when Róise was recorded there in 1953, and 42 years after he was recorded singing there by Hugh Shields in 1977.

I thought that Andrew’s was the only version of that song recorded on Arranmore, until last week when a recording surfaced – on a cassette tape from the mid 70s recorded by Colm Toland from Inishowen, made while visiting Dermot & Mary Toland who were living on the island. The singer is Joe Phil Bhig, who was recorded a lot by Hugh Shields in ‘77, and who had a unique version of ‘No One to Welcome Me Home’ with a very different melody.

When Andrew was recorded in the Glen Hotel that night in 2019, I was sat beneath him on the ground. The energy in the room that night was electric and I’m so glad that moment was captured.

Andrew was one of the strongest living links to Róise Rua. He knew her well as a young boy, and used to call into her a lot. Himself and his friends would call in to her and Séamie, but mostly to act the blackguard, and have the craic, rather than listening to Róise’s songs or stories. He regretted that a bit, but the stories are brilliant.

Róise took an interest in Andrew though, and must have known he could sing, so when everyone would be leaving for home Róise used to get Andrew to stay with her, and she’d sing a few songs to him. She’d sing the ‘Star of Phillipstown’, ‘No One to Welcome Me Home’, ‘Glencoe’, and any of her songs in Irish.

When it would be time for Andrew to leave, it would be dark outside, and the lane down from Róise’s house was narrow and rocky. She’d stick a fork into a hot coal in the fire, take it outside and blow on it til it went alight, and give that to Andrew to light his way home. Andrew would hold his torch high into the wind as he walked down the path, and the wind would keep the coal glowing until he got close to home. He’d leave the fork in the ditch and bring it back up to Róise again the next morning.

Andrew told me that story many times. What a powerful symbol that was for what was happening on those evenings between himself and Róise. Andrew actually never let that torch go out and he sang right until his last days.

Andrew passed away while I was on Arranmore researching and writing for this project in November. He was a close friend of me and my family, and was like a grandfather to me since I was a small boy. He was a guiding light to me in many ways, and I miss him dearly. I sang a few songs with him only three days before he died and I’m so grateful for every moment I had with him. He was an amazing man.

I’m going to let Andrew sing us out. This is a song that Andrew learned as a teenager from an older man on the island. He heard a neighbour of his sitting on a wall singing this song, and he wrote the words down on a torn up cigarette carton. The man he learned it from couldn’t read or write. It’s a version of the ‘Lowlands of Holland’, and I find it really interesting. The Rocks around Gibraltar are mentioned, which makes me wonder if it was Holland or a Dutch colony that is being referred to throughout the song.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog. I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface, but I don’t see an end to this research either – it’s a long and happy road for me to be on.

Nollaig shona, slán agus beannacht.

Acknowledgments 

Sincere thanks to all those individuals and organisations who gave permission to use recordings and images, and helped with the preparation of this blog.

John ‘Twin’ McNamara was born in Dooagh, Achill Island on 7th June 1935 and is one of Achill’s most important historians, folklorists and collector of songs, poetry and stories associated with Achill and its connections to significant aspects of our local and national cultural heritage.

Musician, author, and music teacher, Annie Patterson was born 27 October 1868 in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, daughter of Thomas Rankin Patterson, bakery owner, and Martha Macaulay Patterson (née Wilson), a distant relative of Lord Macaulay. She attended Alexandra College, Dublin, on a scholarship, studying music under Dr James Culwick (d. 1907). She continued her studies at the RIAM under Robert Stewart and obtained a BA and Mus.B. (1887) and a Mus.D. (1889) from the RUI. Patterson was the first woman in Ireland or Britain to receive a doctorate in music that was not honorary.. She made her debut as a solo organist at the age of 15 and was the organist at several Dublin churches (1887–97). She acted as an examiner in music at the RUI (1892–5) and at TCD (1892–5). During the 1890s she became interested in the Irish language, taking classes and joining the Gaelic League. She encouraged the notion that the development of the language should be accompanied by a revival in Irish music. She published Six original Gaelic songs (1896) and was the prime mover behind the first Feis Ceoil, which met in Dublin, 18 May 1897. She was on the organising committee of the first Oireachtas, held in the Round Room of the Rotunda, Dublin, on the day following the Feis Ceoil. She conducted a choir which had been especially assembled to sing Gaelic songs for the occasion, and composed the music for ‘Go mairidh ár nGaedhilg slán’, an anthem for the Gaelic League, the words of which were written by Dermot Foley. Her commitment to fusing classical music with the Irish cultural revival is reflected in her composition of two operas, ‘The high-king’s daughter’ and ‘Oisín’.

She had conducted the Dublin Choral Union (1891–3) and in 1898 she moved to London to become conductor of the Hampstead Harmonic Society. She lived in London until 1908, during which time she published The story of oratario (1902), Schumann (1903), and Chats with music lovers (1905). She then went to Cork to become the organist at St Anne’s, Shandon, prompting her to write a choral piece, ‘The bells of Shandon’. She was examiner in music at the Cork Municipal School of Music (1914–19) and the Leinster School of Music (1919–26). In 1924 she was appointed corporation lecturer in music at UCC, a position she held until her death. Among her other publications were How to listen to an orchestra (1913) and The profession of music (1926). She also contributed to various journals and gave a series of popular radio broadcasts. She had to cancel a broadcast when she fell ill with a cold in January 1934. The cold became pleurisy and she died 16 January at 43 South Mall, Cork. She left £1,632.

Contributed by
Murphy, William

Sources
W. A. Houston Collison, Dr Collison in and on Ireland (1908), 136; O’Donoghue; Cork Examiner, Ir. Independent, Ir. Press, 17 Jan. 1934; WWW; Stanley Sadie (ed.), The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians, xiv (1980); Anne V. O’Connor and Susan M. Parkes, Gladly learn and gladly teach (1984), 85; Donncha Ó Suilleabháin, Scéal an Oireachtas 1897–1924 (1984), 15, 95; DIH; Beathaisnéis 1882–1982, iii; John A. Murphy, The college (1995), 242; Kit and Cyril Ó Céirín, Women of Ireland: a biographic dictionary (1996); Fintan Vallely (ed.), The companion to Irish traditional music (1999), 121, 279

PUBLISHING INFORMATION
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.007229.v1
Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography Contributed by
Murphy, William

Last revised October 2009
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license.

The greatest number of Irish songs ever published, over 1,000 in all, was collected, researched, edited and set to music by An tAthair Pádruig Breathnach / Fr Patrick A. Walsh (1848–1930), a Vincentian Catholic priest and an active cultural nationalist who is almost now a forgotten figure. . Published at politically significant times from 1904 to 1926, Breathnach’s songbooks influenced nationalist cultural thinking during the period, providing material for the de-anglicisation programme of the Gaelic League, disseminating patriotic songs in English during the War of Independence, and making bilingual song provision for schools as part of the nation-building of the new state.

Some 470 of these songs are in Irish and 530 in English. Drawn from oral, manuscript and printed sources, they were published in a sequence of cheap popular songsters and songbooks mainly by the Dublin firm of Browne & Nolan. Every song text was set to a melody in tonic solfa. Sales of these publications ran into the tens of thousands, and they would have a lasting influence on the oral tradition of both languages.

Pádruig Breathnach was born during the Famine in a largely Irish-speaking district near Carrick-on-Suir, Co Waterford. Having been educated locally and in the Catholic seminary of Maynooth, Co. Kildare, he was ordained a priest about 1873; most of his ministry was carried out in the cities of Cork and Dublin. He was interested in music and song from his youth, and, as an early enthusiast for the preservation and revival of the Irish language, he joined several Irish-language organisations before becoming a member of the new Gaelic League in 1893. As a young priest in Cork, he collected songs in Irish from his parishioners and on holidays in west Cork. More than 150 Irish-language songs in his collections, words and music, were collected in Cork and Waterford by himself or by his close associate Áine Ní Raghallaigh (1868–1942) of Macroom, a Gaelic League singing teacher.

In the early 1900s, when he himself was in his fifties, Breathnach was persuaded to begin publishing songs in Irish in penny songsters for schoolchildren. The success of his efforts led him to continue with similar songsters aimed at members of the growing Irish-language revival. The songsters were eventually collected into book form in 1913, and he went on to produce a series of further Irish-language songbooks for over a decade. Many of their songs were new, insofar as Breathnach selected verses by various authors and set them to music collected by himself or chosen by him from the published collections of Irish melody. Breathnach was also aware of the national value of the English-language songs of Ireland and by 1915 he had begun the publication of these songs, again in penny songster form and eventually in a hardback series of songbooks. His publishers advertised these as containing over 1,300 pages of song.

An Cóta Mór Stróicthe  (The Big, Torn Coat)

Ennis wrote that two men, one whose surname was Mac Donncha and the other de Búrca, both from east Galway,  were in pursuit of the same woman whose surname was Ní Mháille. Having refused a dance to de Búrca, she accepted a dance from Mac Donncha. De Búrca insulted her using a bad name and  Mac Donncha took an iron bar and killed him. He spent a year and a day in Leitreach Ard, hiding from the police. The man for whom he worked during this time had the fugitive fined by the police in court after this time. He then went home to Dubh Leitir. He left the ‘big torn coat’ after him, following a week of poitín drinking. The woman he fancied was about to marry another, but when she heard that Mac Donncha had returned she went along with him.

The song was around a hundred years old in the 1940s according to Seáinín Choilmín Mac Donncha. He reminisces about happier times. His mother is heartbroken as her husband has died and her son is roaming the countryside. He says that he will never engage with young women again as he has seen his darling being kissed by another man.

The song is the story as told by Mac Donncha as he wanders the countryside in a sorry state, he is sore and weary from constant walking.

[ from NFC 1280: 251-253]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote in Irish ‘easily’ above the music notation.

Cailín Deas Crúite na mBó  [The Pretty Girl Milking the Cows]

Ennis wrote that a woman was singing a bawdy song while milking cows. A priest passing by heard the singing and ordered the girl, in reparation, to come to church the following Sunday, wearing a long white sheet, with a piece of a bone of a horse in her mouth and to stand at the church door so that everyone entering the church would spit on her and she agreed to this. A friar lived near her and he sent for her. She went to him and he asked her if she could learn a song quickly. She said she could and did so.

The song exhorts people to repent of their sins and to live a good life. It asks the Virgin Mary for protection and states that the Day of Judgement will arrive. It exhorts people to attend mass.

The girl sang the song at church the following Sunday and the priest said that whoever had taught her the song, taught her well.

[from NFC 1280: 135-137]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote in irish, in brackets ‘(From the same person)’ [Vail Bheairtle Ó Donncha] on the music notation.

In December 1942 Séamus Ennis was in Carna where, on the afternoon of 14.12.42, he ‘recorded two tunes from Micheál Choilmín Mac Fhualáin’, a fiddle player whom he had met previously in November when he attended ‘a great night’s music’ with five musicians.  This jig was likely among the tunes transcribed and in his notes to the transcription Ennis indicates that Mac Fhualáin believed this to be a very old tune. The jig was published as ‘The Angry Peeler’ in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (No. 1041). Breandán Breathnach suggested that it is related to ‘Carraig an tSoip’ [The Rock of the Bundle of Straw?]  in Ceol Rince na hÉireann 1 (No. 3). The Kilfenora Céili Band recorded a version which they titled ‘Brodie Kierce’s’ while concertina player, Chris Droney, recorded another variant with the title The Clogher Rose.

Ennis noted on the music transcription for the two tunes written from Maidhcil Choilmín on this occasion, by means of an asterisk * ‘These are both c# although the inclination would be to play c natural – may be the performer’s own whim.’

Referring to the fiddle player Maidhcil Mac Fhualáin from whom Ennis transcribed other tunes, the collector wrote in Irish: ‘He never heard it anywhere else apart from that district. December 1942.’

Ennis noted ‘the singing of Colm Ó L[ochlainn]’ which may refer to the air of the song. He also noted that Seán Ó Gaora got the song from Pádraig de Búrca a brother of the storyteller Éamon de Búrca. Pádraig had died, aged 51, eight years before Ennis collected the song from Seán. It is likely that Pádraig got the song in An Aird Mhóir.

It is a lovesong in which the man is distraught at the fact that his darling is married to another man.

[From NFC 1280: 102-104]

Mo Chúranán

The meaning of the title is unclear, but it is most likely a term of endearment.

Ennis wrote “Donnacha got this lullaby from a woman from Co. Antrim one night when there was music in the hotel in Gort an Choirce. He did not recall her name or her address. Seán Ó hEochaidh tells me that he often heard this air in Teileann, Donegal but these were not the words that accompanied it. He could not recall the words, however. I have transcribed the entire lullaby from Donncha.”

[From NFC 1282:33]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote the following above the music notation of the song:

Music from Donnacha Ó Baoighill from Leitir Chatha, Clochán Liath, Tír Chonaill.

‘Mo Chúranán’ lullaby

‘Slowly, in a regular fashion’. He wrote ‘ralle[n]tando’ [gradual decrease of speed] over the final line of the notation.

Fuígfidh mise’n baile seo (I will leave this place)

Ennis noted that Dinny got the song from his father.

In the song, a woman laments the fact that she is married to someone who won’t let her go to mass and won’t buy her a drink or have a drink with her at the ale-house. And he does not press  her to his heart as a young man would.

[NFC 1282:31]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote, in Irish, the words ‘Lighthearted, lively’ above the music transcription.

Amhrán Pheadair Bhreathnaigh [Peadar Breathnach’s Song]

Ennis wrote from Dinny Ó Baoill that this was what the song was called by the old people. It was composed by Peadar Breathnach.  Dinny thought that he was a tailor and recalled that his grandfather spoke about him, saying that he spent some of his life in Leitir Mhic an Bhaird in Na Rosann and that is where he was when he composed ‘Snath na Báiríona’ [The Queen’s Thread]. He spent the last part of his life in Mín na Gualann in the parish of Inis Caoil. He was wanted because of his debts at this time and he avoided them by going to the islands.

The song tells of his being on the run on the islands. He met a girl and asked her where he could get a drink that would raise his spirits. Some of the song is in the form of a conversation between the man and the girl and he describes how he began to sing and the young people gathered in.

[from NFC 1282:15-16]

An Cailín Rua (The Red-Haired Girl)

Ennis noted that Dinny got this song from his father Páidí (Duncaí) who was from Loch an Iúir. The song tells of a man who was in love with a red-haired girl. He describes her beauty,  and praises her. She, however, takes what he gives her and then goes off with a rogue of a shop-boy.

[NFC 1282:71-72]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote in Irish ‘lively’ above the music transcription.

Ennis noted that Dinny got this song from Pádraig Ó Dónaill from Loch an Iúir. Pádraig was around 65 years of age in the mid nineteen forties when Ennis was collecting from Dinny. Ennis noted that the background to the song is on p.100 of  Céad de Cheolta Uladh.

[NFC 1282:23-25]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote ‘easily’ in Irish, above the music transcription.

This is a lighthearted song in which the composer is compelled by the force of love to celebrate it in song.

Ennis noted on the music transcription that Máire sang it sadly and he wrote ‘easily’ in Irish above the music. He also noted that this is how it is said ‘Doe do ó didle ó’.

An Mhaighdean Mhara [The Mermaid]

Ennis wrote that the song is about a mermaid called Méirí Shinídh. It concerns a man who went out fishing one day and the mermaid came to the stern of the boat and she had a cloak (that was what was keeping her on the surface). He stole it from her and she came home with him. He hid the cloak in a stack of oats. They married and had two children Máire Bhruinnil and Pádraig Bán. One day, the daughter saw this beautiful cloak in the stack of oats and she told her mother about it. The mother went to the stack, took the cloak and returned to the sea. She was very close to her daughter and she would come every day and would comb the girl’s hair and the song is the conversation that took place between them.

Ennis wrote the account from Síle Mhicí.

[ from NFC 1282:250-252]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote the following note at the start of the music notation of Síle’s songs:

Music from Gaoth Dobhair

From Síle (Mhicí ) Ní Ghallchóbhair (82), Dobhar Láir, Donegal. She is not a pure singer now – she does not sing the notes accurately and so I wrote the following six songs from Cití Ní Ghallchobhair (21) (v. the manuscript with lyrics). I wrote the music of the songs from number seven onwards from Síle.

He wrote in Irish ‘slowly’ above the music notation of ‘An Mhaighdean Mhara’.

He also wrote in Irish : ‘ The words ‘ádha’, ‘sámh’ and ‘snámh’ pronounced as in the English word ‘bough’.

Óró Londubh Buí (Óró, Yellow Blackbird)

Ennis wrote that this version from Dinny is the Gaoth Dobhair version of the song. He got it from Mairéad, Bean Uí Ghuibhir, 30 years earlier [c. 1914], (she was around 60 at the time), Gaoth Dobhair.

A man and his wife are returning from a wake when they meet a young man who asks the man for his wife. She accompanies the young man who is uncouth. After three seasons she returns home.

[See also ‘Cuach Mo Londubh Buí’]

[See NFC 1282: 20-23]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote ‘easily’ in Irish, above the music notation.

Ennis wrote that Dinny got the song from his mother.

This is a lighthearted courting song describing the exchange of messages between the couple in question.

[NFC  1282:32]

Note to music transcription:

On the music transcription Ennis wrote in Irish: ‘At reel tempo’ and the word ‘Chorus’ is written above the music. In the centre of the music transcription he wrote the word ‘Verse’ and at the end of the notation he wrote ‘Chorus again’.

Goidé Sin Don Té Sin?  [What does it matter to anyone?]

This is a lighthearted song by a man who enjoys life. He says he is sought after by women. Whatever he does, it shouldn’t  matter to anyone.

[See NFC 1282:293]

Note to music transcription:

Ennis wrote the words  ‘Lighthearted, regular’, above the music transcription.

Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair  [The Green Autumn Stubble]

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

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

[from NFC 1282:245-246]

Note to music transcription:

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

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

Brian Ó Domhnaill or Brian Danny Minnie is from Anagaire in the Donegal Gaeltacht. As a young boy, he was very interested in sean-nós traditional song and began to take part in singing events and competitions. In addition to his passion for songs, he also plays the flute. Brian is particularly interested in local songs and singers, including those of previous generations. He loves the stories associated with songs and the singers of previous generations and has gathered a great deal of information about them. He brought together a collection of hundreds of songs which he presented to the Irish Traditional Music Archive. He hopes to continue with the project related to these songs, which was brought to a halt due to the pandemic. He is deeply interested in song versions and in discussing variants of songs and their lyrics.  He is committed to keeping the song tradition alive. He is a first-class chef and was awarded Donegal Chef of the Year. He manages the noted restaurant   ‘Dannie Minnie’s’ in Anagaire which has a world-wide reputation. 

Éamon Ó Donnchadha was born in Bluebell in Dublin. His mother came from Marlborough Place in the city centre and her father was a blacksmith. His father was from Toomevara in Tipperary, came to Dublin and joined the civil service. They married and Irish was the first language of the home and of their seven children. Éamon developed an interest in music and singing when he attended St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra and he often shared his music with friends Ger Galvin and Fearghas Mac Lochlainn. His interest further increased when he went to Leitir Móir and An Trá Bháin in Conamara where he heard Máirín Uí Chéidigh, her uncle Coilmín an tSeoighigh and other Conamara singers ag casadh na n-amhrán. Éamon was entranced by the magic of the poetry, the musicality of the language and the artistry of sean-nós singing. On three occasions he won Corn Ui Riada. He is particularly interested in the songs of Galway poet Antaine Ó Raiftearaí. Éamon often participates in Oireachtas competitions along with his friend Fearghas Mac Lochlainn, composer of ditties (lúibíní), working songs and agallamh beirte. or verse dialogue.

Éamon married Mairéad Ní Cheallaigh. a daughter of Peige an tSeoighigh from An Sconsa and Pádraic Ó Ceallaigh from An Máimín both noted singers.  Éamon and Mairéad live in the Ráth Chairn Irish speaking district in County Meath. Éamon spent twenty years as a schoolteacher in Ráth Chairn Éamon and Mairéad’s children are involved in music and song along with their parents.