Music and song collected by Séamus Ennis in the 1940s and recreated by contemporary singers and musicians associated with the same locality.  Presented by Ríonach uí Ógáin, with thanks to the National Folklore Collection  and the Arts Council

Séamus Ennis is remembered for the most part as a piper par excellence. However he was also a collector, broadcaster, singer and raconteur. His appointment with the Irish Folklore Commission spanned the years 1942 to 1947 and the results of his fieldwork contain a wide variety of material, with an emphasis on traditional music and song. His work brought him to the west of Ireland and most of the material is in Irish. His collecting tools consisted of pen and paper although he made a small number of sound recordings according as sound recording equipment, primarily the Ediphone, was made available for some field trips. As a result, the bulk of the songs, tunes and airs from Ennis exist in manuscript form alone. The Ennis music transcriptions amount to some 600 songs and tunes, with songs accounting for around three quarters.  Ennis built relationships with singers and musicians inside and outside their homes, as people willingly gave their music and song to him. The dance music was transcribed from lilting and whistling for the most part with a small amount of instrumental music from accordion, fiddle and uilleann pipes. Following his initial documentation of the staff notation and words of tunes and songs, Séamus Ennis then transcribed the music from his field notes to the manuscripts now found in the the National Folklore Collection,UCD. 

This project, funded by the Arts Council, highlights the importance of understanding earlier fieldwork followed by an archival process. Crucially, it gives an insight into archival material which is the result of ethnographic fieldwork. Older transcriptions have been given new life and interpretation as contemporary performers engage with the work of Séamus Ennis as fieldworker and transcriber. The manuscript material provides a provenance and original performer. 

Singers and musicians have been invited to investigate and interpret some of the songs and music in the Ennis Collection. After the performers had chosen their particular transcriptions, they then engaged with tunes and songs collected at a given time and in a given place. Singers and musicians were then recorded. The transcriptions capture the exchange involved in fieldwork. The initiative allows for a combination of recognition of the work of Séamus Ennis, of the material itself and of the archive, while being also true to contemporary singers and musicians. It generates a fresh relationship of our current time to the archive. 

The project offered an opportunity for performers to interpret handwritten, archival transcriptions at will. They have given new insights and new life rather than imitation.  The transcriptions have provided a framework while at the same time enabling the artists’ innovation, interpretation and creativity. 

Ríonach uí Ogáin, May 2022

Le Buíochas / With thanks

Na ceoltóirí agus na fonnadóirí, the musicians and singers, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Marty Curran, Adam Girard, Treasa Harkin, Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann, Leabharlann na Breataine, Neansaí Ní Choisdealbha, Peigí Ní Thuathail, Garry Ó Briain, Damien Ó Dónaill, Máire O’Keeffe, Gwyn Ó Murchú, JJ O’Shea, Tom Sherlock, Lisa Shields.  Séamus Ennis photograph courtesy of Anna, Mary agus Nóra Ní Chadhain.

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

Séamus Ennis, musician, folklorist, singer, and broadcaster, was born 5 May 1919 in Jamestown Lodge, Finglas, Dublin, son of James Ennis, civil servant and warpiper from Dublin, and Mary Josephine Ennis (née McCabe) from Co. Monaghan. He had three sisters and two brothers. His father played the warpipes on the airwaves at the inauguration of radio broadcasting in Ireland in 1926. Séamus was educated at Glasnevin primary school, Belvedere College, and Coláiste Mhuire in Dublin, where he studied Irish and music. He left Coláiste Mhuire in 1936 and went to work in Colm Ó Lochlainn’s (qv) printing house ‘The Sign of the Three Candles’ in Fleet Street, Dublin, until 1942.

His job at the Three Candles was to write and fill in the musical notation for the numerous songs in the Ó Lochlainn publication Irish street ballads, one of the best collections of ballads in existence. There is an insight into the work he did in one barony in Clár amhrán Bhaile na hInse, published in 1976 by Ríonach Ní Fhlathartaigh. In the late 1930s and early 1940s he began travelling with his friend Kevin McCann to Mayo, Donegal, Kerry, west Cork, and the western islands off the coast of Scotland, collecting songs and tunes of dance. From 1942 to 1947 he was employed in this work by the Irish Folklore Commission, and was deployed mainly in Connemara. By 1947 he had a reputation as a collector of sean-nós (traditional style) songs and at the Golden Jubilee Oireachtas of that year he organised a session about the meaning of singing, which lasted three days. In autumn 1947 Radio Éireann (RÉ) employed Ennis and Seán Mac Réamoinn (1921–2007) as outside broadcasting officers to collect speech and music, mainly from Irish-speaking areas. They travelled around Ireland collecting song texts and airs, and also many dance tunes, such as reels, jigs, slip jigs, set dances and hornpipes. One of their first trips was to Peig Sayers’s (qv) house in Dún Chaoin, where they recorded sixty minutes of Peig’s seanchas (folklore, mythology, legends, stories, etc.) on discs; tape recorders were not yet available. At this time it was one of the biggest broadcasting ventures.

Ennis collected various eclectic materials in English and Irish for RÉ until 1951, when he left Ireland to work for the BBC Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme, assisting Brian George in promoting the successful BBC programme ‘As I roved out’. The programme achieved a listenership of 7 million during the 1950s. One fruit of Ennis’s long experience with Irish musicians was seen in the Irish record in the series ‘Columbia Folk’. He left the BBC in 1957 to work as an independent journalist and musician. He began to provide English translations for Irish songs and in 1962 he translated Peig Sayers’s 1939 work Machtnamh seanamhna into English under the title An old woman’s reflections.

He was in bad health from the 1960s and it seemed his lifestyle (involving travelling around the country in all weathers) was not helping. He began travelling with the Dubliners on tour, still collecting music. Hundreds of songs and tunes of his were lost in a fire in Lisdoonvarna on one of the tours. In 1968 he became a joint patron of the newly formed Na Píobairí Uilleann. He married (1952) Margaret Glynn, an air hostess, in Kerry; they had two children, Christopher and Catherine, and separated when their daughter was four. Apart from his music, Séamus had an extraordinary ear for language. In the Gaeltacht he could switch from one dialect to another with perfect ease; this facility extended even to Scotland. This and his easy manner made him the most successful collector of folklore in the Irish language. Most of his work in this field is in the folklore archives of UCD. He was a very private person and had all the detachment of an artist. He chose to live alone and though he had many friends his circle of intimates was quite small.

He was living in Naul, Co. Dublin, in a caravan beside his sister Ursula (‘Pixie’) when he died on 5 October 1982. He had christened their place ‘Easter Snow’; it was located opposite the graveyard where he is buried. In 1994 a plaque in his honour was erected on the site of the Ennis home in Finglas. A section of Jamestown Road, Finglas, was renamed ‘Séamus Ennis Road’ by John Gormley, lord mayor of Dublin, in October 1994. In 2000 the cultural centre of Fingal was named after him. There are various recordings of his music, the most important being 40 years of Irish piping.

Source: Dictionary of Irish Biography  https://www.dib.ie/