I remember our cousin Kevin O’Brien telling me that as a Strawboy he had danced 40 brides! Let me explain that to you here.
The tradition of Strawboys was very much alive and well when I was growing up in Crusheen. Strawboys would come to the home-coming party of a local bride after her wedding day, dressed in straw costumes and in disguise. I became one of the musicians along with my father Joe and uncle Paddy for our local Strawboys. On getting to the house the floor would be cleared and musicians lined up to play for a Caledonian set by the Strawboys. Kevin’s job would be to dance the bride in the set and he was a good dancer. When the set was over the Strawboys would leave in full costume so as not to reveal their identity. The new bride and groom would issue an invitation for them to come back in to the party to Kevin.
Returning later dressed in our civilian clothes the party would get into full swing with music, songs and dancing going on well into the night. This tradition is still alive and well in parts of Clare. I dedicate this to the memory of Kevin O’Brien of Cappafean. Crusheen, County Clare.
Bóthar na Cearta was a local name to describe the locality where I grew up in Drumbaniff, Crusheen, County Clare long before the English surveyed and mapped the country. Sadly Bóthar na Cearta never made it on to their maps.
This tune is dedicated to my mother’s people, the McMahons of Cappafean, Crusheen, County Clare. Their father John was a noted set dancer and passed on his love of set dancing to all of them.
After the economic collapse and banking crisis I, like many others, became an economic migrant. Like generations before us we spread across the world in search of employment when there was none at home.
I got an opportunity to go to New York with an offer of a job as a night watchman in a new high rise apartment building that was being built on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. I was given the graveyard shift which was 12 hrs long. The building had no residents at this time so there was a lot of time on my hands and not a lot happening at my end.
One of my duties involved checking every part of the unoccupied building, making sure that everything was in order, safe and secure from the basement to the luxury penthouse while construction was going on. In the middle of December in the height of winter while on one my nightly rounds I could hear the wind echoing off the hard surfaces of the building and making strange noises, some that were almost human like cries to my ear.
Coming down the stairs from the penthouse 40 floors up on one of those nights I suddenly realised that I had been humming a bit of a melody all the way down imitating some of the sounds I had heard of the building being blown by the wind. I sang it into my phone for fear of losing the notes before I got to the foyer even though it was only half a tune at this stage. The resolve in melody came days later when I picked up my accordion back at my apartment in Brooklyn.
This reel is one I composed for my father Joe. He played the accordion and was a fine singer dancer and storyteller and was the main influence on my journey into the world of music. Like his brother Paddy he was also a member of the Tulla Ceili Band in the 1950’s and 60’s. Our home growing up was a house of music too.
By profession he was a Psychiatric Nurse and was the night Superintendent at Our Lady’s Hospital in Ennis. When I was in secondary school at St Flannan’s College in the town, I remember meeting an older man who asked me if I was the Captain’s son? Not knowing who he was talking about, he then asked me if Joe was my father and I answered yes. He then explained to me that Joe was his boss and that he was sometimes referred to as the Captain in the Hospital, a title that went back to his hurling days. He went on to tell me that if they (the staff) wanted to gain some favour from him they would often steer the discussion around to music and if that didn’t work then they’d move on to hurling and dogs, his other passions.
He left telling me that the Captain was a good man and a fair boss to have. I got a lovely insight into my father’s life outside of home from that meeting back in my early teenage years. ‘ One for the Captain’!
This tune is dedicated to the memory of my uncle Paddy Mc Namara of Drumbaniff, Crusheen, County Clare.
Paddy worked the family farm, one of their fields was know as Paddy’s Haggard.
He was very fine musician on accordion and fiddle, a singer and a dancer, and was a member of the Tulla Ceili Band in the 1950s and ’60s. He played fiddle on a series of 45’s that the band recorded back then.
When I was about 10 years old I was sent off on my bicycle 3 miles away to pick some messages (groceries) for my mother from Fogarty’s Shop and Pub in Crusheen village. I handed in my list with the money and my shopping bag to the woman of the house, our cousin Angela Fogarty.
When she had everything put in the bag she then cut me a wafer ice cream and told me to pick up an orange crate that was left on a bench across from the bar counter. I looked on in total surprise after hearing the chirping noises coming from the crate. She came out with me holding some string to tie it securely on the carrier of my bike. I had no idea what all this was about and was too shy to ask any questions till I got back home.
Once that was all done I hopped back up on my bike after relishing my ice cream and with Angela Fogarty issuing me orders to go easy and make sure that I brought the Day Old Chicks home safe and sound. Anyway, they chirped all the way down the road making their own music… happy as could be to my child’s mind.
In those days, it was common for everyone in the countryside to have their own hens and when there was a brooding hen and not enough eggs to hatch the woman of the house would send an order by post to the hatcheries in Limerick for an a dozen day old chicks which would be dispatched the following day by bus to local shops/pubs like Fogarty’s in Crusheen.
My epic journey home with these Day Old Chicks is the inspiration for this tune.
This tune is dedicated to my father’s family of Drumbaniff, Crusheen, County Clare. ‘The house at the bridge’ always referred to my father’s home place. Theirs was an open house where neighbours, friends and family went on cuairt after their days work was done. It was a place where music, dancing and singing happened on a regular basis, long before dance halls came along. His father Jim and his mother May were concertina players. Music was carried by them all – it lit them up.
The landscape in and around Cappafean in Crusheen, County Clare is an ancient one. It was carved out and shaped by the last ice age. This is drumlin country with rocks bigger than houses to be seen everywhere, carried by glaciers into the valleys from higher ground and left there long after the ice had melted. This is a remote and wild place, off the beaten-track, untamed. Life began here and remained unchanged for centuries.
Molly O’Brien, my grandmother, was born here in 1900 and lived to be 102. She married John McMahon and they raised a family of eight and worked the land. It was a tight-knit farming community of small holdings and big families living in humble thatched houses.
During the War of Independence 1919 to 1921 they, along with their neighbours opened up their homes, gave food, shelter and refuge to the volunteers who were on-the-run and living in the wilds.
‘The House Under the Hill’ is a musical tribute and a celebration of the role that families and communities (like my own) gave in the struggle for independence.
The name for this tune came from a story my father Joe used to tell a lot when he was in the company of some of his old band friends including PJ Hayes from the Tulla Band who was married to my mother’s sister Peggy. Whenever himself and PJ got together there were always tunes and the stories that came with them. In this case he was telling the story of ‘Turning Mary Browne’ !
His way of telling a stories was so captivating as he set out the scene, painting in the fine details and describing things in a way that came from an older time when there was no photographs or images to inform the listener. unlike nowadays.
He was after getting his first one-row melodeon from an older woman, Jane Tierney, who lived in an old mill house near the village of Crusheen, County Clare, after she had gotten a new one. He was making great progress on the melodeon and Jane was very impressed with him as a musician. Often when on his way to the village Jane would spot him coming on his bike and would run out to meet him and of course she’d enquire of him and how he was getting on with melodeon. She would then ask him to come in and help her turn Mary Browne! I have no idea who Mary Browne was nor what the tune was for that matter.
I dedicate this to the memory of Jane Tierney melodion player who was passed and gone long before I was born.
Note: The second part of a tune is often referred to as the turn.
Christy Mc Namara grew up in a musical family in Crusheen, County Clare. He plays accordion and concertina and is a specialist in black and white photography.
His debut recording ‘ The House I was Reared In‘ was released in (2007). This year sees the release of a new recording of his original compositions ‘The Year of the Blizzard‘. Christy has been part of the session scene over many years and a regular performer at festivals including Scoil Samhradh Willy Clancy and The Feakle Festival.
He was a soloist with live score and orchestra for the screening of the film ‘Barry Lyndon‘ (Stanley Kubrick) at The Kings Theater Brooklyn, New York City in 2017.
His photography of traditional music is featured in his book ‘The Living Note‘ (O Brien Press 1996) with author Peter Woods, it received wide acclaim.
His work has been exhibited extensively at home and abroad over the last three decades and is held in both public and private collections worldwide. He was photographer in Residence at ITMA for 2022.
He is featured in the film documentary ‘The Job of Songs‘ on traditional music in County Clare.
In 2023 he was invited to do an an exhibition of his photographic work on traditional music and to perform at Masters of Tradition festival in Bantry, Co.Cork
