Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill (Síle Ní Ghallchóir)

Síle Ní Ghallchóir 

(Síle Mhicí), Dobhar Láir. Síle lived near the family of Eoin Éamoin Ó Gallchóir, and gave them many songs. Eoin Éamoin’s daughter, Cití Ní Ghallchóir, told Ennis about Síle Mhicí who gave him much material. She spoke Scottish. She was always very youthful. She died c. 1960. Síle told Ennis she had a small lodging house in Scotland for coalminers. She had reared her family there. Her sight failed with advancing years. The family returned to Ireland, but her children later emigrated to Scotland, England and America, apart from one daughter who married in Croithlí. Síle got many of her songs from her father in Machaire Ghlaisce (See NFC 1282: 259–60). Cití Ní Ghallchóir had written the songs from Síle and given them to Ennis, who then went to Síle, went over the songs with her and made a few minor changes to the words. 

Ennis described Síle in his own words in the diary entry for 24 March 1944 on his first visit to her with Cití Ní Ghallchóir. He wrote that Cití: ‘brought me to Síle Gallagher, the old woman from whom she got her songs. She is a small, heavyish woman who is 82 years of age, but she is as agile as a child. She was tending cattle – a cow had given birth a few days before that – when we arrived. She brought me into the house when we arrived and we talked and laughed with her for a while. Our conversation turned to songs and she said she would give me plenty of songs but to return in the evening because she was very busy working in the house during the day.’

He visited Síle again on 29 March and although the old lady was not well they ‘ talked a great deal until ten o’clock or so. And she would not let me go without giving me a song to write – such a kind woman. I wrote ‘Amhrán na Circe’ [The Hen’s Song] from her. I said goodbye and she told me to come in the summer and spend a week taking songs down from her. I hope she will still be there.’