During the January 2021 lockdown piper Roger O’Keeffe sent a short video to Shay Fogarty’s Meitheal Deardaoin WhatsApp group. It showed the River Dodder in Dublin bursting its banks after heavy rain. He wrote:
‘As the Banks of the Dodder disappear, we need a new tune: The Dodder in Spate.’
I took up the challenge and composed my tune ‘The Dodder in full spate’ that evening. I sent in my score of it the next day, along with a watercolour I had done of the weir at the Dodder in Milltown in sunnier times.
Banks of the Dodder [artwork] / Lisa Shields
Banks of the Dodder, watercolour by Lisa Shields
Piper Dave Fadden then recorded himself playing my tune on the whistle, and posted that to the group. More compositions followed – Dave’s tune called ‘Roger’s dawdle down the Dodder’ and ‘The Rolling Dodder’, a jig from Shay Fogarty. Hugh Magee is also a member of that Meitheal Deardoain group and he picked up my tune from there.
The Dodder in full spate [comp. Lisa Shields], jig
