O’Neill’s 1001 and East ClareA Curious Connection

Gerard Foley

Preface

In 1903 Captain Francis O’Neill published O’Neill’s Music of Ireland. This was a collection

comprising 1850 Airs, Jigs, Reels, Hornpipes etc. It met with success and, arising from this, he

perceived a popular appetite for a compilation specifically dedicated to the dance music of Ireland.

Many of the tunes in the new collection would be drawn from his previous effort but in 1906 he

travelled to Ireland in search of further material for this project. He found little music to excite him

until he heard a handful of tunes near Feakle in East Clare. In 1907 he published The Dance Music of

Ireland, O’Neill’s 1001. This book, over time, became an important printed source of new tunes for

traditional musicians all over Ireland. The conundrum is that several tunes now identified as part of the

East Clare repertoire are drawn almost directly from this collection. I decided to explore when and how

this happened,

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due primarily to :

Mary Coughlan (nee Canny) for allowing me to record an interview with her and for furnishing

me with much valuable information about Paddy Canny.

Vincent Griffin for information regarding O’Neill’s visit to the area.

Paddy O’Brien from Offaly for supplying me with a copy of a recording made of Paddy Canny

in August 1972.

Also to:

Sandra Joyce for her understanding and advice.

Micheal O’Suilleabhain for his inspirational work on Tommy Potts.

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Table of Contents

Page

Preface i

Acknowledgements ii

1. Among the peasantry 1

2. The good captain 3

3. Time for a change 4

4. From book to bow 7

5. The circle turns 8

6. Conclusion 12

Appendix A 13

Appendix B 16

Reference List 21

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Among the peasantry

I first visited County Clare in 1976. I’d come, like many before me, in search of ‘the music’.

First stop was Kilfenora. Pitch the tent in Dermot Hogan’s donkey field opposite his shop on the main

street and off to Vaughan’s looking for Tommy Peoples. We found neither him nor ‘the music’ that

time but people were kind to us and we played anyway. It was only later that I realised that I hadn’t been

in Clare at all but in West Clare.

When Captain Francis O’Neill listed the contributors in his introduction to The Dance Music of

Ireland, O’Neill’s 1001 he new exactly where they came from. He lists forty five contributors in total

from seventeen different counties plus Newfoundland and Chicago. Only two of the counties are given

regional ‘subdivisions’. One is West Cork where he, and several other contributors, hailed from and the

other is County Clare as witnessed by the following :

Michael Tuohy, East Clare ; John Allen, E. Clare

John Tubridy, Clare ; Patrick Mahony, W. Clare

O’Neill 1907 p. 3

While this idea of Clare being divided is obviously not new I suspect that, in this instance, the

designations came from the contributors themselves. When O’Neill, towards the end of the

introduction, wrote the following passage he failed to include a regional prefix :

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the incompleteness of the work of

collecting the folk music of Ireland than the existence of unrecorded

tunes among the peasantry within twenty miles of Limerick City. It

was a real pleasure and a relief to hear such delightful specimens of

traditional reels at Nos. 774, 775, and 776 and the hornpipe No. 951,

as played by modest peasants in a farm house at Clashmore near Feakle,

County Clare, during a visit to Ireland last year after listening to Miss

McCloud’s reel, and little else except that threadbare tune at the centers

of population in Ireland day after day.

O’Neill 1907 p.51

I was initially surprised by the use of ‘peasant’ but would have to believe that, a century ago, the

term was used in its literal meaning i.e. a small farmer: a tiller of the soil: a countryman, rather than with

its modern derogatory connotations. However that is a minor point. The important thing about this

passage is that O’Neill found little music to excite him on his travels except in what we know think of as

East Clare. In fact these four tunes constitute the only reference in the introduction to music being taken

down from players rather than coming from written sources. Two of the players he heard were the

aforementioned John Allen and Paddy MacNamara (O’hAllmhurain). Both were noted players from

the area. The tunes referred to are the reels, Johnny Allen’s Reel, No. 774, The Maid of Feakle, No. 775 and

The Humours of Scarriff, No. 776 and the hornpipe, Paddy Mack, No. 951. The three reels are still current

in the local repertoire. Paddy (Mack) MacNamara was a blind fiddle player who lived in the area. He

taught Paddy Canny’s father to play fiddle and in his later years he would winter in the Canny

household in Glendree and teach fiddle to the local children. (Hanrahan 2008) (Griffin Appendix A)

Aside from these four examples, there are a number of other tunes in the book whose names

suggest a connection to East Clare. Whether some or all of these tunes were collected on that same

occasion I have no way of knowing for certain, but, I suspect that this was the case. The circumstantial

and geographical evidence is very persuasive and none of these tunes appeared in his earlier book

O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903). An examination of O’Neill’s manuscripts could provide enlightenment.

Among the hornpipes we find :

Biddy Early, No. 946, who was a famous local healer / witch, depending on point of

view, and whose cottage is just outside of Feakle. Earlier in her life she lived at Ayle

cross and is reputed to have worked at Ayle House.

Tomgraney Castle, No.949 The modern spelling is Tuamgraney.

Among the reels we find:

Cooleen Bridge, No. 780, is between Feakle and Scarriff and was the home of the

previously mentioned Paddy Mack. This tune is rather better known, as recorded by

Michael Coleman, under the title Tarbolton.)

The Maids of Tulla No. 783. From the Irish Tulach meaning a hill, it is a common

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town name, in Anglicised form, throughout Ireland but this spelling is only found in

Clare. (Flanagan p.158)

Among the jigs we find:

The Humours of Ayle House, No. 261 Ayle House was the name of the country house

situated between Feakle and Tulla where O’Neill stayed during his visit to the

area. (Griffin)

There may well have been other tunes collected but whose names do not give us a geographic

clue. Even if this were not the case, one can only imagine O’Neill’s excitement in uncovering nine new

specimens from ‘among the peasantry’.

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The good captain

We return again to the printed collections to meet in Francis O’Neill the most

colourful collector, and incomparably the greatest as far as dance music

is concerned.

Breathnach p. 116

Praise indeed from Brendan Breathnach in his Folk Music and Dances of Ireland. O’Neill was born

in 1849 at Tralibane in West Cork. He ran away from home at age sixteen and seems to have lead a

pretty varied and adventurous life until, in 1873, he joined the Chicago Police Force. He was an

accomplished flute player who learned by ear and had an excellent memory for tunes (Breathnach). Like

many a traditional player he was unable to commit music to paper.

In the early 1880s he met James O’Neill, a fiddler from County Down who had a

huge store of dance tunes and an uncommon ability to write music. The two O’Neills

formed a lifelong friendship, both as police colleagues and avid collectors of

traditional dance music.

O’hAllmhurain 1998

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He became aware that many of the tunes he remembered from his childhood in West Cork were

unknown to other Irish musicians then resident in Chicago (Docherty). He started his collection of tunes

purely as an exercise in preservation with the help of his friend Sergeant James O’Neill. It was only after

he started to amass a considerable number that his thoughts turned to publication.

His first effort was the massive The Music of Ireland (1903) which contained 1850 airs, songs, and

O’Carolan compositions as well as a variety of examples of all the standard dance forms. This volume

seems to have garnered mixed reviews.

While academic musicians could rightly point out that many of the airs had been

published previously and others were not, in fact, traditional at all....

O’Canainn p.20

However enough interest was obviously generated, and especially regarding the dance tunes, that a

second publication was planned. In 1906 he and his wife Anna Rogers, a native of Clare, spent six

weeks in Ireland (O’hAllmhurain). In 1907 he published The Dance Music of Ireland 1001 Gems . This

book was to become “The most popular written source of Irish dance music until Breathnch’s Ceol Rince

na hEireann” (Docherty p.286)

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Time for a changeWhile it is true to say that the collections of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

had little influence on the tradition, the situation has changed considerably in the

twentieth century. Since the publication of O’Neill’s The Music of Ireland in 1903,

the process of transmission has been considerably affected both by it and subsequent

publications.

O’Canainn p. 9

On the face of it this statement looks pretty straight forward, but things are rarely as simple as

they seem. In practice ‘O’Neill’s’ was neither widely nor readily available in most parts of the country

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for quite some time after publication. I suspect that the initial market for the book was that same urban

middle class enthusiast that purchased the earlier published collections of music. It was only in the

1920s and 1930s that the book became available to “musicians in the regions through a library address

in Dublin” (Vallely p.258). The Compendium then goes on to state that “individual players (like Lucy

Farr, Angela and Ita Crehan etc.) learnt from it, and then aurally passed on the tunes so learnt to family,

friends and neighbours”. Lucy Farr fits the time frame, just. She left home in 1933 at the age of twenty

one. She first moved to Mayo and then in 1935 to London (Brown 1994). Although Lucy could read

music I don’t find it credible that she was teaching her friends and family tunes from ‘O’Neill’s’ at that

point in her life. There is no mention of any such thing in Roly Brown’s article. Also I am sure Angela

Crehan (now Crotty) would be horrified at the implication that she is of similar age to Lucy. She was not

born until the 1950s. So I think we have a time discrepancy in this now accepted truth. Furthermore,

why would a previously largely aural tradition suddenly become concerned with learning music from

printed sources?

There have been many and various notation systems in use in Irish music since the early

eighteenth century (Vallely). They were mostly used in teaching as an aide memoire for the student. Padraig

O’Keefe used a particularly celebrated system and there are many other examples ranging from the

seemingly complicated to the simple ABC system. I find Vallely’s implicit suggestion that the adoption

of the musical notation in ‘O’Neill’s’ was some sort of logical ‘next step’ in this process unconvincing.

Even today Mary MacNamara from Tulla is using an ABC system with her many students. Also, we see

ample evidence of ‘O’Neill’s’ being a tool for the accomplished musician, rather than simply the

teacher, as witnessed above and in this later extract from the entry in The Compendium on Peadar

O’Loughlin..

Much local music was originated in ‘O’Neill’s’ (learned and transmitted by

Hughdie Doohan)

Vallely p.282

Again I am struck by the time frame. Peadar was born in 1929. Turning to Paddy Canny we see his first

‘encounters’ with ‘O’Neill’s’ occurring in the mid to late 1950s ( Coughlan Appendix B). So we have

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perhaps a forty or fifty year gap between the publication of ‘O’Neill’s’ and its adoption by the traditional

music community at least in the County of Clare and environs.

If we accept that there was a significant period of time between the publication of ‘O’Neill’s’

and its subsequent impact on traditional musicians, we need to determine what factors were at work in

the intervening period. What moved the traditional musician from a predominantly ‘aural’ world to the

inclusion of a significant ‘notational’ aspect in the acquisition of new tunes.

The perceived wisdom is that the traditional musician was influenced by local players and the

occasional visit from a travelling musician. The result would be a fairly static local repertoire that only

changed very gradually. This all altered, to varying degrees, after the first couple of decades of the

twentieth century. I would propose that there were four main factors at play.

In 1926 the Free State ventured into the world of radio. The first station was called 2RN and

was largely only available in urban areas. This was followed by Radio Eireann which started

broadcasting in 1937. (O’hAllmhurain). Radio quickly gained in popularity throughout the country and

included much traditional music in its schedule. For the first time, music from different areas could be

regularly heard all over the country. During this same period we see the arrival of ‘78’ recordings from

both Britain and the USA. Both of these things meant the ‘local’ musician now had access to an

increasing amount of varied material.

The ‘Public Dance Hall Act’ of 1935 moved dancing out of the kitchen and into the pubic hall.

In this era before the advent of Public Address systems it was no longer practical to have a couple of

musicians playing for dancing. A larger ensemble was now needed to produce the volume required. As

a consequence Ceili Bands sprang up all over the country. This resulted, I believe, in pressure to

increase the size and variety of the dance music repertoire. Musicians were now playing for longer and

more sustained periods, and each band was trying to develop its own style and repertoire.

Finally, in the early 1950s, we see the emergence of the Fleadh Cheoil Movement.

While the fleadh cheoil gave traditional musicians a new platform and an

appreciative audience, it also increased the emphasis on competitive playing.

O’hAllmhurain p.124

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By the mid 1950s the traditional musician had been subject to an increase in access to new

material and, for many, an increase in pressure to learn new tunes. The once revolutionary renditions of

the great ‘Sligo Masters’ etc. would have been thoroughly assimilated by then. So, where to turn to next

for new material? There were many recordings now being made in Ireland. They proved a valuable

source of new material. And, for the musician who could read music notation there was ‘O’Neill’s’.

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From book to bow

This section is based on the interview with Paddy Canny’s daughter Mary (Appendix B) and my

recollections of conversations with both Paddy and Mary. He was born in the townland of Glendree in

1919. This townland was part of the Parish of Tulla. It was actually at the boundary of three Parishes,

Tulla, Feakle and Killanena and was closer to the latter two. Paddy always thought of Feakle, which was

where the family shopped and went to Church, as his ‘home town’. He was taught to play fiddle by his

father Pat who in turn had been taught by Paddy Mack. His neighbours included the family of Paddy

O’Donoghue, the celebrated flute and fiddle player. Under the auspices of The Land Commission,

following the Land Act of 1950, the O’Donoghues were given a farm in the Townland of Ballinahinch

in the mid part of the decade. Ballinahinch is on the opposite side of Feakle from Glandree and close to

both Bodyke and the main Ennis to Scarriff road.

The 1950s were a busy period in Paddy Canny’s life. He was playing with the Tulla Ceili Band.

In 1953 he won the ‘All-Ireland‘ in Athlone. In 1956 he went to America with Dr. Bill Loughnane

where he played several concerts including at Carnegie Hall and appeared on television. He returned to

the USA in 1958 with the Tulla Ceili Band. In 1959 he recorded All-Ireland Champions - Violin with

Peadar O’Loughlin, P Joe Hayes and Bridie Lafferty. During the second half of the decade he would

travel to Dublin four or five times a year to broadcast live on RTE. On those visits to Dublin he would

stay with Tommy Potts. Paddy was in his thirties, single and at the peak of his playing. Paddy was a

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powerful and lively player. His fiddle playing was strong and lyrical. Mary recalled a conversation she

had with Brendan McGlinchey where he told her that he would always listen excitedly to RTE

whenever he knew Paddy was to be broadcast.

In 1955 Paddy got his own farm closer to Tulla. His new neighbours, all diligent farmers, were

quietly amazed by Paddy who lived a very different lifestyle to their own. He would be coming and

going and could often be heard playing the fiddle in the early hours of the morning. At harvest time

Paddy would go down to Ballinahinch and stay with the O’Donoghues for a week or two. They would

bring in the potato crop and play music. Mary believes that this was when Paddy first came into regular

contact with Martin Rochford.

Martin was born in 1916 near Ballinahinch. He started playing the fiddle at age 10. Later, he

took up first the whistle and then the pipes. (Vallely p.321) Martin could read music and had a copy of

‘O’Neill’s’. Paddy and Martin became good friends and this friendship carried on long after Paddy was

married in 1961. Martin taught Paddy to read music. Paddy was never very skilled but could whistle a

tune from the notation. Mary who was born in 1963 can remember many visits from Martin. There

were often bits of paper passed from Martin to Paddy with tunes on them. Paddy acknowledged in later

interviews that he had learned tunes from Martin Rochford. Mary thought that Paddy would sometimes

ask Martin if he knew such and such a tune and this accounted for some of the traffic in the bits of

paper.

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The circle turnsAbout nine years ago Paddy O’Brien from Offaly sent me a CD. He knew of my interest in the

fiddle and in the music of County Clare. The music had been recorded in August 1972 and contained

recordings of Junior Crehan, Paddy Fahy and Paddy Canny made in their respective homes. The

recordings of Paddy Canny were made on the fifteenth of August and comprised 15 separate tracks :

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1. Paddy Fahy’s Jig (?)

2. The Rakes of Clonmel

3. The Cliffs of Moher

4.Apples in Winter

5. The Goat in the Green

6. The Repeal of the Union

7. The Bunch of Green Rushes

8. Garrett Barry’s

9. Unknown Jig

10. Unknown Jig

11.Mullingar Lea / Star of Munster

12 The Silver Spear

13. The Tulla Reel

14. The Rose of Lough Gill

15. The Pigeon on the Gate

16. Morrison’s Jig.

My move to County Clare in June 2006 coincided with a renewed interest in occasionally

browsing through the various music collections in my possession including O’Neill’s, Breathnach’s and

the Roche Collection. I would always skip over The Cliffs of Moher (DMI No. 121) presuming that it

was the well known version. Recently I did play it and realised I had heard this version before. It was

commonly known as ‘Paddy Canny’s version of The Cliffs’. I went back to the 1972 recording where I

discovered that a significant number of these tunes were also in O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland 1001

Gems :

The Rakes of Clonmel No. 149

The Cliffs of Moher No. 121

Apples in Winter No. 300

The Repeal of the Union No. 459

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The Bunch of Green Rushes No. 478

The Star of Munster No. 495

I decided to compare Paddy’s settings with those in the book. The differences in the two

versions of The Bunch of Green Rushes are beyond the scope of artistic interpretation. O’Neill’s setting

has two parts compared to Paddy’s three and there are significant differences in the melodic structure.

The Star of Munster is interesting in that it has more in common with the version Tommy Potts recorded

on The Liffey Banks than the version in O’Neill’s.( Coincidentally both recordings were made in 1972).

The four remaining tunes, The Rakes of Clonmel, The Cliffs of Moher, Apples in Winter and The

Repeal of the Union all bear a marked similarity to the settings in O’Neill’s even allowing for Paddy’s

improvisational skills.

By now I was intrigued. An examination of Paddy’s solo recording from 1997 produced the

following tunes which were also published in ‘O”Neill’s’ :

The Gallowglass No. 236

The Rakes of Clonmel No. 149

The Cashmere Shawl No. 599

Poll Ha’penny No. 983

The Rights of Man No. 811

Sergeant Early’s Dream No. 656

Mayor Harrison’s Fedora No. 799

Dunphy’s Hornpipe No. 810

Toss The Feathers No. 502

The Repeal of the Union No. 459

These are repeat recordings of The Rakes of Clonmel and The Repeal of the Union. Of the remaining

tunes The Cashmere Shawl, Poll Ha’penny and Toss the Feathers are quite different. The Rights of

Man and Mayor Harrison’s Fedora are performed in different keys to the usual being in D modal and G

minor respectively. (This changing of the accepted key is not uncommon in the music of this area.

According to Mary, Paddy was able to play tunes in different keys much to the amazement of his fellow

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musicians.) While there are some melodic similarities, the key changes allow Paddy too much

improvisational scope for me to draw direct comparison. Sergeant Early’s Dream is given in A minor in

the book while Paddy plays it in D Minor. (This moving of the tune ‘over a string’ on the fiddle is also

not without precedent around East Clare. The local version of Pigeon on the Gate, for example, as

played by Martin Hayes on The Shores of Lough Graney is in D but it bears a strong resemblance to the

setting in O’Neill’s which is given in A). However once again the key change allows Paddy too much

melodic scope. So, we are left with The Gallowglass and Dunphy’s Hornpipe as two tunes that can be

directly related to the versions in O’Neill’s. (As an additional note, Paddy would drop a tune in A down

to G when the tune ventured above the B on the E string. For example he did this with Sean sa Cheo on

his solo CD and his version of Eileen Curran was in G minor rather than in A minor).

Having now found six tunes which could certainly have been taken directly from O’Neill’s, I

decided to keep looking. I turned to the classic All-Ireland Champions - Violin. I found that the following

tunes from this recording were also published in O’Neill’s :

Bunker Hill No. 787

Music in the Glen No. 462

Doctor O’Neill No. 6

Dunphy’s Hornpipe No. 810

Chief O’Neill’s No. 806

I have previously addressed Dunphy’s. I was struck by how much the remaining tunes bore such a

resemblance to the settings in ‘O’Neill’s’. Bunker Hill, Doctor O’Neill and Chief O’Neill’s are

practically the same settings, allowing for differing ornamentation. Even taking into account the change

in key from A to G, the settings of The Music in the Glen are also very similar indeed.

There are also a number of other examples in the broader East Clare repertoire which are very

similar to O’Neill’s settings. These include the already mentioned Pigeon on the Gate no. 648. Then

there is the version of Toss the Feathers No. 502, which, while not being Paddy Canny’s version, turns

out to be the Tulla Ceili Band version as is Tear the Calico No. 525.

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Conclusion

I am convinced that the ten tunes I highlighted from Paddy Canny’s recordings did come from

O’Neill’s book. There is an interesting symmetry in O’Neill taking tunes from East Clare and fifty years

later ‘giving them back’. And perhaps there is an element of serendipity in the way that Paddy got tunes

from a book that was contributed to by the man that taught his father. As to the exact way some or all of

them got to Paddy I cannot say. Perhaps he learnt them from Martin Rochford. Perhaps he asked

Martin for the tunes. Perhaps some of the tunes on the Champions recording came from either Peadar

O’Loughlin or P Joe Hayes. Until Mary Coughlan has time to retrieve the ‘bits of paper’ there can only

be speculation. It is interesting though that the tunes recorded in 1959 are the closest to the O’Neill

settings and are in fact almost identical. By the late nineteen nineties many of the tunes may have been

developed almost beyond recognition. Perhaps there is no surprise in this.

It would be of great interest to find out if any of the many broadcasts Paddy made were

recorded and are still in existence somewhere in the RTE Archives. It would be interesting to see what

tunes he was playing at that time and if he was playing any of the tunes he got from O’Neill’s.

A regret that Mary has is that she has never heard much of Paddy at his prime. He was already

forty four when she was born. Long after the recorder had been despatched back to the pocket, Mary

told me that Paddy had intended making a solo record in the seventies. He may even have started on the

project, but a succession of setbacks to his health had prevented him from carrying on.

And one final thought. The influence of O’Neill’s is still working in East Clare. If you were to

ask some of Mary MacNamara’s students to play The Kid on the Mountain you’d be surprised to find

that they play the tune with an extra part.......

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Appendix A

Interview with Vincent Griffin25/11/09

GF: I wanted to talk about O’Neill coming to collect. He stayed over the road here right?

VG: He did. He stayed next door here at Walsh’s which was a great house for music. I think at

the time there were three or four of them playing fiddles.

GF: They played did they?

VG: they did yeah.

GF: And that’s Ayle House right?

VG: Ayle House yeah. He stayed there and played a lot of music. He recorded a lot of tunes as

well.

GF: Is this in the old house?

VG: Oh the old house.

There then followed some discussion about the various houses.

GF: So Johnny Allen. Where did he live?

VG: Johnny Allen lived in Laccaroe just a few miles below the village of Feakle. I remember

my first time meeting Johnny Allen. It was way back I’d said about nineteen forty four or five. Three of

us went out on the ‘Wren’ collecting on St Stephen’s Day. We went out on three bicycles and I was

playing and my brother and a neighbour up the road, Pat Keefe were dancing the set. So we mmm. We

had it on our program that we would go and see Johnny. So we went to Danny Mack’s in Laccaroe and

from there we went to Johnny Allen’s which was on the cross at Moran’s field. So we spent a few hours

with Johnny. Actually it curtailed our collecting time. He wouldn’t let us go. He was.... I was a young

fellow at the time but he was a lovely man and played a lot of music for us. and he asked me to play this

one and play that one.

GF: And what sort of age would he have been then?

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VG: Ah I’d say he was probably early seventies.

GF: OK so he was a good age. Do you know anything about Michael Tuohy?

VG: I know nothing about Michael Tuohy but I know a little more about Johnny Allen. When

O’Neill who compiled the 1001 and the 1800 tunes came to the area he visited Johnny and recorded a

lot of Johnny’s music. He said the first time he ever heard real traditional Irish music he heard played by

Johnny Allen of East Clare.

There followed the story of the second time Vincent met Johnny Allen.

GF: O’Neill mentions a place called Clashmore. A farmhouse in Clashmore.

VG: That’s right.

GF: Do you know who lived there?

VG: That’s where the Tuohy man lived I think.

GF Is that where Michael Tuohy lived?

VG: Yes

GF: was he older again than Johnny?

VG: Ah he would have been.

GF: You never met him.

VG: I never met him no. But when you mention Clashmore what was the mention in the book?

GF: Ah it just says he heard some great music in a farm house in Clashmore near Feakle.

VG: That’s where the Conway’s house is.

GF: That’s the Conway’s have it now?

VG: As far as I know Clashmore is the residence of the man that owns the shop there in the

village.of Feakle.

GF Right, but have they owned it for a long time?

VG: Ah they have.

GF: OK, but Tuohy was from round that area was he?

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VG: He was from Laccaroe I think or a little maybe towards the Scarriff road.

GF: Ah right. This might be before your time as well. There was a blind fiddle player lived in Cooleen

Bridoe..

VG: Paddy Mack.

GF; Yeah. Paddy MacNamara. Did you know him?

VG: He was known as Paddy Mack. No I didn’t no. I often heard Paddy Canny talking about

him. He used to visit various houses during the winter time.and give music lessons. And apparently he

used to actually stay at Paddy Canny’s house for a whole winter. And he taught a lot of music in the

area. I think he taught Paddy Canny’s father and some more musicians up around that area. Maybe Bill

Malley, not sure, and there was that girl now......Macnamara. She learned a lot from that man too. From

Paddy. He was.... he had a big influence I think on the music of East Clare.

GF: Do you know when he died?

VG” I haven’t a clue. He was way before my time. I think he would have been responsible for

teaching Martin Nugent who was a very good fiddle player and I think he would have been responsible

for teaching John James Loughnane as well. They were two nice fiddle players. John James would be an

uncle of Ger’s. And Martin Nugent I think was a brilliant musician. In fact Paddy Canny mentions him

on his sleeve notes. He moved from the Laccaroe area to Lisdoonvarna. He married a girl up there. I

used to meet him at the fleadhs. He was a lovely man. The only problem with Martin’s music was that

he used to hum a bit while he was playing the tune........

There followed some more stories about Martin Nugent and then

Patrick Moloney of Feakle. And then about Vincent’s first and

second fiddles. And then about his Father’s job. And then about

Biddy Early,and Johnny Patterson.

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Appendix B

Interview with Mary Coughlan (nee Canny)7/12/09

The interview starts in mid flow.... Mary is not very comfortable...

MC : the only thing I would be wondering about would be Martin Rochford had an O’Neill’s

book but Paddy didn’t have an O’Neill’s book.

GF : Did Paddy read music?

MC : Paddy read music but like he understood how to read it but Martin Rochford was the

person who showed him how to read, and he could write it as well....

GF : OK

MC : I suppose very roughly like, you know, not.... not....

GF : Very slowly?

MC Yeah. But he could also pick up a sheet of music and he could whistle the tune off the sheet

so...

GF : Right....

MC : I really don’t know how much more than that he knew about music from the written stuff

GF : Don’t worry about that (meaning recorder). It’s just that I have to type up what you say.

MC : Right

GF : And I have to give them.... it’s just for... to prove that I didn’t make it up.

MC : Oh right. OK

GF : I have to give them a recording of what you’ve said and it doesn’t go anywhere.

MC : Yes OK

GF : It’s not for publication and you’re welcome to a copy if you want.

MC : Yeah. OK

GF : So, Martin Rochford had a copy of the book?

MC : Martin had. I suppose he had a lot of music books. But I don’t know. Martin knew how to

read and write the music back and I have pieces of music around the house somewhere that Martin

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would have written for Paddy. And I would have found a lot of stuff in tidying out Paddy’s house. Of

little pieces of paper and the name of the tune maybe written on top of it. It would be maybe something

that Paddy might have heard somewhere and say to Martin have you come across that or whatever.

GF : When was this then? When would Martin be doing this?

MC : Oh this would have been Oh God I don’t know I suppose. Would it be the fifties or

sixties? I remember Martin Rochford was a regular caller in my younger years to Paddy’s house. But it

was very much for for a chat and maybe an odd tune. But we were very young at the time you know.

And I can remember maybe bits and pieces like passing between them of tunes alright. More than that I

can’t say.

GF : Now did that..... Don’t worry about that. Just ignore that

Laughter

GF : I’ll put a piece of paper over it. you don’t have to look at it.

GF : Did this carry on for a long time?

MC : No not really no. Paddy learned a lot of stuff by ear. That was his main... He would I

suppose take a tune then and he’d work the tune and see how he could..... whatever type of skills he had

to put a different kind of maybe slant on it maybe not it depends. There were some tunes that he could

do nice things with. He had a good brain like for lots of things.

GF : Were you still at home in 1972?

MC : I was

GF : Somebody came in 1972. You might not remember this. It was in August 72 when they recorded

Paddy. They recorded about a dozen tunes. And whoever it was, on the same trip, went and recorded

Paddy Fany and Junior Crehan. All within a few days of each other.

MC : Really. Like several people called. I can’t... Have you heard this recording?

GF : I’ve got the recording...

MC : You’ve got the recording.. Was there voices on it?

GF : Only Paddy saying the odd thing. Not much. It’s not like an interview or anything.

MC : It was just a few tunes that they wanted

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GF : Yeah. It was the likes of. This is what set me thinking. The Repeal of the Union. Apples in Winter.

Cliffs of Moher. Mullingar Lea. The Star of Munster. There’s twelve or fifteen tunes on it. A few I don’t

know the names of. But I just wondered if you remembered. I’m thinking it was probably an American

but I don’t know. I got a copy from Paddy O’Brien. Young Paddy O’Brien. The accordion player from

Offaly who lives in the States.

MC : There’s a lot of recordings. I’d be interested to see that now. Or to hear it.

GF : I can make you a copy

MC : If you can. Because there’s quite a lot of copies of bits and pieces that people are sending

to me. And maybe I already have what you have and I might be able to identify it for you. I know there

was a few interviews. Not interviews

Mobile phone goes off. I turn off recorder.

GF : So just ignore that. So tell me that again.

MC : I would think that Paddy.... I don’t know at what age Paddy would have come in contact

with Martin Rochford. I presume he didn’t know him in his earlier years. But it was the

O’Donoghues. Paddy O’Donoghue’s family were neighbours of Paddy’s up in Glanderee. So. I

don’t know what time period it would have been when the Donogue’s would have got land or the

changing with the Land Commission. They got property down in Ballinahinch at that particular time.

Maybe I’m not correct but I know they came from Glanderee to Ballinahinch. So Martin Rochford

then was their neighbour. So it was at that stage... Paddy being a neighbour up in Glanderee would

have gone down to Donaghue’s for the time we’ll say of the harvesting of the potatoes and all that so.

He would stay there then maybe for a week or two. And needless to say music obviously was the big

uniting force between them. So I don’t know how much harvesting of anything was happening. But.

It was at that stage. That was where Paddy came in contact with Martin Rochford.

GF : Now was that before Paddy was married?

MC : It would be before Paddy was married. Paddy was married in 1961. So you are

probably talking somewhere in the fifties. Something like that. So at that stage then. Paddy was born

in 1919. So in the twenties and thirties he was a teenager. Forties. Like I suppose he would be very

established in his music at that stage by the time he would have come in contact with Martin. But

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Martin had the O’Neill’s book so I suppose you see tunes certainly I know definitely came from

Martin to Paddy. He very much acknowledges that I’d say in other interviews when he was alive.

GF : You know Paddy’s music pretty well.

MC : I’m not sure...

GF : Well you are familiar with it. Would you say it changed round that time?

MC : Would his music have changed?

GF : Or at some point. Maybe later than that still.

MC : I suppose that is something that interests me myself too. And I’m very anxious to come

across earlier recordings to see. I don’t know. I suppose like what we would have been used to of

Paddy was him as an older musician. Like Paddy was in his middle forties when I was born. So I

don’t know.

GF : You heard that program that Kieran Hanrahan

MC : Yes

GF : On the Christmas after Paddy passed away God rest him.

MC : Yes I did.

GF : And he played that recording from 1955 that Ciaran MacMathuna made in Crusheen. I think he

played Sporting Nell. It was pretty lively.

MC : It is yeah. Paddy did play with good speed.

GF : Oh I know that. But then I was in Naughton’s one night and Clare FM was on. There was some

fiddle playing on the radio. I think it was Paula Carroll. So Mickey Naughton and myself were saying

I wonder who that is. You could tell it was someone from round East Clare. But I think it was an old

78 of Paddy playing. You know something I didn’t recognise. No I know he wasn’t a slow player.

There’s a mistake about that idea that east Clare music is slow.

MC : Totally. He always played with great energy and great life. And it’s only like I suppose

in his later years cos’ he nearly lived to be ninety. So he was playing in his sixties. In his seventies. In

his eighties. So as time progressed I’m sure his style slowed. The speed at which he played. And his

hearing wouldn’t have been wonderful either I suppose. So I suppose there would have been a natural

slowing down.

GF : I think there is anyway. We’re all a bit slower than we used to be.

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MC: He liked lively... He felt a tune needed to have life... and needed to have a good lively flow about

it you know. But I suppose tunes lend themselves to different pace as well.

GF : Oh yeah some tunes are better suited slow.

MC : Sound better or whatever.

GF : So we’ll go back to Paddy and Martin Rochford then. Some time in the fifties

MC ; Paddy O’Donoghue would be better on the dates. I’m not sure. But I know that it was

through the O’Donoghue’s that Paddy met up with Martin Rochford.

GF : But that friendship carried on for a long time.

MC : Oh it did and they were very friendly. And they had great chats about music. They

might’nt even play but they would discuss music. and they would discuss tunes and they would

discuss various people playing. But they were very very friendly and very close. I suppose they had

much the same understanding of music. I think Martin Rochford played a lot like Paddy though.

GF : I once heard one little recording... I need to try and find some recordings of Martin Rochford.

There was one on a website somewhere but it has since gone.

MC : He had much.... You’d know they were all from this side of the country or this side of

the county I suppose or maybe whatever.

GF : Changing the subject a bit it just occurs to me. Did you ever know Tommy Potts coming down.

MC : No I don’t remember Tommy Potts coming but I remember my father always telling us

that Tommy Potts called.

GF : So that again was probably in the fifties.

MC : It could have been or it could have been in the early sixties. But I certainly can’t

remember that but you see I was born in 1963.

GF: So that would have been a bit before. Thay talk about. You read about this connection between...

MC : There’s a letter..... I know there’s a letter from Tommy Potts around our house

somewhere that he wrote to Paddy about music or whatever so. There’s so much bits and pieces....

Paddy was a huge admirer of Tommy Potts.

GF : Well I think it was mutual

MC : I think so too.

GF : Well that’s great. That’s all I need to know for this......

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After the recording

Once the machine was turned off I stayed for another three hours. Mary was much more relaxed and

told me a lot about Paddy. She showed me letters that had been sent to him and an old flyer from

Paddy’s trip to the States with Dr Bill Loughnane. I discovered that Paddy had broadcast on RTE

four or five times a year for four or five years during the fifties.....

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Reference List

Breathnach B. (1977) Folk Music and Dances of Ireland rev.ed. Dublin : Mercier

Brown R. (1994) Lucy Farr Heart and Home Musical Traditions no. 12(online) http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/farr.htm

Docherty L. (1999) ‘O’Neill, (Captain) Francis’ in Fintan Vallely (ed.) TheCompanion to Irish Traditional Music, Cork : Cork University Press

Flanagan D. & L. (1994) Irish Place Names Dublin : Gill and MacMillan

Hanrahan K. (2008) Ceili House broadcast 30/12/2008 on RTE

O’Canainn T. (1978) Traditional Music in Ireland Cork : Ossian

O’hAllmhurain G. (1998) A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music Dublin : O’Brien

O’Neill F. (1907) The Dance Music of Ireland O’Neill’s 1001 reprint ed. Dublin : Waltons

O’Suilleabhain M. (1996) Crossroads or twin track? p.178 in Fintan Vallely,Hammy Hamilton Eithne Vallely & Liz Docherty eds.The Crossroad Conferences Cork : Ossian

Vallely F. (1999) musical notation p.258 O’Loughlin Peadar p.282 Rochford Martin p.321

in Fintan Vallely ed. The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, Cork : Cork University Press

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