SOME REMINISCENCES OF A COLLECTOR OF IRISH FOLK-MUSIC

New Zealand Tablet, 23 March 1911, Page 539

SOME REMINISCENCES OF A COLLECTOR OF IRISH FOLK-MUSIC

In 1851 a society was founded in Dublin for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, which included among its members a large number of the nobility and other influential persons of Ireland, with Dr. George Petrie, the great archaeologist, as president (writes Dr. P. W. Joyce in the Catholic Book Bulletin). , About that time, when I was still a very young man, 1 came to reside in Dublin, and soon became interested in the new movement. For I had spent the preceding part of my life in my native valley in the heart of the Ballyhoura mountains in Limerick, where the people were passionately fond of dancing, singing, and music of all kinds. Their pastimes, occupations, and daily life were mixed up with tunes and songs. The women sang at the spinning-wheel; ploughmen whistled their melancholy plough-tunes to soothe the horses; girls sang their gentle milking-songs, which the cows enjoyed, and kept quiet under their influence; parents and nurses put their children to sleep with their charming lullabies; laborers beguiled their work with songs of various kinds, to which their fellow-workmen listened with quiet enjoyment; and, at the last scene of all, the friends of the dead gave vent to their sorrow in a heart-moving keen or lament. And besides our professional musicians, we had amateur singers, fifers, fiddlers, pipers everywhere. Yet this richly stored valley was never examined for Irish music before my time. I loved that graceful music from childhood, and I learned all the tunes —or, I should rather say, they clung to my memoryalmost without any effort of my own, like the words and phrases of my native language, so that I could whistle or sing, or play them on my little fife with the utmost facility. On the fine summer evenings, especially on Sundays, the boys and girls collected at the cross-roads in the village to have a dance, while the old people looked on complacently, thinking of their own youthful days. Ned Goggin, our professional fiddler, supplied the music, and went home in the end with his pockets 7 ell filled with coppers. The dancing, too, was often varied by a song from some favorite

singer. And all that devotion to harmless sports among our people never interfered with their daily work. Some of the greatest lovers of music that I can now recall were among the most industrious and hard-working and prosperous of the people. That cross-roads is there still, but there is no longer any music or dancing or singing ! Soon after my arrival in Dublin, a copy of the Society’s prospectus fell into my hands, in which they asked for contributions of Irish music. Though I knew a vast number of Irish airs, and suspected that some of them had not been published, I had not the least notion that a great wealth of unpublished Irish melody was preserved in my memory; for up to that time I had no opportunity of examining the printed collections. With the prospectus in my pocket, I called one day on Dr. Petrie, and saw him for the first time at his house. No. 67 Rathmines road, which is now occupied by the Rathmines Public Library. I introduced myself, and told him the object of my visit. He soon made me quite at home, for I was a bit nervous in presence of the great scholar and antiquary. He was then an old gentleman, with a charming wav about him gentle, unpretentious, and kindly, , and full* of pleasant, genial talk. At his request, I whistled or hummed half a dozen tunes. He was evidently surprisedalmost taken aback, indeed for he never heard them before, and was charmed with them. Asked could I write music: Yes. Then he requested me to come to him with a couple of dozen tunes written down. I promised, taking care to tell him that all this was for love of the thing, not for pay, which I did not want. With a little book filled with airs, all from memory, V!t at the end of a week. The good doctor looked at the Mb., and fell upon it much as a gold miner might fall upon a great and unexpected nugget. And so commenced my collection of Irish airs, at first entirely from memory; all of which I handed over to Dr. Petrie, book after bomi, according as each was filled. And this continued for several years. But I kept copies of most MSS” Si y i ; „/? r + l t6r i V ie ’ s death in 1866, his musical I never sa v again! 1 ' handSs among them m >’ books > "'hick

Then I always kept a bit of music paper in my pocket • and whenever an old air came up from the depths of my

memory, whether at home or on the roads, or in the fields, or in a Dublin street, out came paper and pencil, and down went the first bar. When my memory was becoming nigh exhausted, I went among the people during vacations, and took down their tunes, till a very large collection accumulated.

As a curious illustration of how some of these old Irish airs were captured as prisoners, I will instance the air called ‘The Orangeman (published in my Old Irish Folk Music and Songs, p. 4). There are still some old people to the tore who, like myself, can recall the great snow am] wind storm of February 15, 1838. It began in the morning and continued coming down in volumes without intermission all that day and night. About 11 o’clock that morning, Ned Goggin, on his way to his home up in the mountain gap, called at our house for shelter till the snow should cease. He sat by the kitchen fire till he was well thawed, and then to our great delight he drew out his fiddle from its case, and began to play. Tune followed tune, til! at last he struck up the ‘ Orangeman,’ at which we were delighted for the air is a beautiful minor one, and Ned played it well. I was then only eleven years old, and, of course, could not write music; but he played it over and over till I learned it perfectly. Years passed bv. I was in Dublin, and was diligently recalling all my “tunes for Dr. Petrie, as I have said, but the ‘Orangeman’ had not yet come forward: and it might have been forgotten and lost, but tor a dream. In the middle of one winter night the great snow with Ned Goggin and his music passed before me— neul, as the Irish song-writers would say through my dream’; and I woke up actually whistling the tune. Greatly delighted, I started up—a light, a pencil, and a bit of paper, and there was the first bar securely captured the bird was, as it were, caught and held by the tail. or some years after my first interview with Petrie i was a pretty constant visitor; and on many a Sunday afternoon he and Professor Eugene O’Curry and mvself sat at the fire in his study discussing Irish airs and songs, preparatory to publication in Petrie’s book; for O’Gprrv’s memory. was as deep a store of Irish songs as mine was of the airs. The little grate is still there, with its cheerful tire as of old; and now, on my way to the library; I often stand before it with my mind running back to old times.