Irish Traditional Music and Athy

Irish traditional music, whether songs in Irish or English, instrumental music or dance music, has been passed on from generation to generation. Here in Athy, the Anglo-Norman town on the river Barrow we are proud to claim as our own William Beauford who made several contributions to the first book on Irish music published in Ireland. Joseph Walker’s ‘Historical Memoirs of Irish Bards’, published in 1786, included four articles by the Athy resident Beauford. Walker, a 24-year-old clerk in the Irish Treasury, was described by Nicholas Carolan in his 1990 O’Riada Memorial lecture as ‘a literary dilettante of English descent’. Beauford, like Walker, was apparently of English descent and a member of the Royal Irish Academy and over the years had contributed several papers on different aspects of Irish culture and archaeology. He was, I believe, a teacher in a classical school in Athy and may have been attached to the school operated by Rev. Nicholas Ashe who was elected Sovereign of Athy in 1797. The 19th century Irish scholar Eugene O’Curry was highly critical of the Athy man’s contributions to Walker’s book, claiming that Beauford ‘was an unscrupulous person ….. who pawned his pretended knowledge of facts on the well intentioned but credulous Walker.’ Apparently Beauford’s views on the evolution of the Irish harp were based on an insufficient knowledge of the Irish language which led to analysis based on an incorrect interpretation of some ancient Irish scripts. One of the many mistakes subsequently revealed in Walker’s pioneering work was the claim the Irish harp was improved by the Jesuit Robert Nugent, who for a time lived in Kilkea Castle when that castle was leased to the Jesuit order. This somewhat tenuous link between an Irish traditional musical instrument and South Kildare regrettably was not correct so we must come closer to our own time for links between South Kildare and Irish traditional music. Uilleann pipers with family roots in counties Wicklow and Wexford were frequent visitors to Athy and amongst their numbers were members of the Cash family. John Cash who died in 1909 was an influential uilleann piper whose fame is captured in the song ‘Cash the Piper’. His son James and other Cash cousins were also noted pipers and many of us will recall a family relation, Bill Cash, who lived with us in Offaly Street in the 1950s. Perhaps Athy’s most noteworthy connection with the Irish piping tradition comes from the visits of the Doran brothers from nearby County Wicklow to the town. Johnny and Felix Doran often played the uilleann pipes on the approach road to Geraldine Park on big match days. Their visits to Athy were never complete without calling on local uilleann piper Neddy Whelan at his forge in Kilmoroney. John Doran’s uilleann pipe playing was regarded as masterful and thanks to the late Kevin Danaher we can today listen to Johnny Doran on the CD, ‘The Bunch of Keys’. Johnny is forever linked with Athy for it was in our own St. Vincent’s Hospital that he passed away on 19th January 1950. While he was a patient in the hospital he was visited by his fellow piper Willie Clancy and it was in St. Vincent’s Hospital that Johnny Doran played the uilleann pipes for the last time. His brother Felix died in England in 1972. The greatest uilleann piper of our generation, the County Kildare born Liam Óg O’Flynn, lived in south Kildare for many years and played a number of concerts in Athy locally during the annual Shackleton Autumn School. Athy native and resident Brian Hughes is today regarded as one of Ireland’s finest uilleann pipers as befits a musician who received his early training in the Pipers Club, Henrietta Street, Dublin. The uilleann pipes belong to the bagpipe family and here in south Kildare there is a long history of pipe bands. St. Brigid’s Pipe Band organised by local publican John Bailey of Stanhope Street was one early pipe band founded before World War I. It was followed years later by the Churchtown Pipe Band and later again by the Kilberry Pipe band. Perhaps the most famous pipe band in this part of the county was the Narraghmore Pipe Band. Today the bagpiping tradition continues with the St. Brigid’s Pipe Band, formed in recent years by Richard Bracken. The tradition of uilleann piping is today very much alive in the Athy area, with excellent pipers such as Toss Quinn and Joe Byrne and not forgetting Seamus Byrne and Ciaran O’Carroll. The weekly session in Clancys now going for 50 years or so, is Athy’s unique contribution to the Irish traditional music scene. That weekly session brings together a great number of musicians whose musical predecessors in the 1940s and later gave us Cully’s Ceili Band from Levitstown and the Ardellis Ceile Band, originally based in Fontstown. The recent re-establishment of a Comhaltas Ceoltoírí branch in Athy is a welcome development in a town historically referred to as a garrison town and one whose allegiances were not always seen as fully aligned with Irish traditional cultural values.