Irish Language Resources on the Web

CEOL: Jean Carignan

Miss McCleod's, the Wild Irishman (with Gilles Losier)





Bonnie Kate (with Yves Verette & Gilles Losier)





Reve du Diable/Devil's Dream (with Gilles Losier)





Reel du Rimouski (with Gilles Losier)






La ronfleuse Gobeil





Monymusk





Reel des sucres





Reel de la madame Renault





Master Crowley's





Paddy Ryan's Dream





Hangman's Reel





Reel du violon monte en vielle





The Laird O'Thrums Strathspey, the Gavin McMullin Reel, the Laird O'Drumblair Strathspey, the Gladston Reel





Reel du forgeron

Earth's Second Moon Given an Old Irish Name

"Cruithne" is an Old Irish name for the people that lived in Ireland and Scotland before the Celts. It's also the name given to "earth's second moon" by the astronomical community, on behalf of the amateur sky-watcher who discovered the strange asteroid that revolves around the sun, like another planet.

Tony DeMarco & Kevin Burke

CEOL: (review from Dirty Linen magazine) Fingal's new CD

CEOL: Seán McGuire

(1) Jackie Colemans, Liffey Banks, Peter's Street (reels)





Ar Éireann ní Nósainn Cé hÍ(For Ireland I'd Not Tell Her Name) (slow air)





,Maid Behind the Bar, (reels) with Stockton's Wing

CEOL: Matt Molloy

Bucks of Oranmore





Gravel Walks





The Independence (hornpipe), Jim Donaghue from Sligo, The Gravel Walks (reels)





Colonel Frasier





Mason's Apron

CEOL: New York Irish American Traditional Musicians, the Next Generation

Shane Cornyn. An Raibh Tú ag an gCarraig (Were You at the Rock?), Farewell to Ireland (air, reel)





Dylan Foley. Dunphy's, Joe Cooley's by Paddy O'Brien (hornpipes)





Rose Flanagan & Dylan Foley. The Lads of Laois, The First Month of Summer (reels)





Dylan Foley. Steeplechase, Black Pat's (reels)





Eugene Bender. Paddy Ryan's Dream, Never Was Piping so Gay by Ed Reavy. (reels)





Shane Cornyn (fiddle), Alex Reidinger of N.Carolina (harp), Cáitlín Finley of
Philadelphia (fiddle), Kathleen Parks (fiddle), Eugene Bender (fiddle), Brian
Lindsay (fiddle). Tarbolton, The Longford Collector & The Sailor's Bonnet.(reels)





Erin Loughran, Maeve Flanagan & Deirdre Brennan. Across the Fence by Brendan McGlinchey, Galway Bay (hornpipes)

ISSUE: Save Tara

The Tara Complex from the Sky

Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny


The Irish government bulldozed the Viking walls of Dublin when they were uncovered, and now it's planning to put a highway through the middle of Tara valley. This highway called the M3 is a bigger and badder version of another road, the N3, that is already encroaching on the hill of kings, where Ireland's nationhood was first made real more than two thousand years ago.

The distance between the motorway and the exact site of the Hill is 2.2 km (1.37 miles), making noise pollution and the visual desecration immediate and abhorrent.
Protestors have reason to suspect that the motorway is the beginning in a series of developments planned within and on the border of the historic valley.

This is a map of the proposal:


There are many alternatives to this kind of irreversible destruction. An alternative route approximately 6 km west of the Hill of Tara is believed to be a straighter, cheaper and less harmful alternative. Details.

Protests have been numerous and creative across Ireland and the world:

On Sunday 23 September 2007 over 1500 people met at Tara to take part in a human sculpture representing a harp and spelling out the words "SAVE TARA VALLEY."


The European Union is objecting to the Irish government's seeming disregard for European Celtic heritage.

The World Monuments Fund's 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world sited Tara.

A major arts production was staged on the hill in the summer of last year. Details. and here.
Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly, Aidan Brennan and others performed at the event.

Paul Muldoon's op-ed in the New York Times: May 2007.

Colm Toibín's op-ed in the Times: April 2005

CEOL: Liam O'Flynn and Tommy Peoples

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (reel)

CEOL: Bothy Band

Billy Brockers, The Humours of Loughrea, The Laurel Tree (reels)





Old Hag You've Killed Me, Dinny Delaney, Morrison's





The Morning Star, The Fishermans Lilt & The Drunken Landlady.





Martin Wynne's #2, Longford Tinker





Michael O'Gorman's

CEOL: Paddy Keenan

Spike Island Lassies, Lord MacDonald(reels) with John Walsh





Dinny O'Briens or Byrne's or The Mullingar Races, Garden of Daisies, Cork or Harvest Home (hornpipes)with Tommy O'Sullivan





Kesh, Give us a Drink of Water, Famous Ballymote, Bucks of Oranmore(jigs, reels) with Tommy Sullivan

CEOL: Paddy Canny Duets

Pipe on the Hob, Cliffs of Moher (jigs) with Frankie Gavin





The Old Bush & Geaghans (reels) with Peadar O'Loughlin

CEOL: Stephane Grappelli & Frankie Gavin

Sweet Georgia Brown





Oh the Days of the Kerry Dances

CEOL: Danny Boy, different versions

Tim Kliphuis, Danny Boy





Michael Dunne, Danny Boy





The Larks: Gene Mumford, Orville Brooks, David "Boots" Bowers, Isaiah Bing, Pianist Glenn Burgess





Roy Orbison









Mario Lanza

CEOL: Liam O'Connor & Seán McKeown

First set: march: on the Moon. reels: Knotted Chord, Stony Step. reels: Silver Spear, Fisherman's Lilt, Flogging.





Maid in the Green, Humours of Glin, Killoran's(jigs)





Cáilín ..Das Cruite na Mó(air) ?





(hop jig)









Mrs Galvins & Billy Connors

CEOL: Irish Traditional Music Scene in Israel

Every year the ITM Festival in Tel-Aviv is the event of the year for the Irish traditional music community of that central city in Israeli life. There are open sessions after and between the shows.

The thriving scene is centered at The Molly Bloom's Irish Pub, and starts up around Friday afternoon. Here's night-vision-goggle video from a session there:


Ayelet Hacohen has been called "the Irish Music expert in Israel." No one can be sure what that means. His website has a row of dancing leprechauns at the top, so the idea that he's an expert is about as funny as those gif file elves. I learned on his website that there is such thing as an Irish traditional music discussion board in Hebrew only. I'm almost sure there's no such lán-Gaeilge music discussion board.

CEOL: performance: Danú

Easy and Free a Scottish song with Liam Clancy from the album All Things Considered



The Beauty Spot, The Maid Behind The Barrel







Sliabh Russell, An Buachaill Dreoite, Humours of Rahey



An Déirc An tAth Liam Ingils



The Kinegad Slashers/Young Tom Ennis/The Battering Ram

CEOL: singing Óró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile

Mary Black here, performing the Pádraig Pearse re-write of the Drunken Sailor, Óró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile, an anthem for the rebel spirit associated with the pirate queen Gráinuaile.



And now Sinéad O'Connor:


The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem:


the Dubliners:


The best part about Darac' Ó Catháin's rendition here, is at minute 0:56, when he rises to the words "is cuirfidh siad ruaig ar ghallaibh
" and lights up to emphasize the meaning "these champions come home will put ruaig on the foreigners" where ruaig means something that repels and is not directly translateable into English:

CEOL: Slán le Maig' (song in Irish) sung by Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh & Michael Rooney performing Slán le Maigh a few months ago in Scotstown, Monaghan at the An Bhoth Festival in Monaghan.

And this performance of the song, she gave for TG4.tv:


Muireann is well-known for being Danú's leader singer.

Irish Rally for Pete Seeger's Nobel Prize

Maybe it stems from his life-long friendship with the late Tommy Makem, but the respect, resource and inspiration Pete Seeger draws from Irish music and the traditions of Ireland is evident in his life's work. As a man of peace, and a man among the happy warriors that made time in popular (sic) culture for folk ways and the peoples' traditions, the Irish owe and pay Pete Seeger great heed and respect.

That is why Pete Seeger so highly ranks among those who deserve a Nobel Prize Nobel Prize for Pete Seeger.

EVENT: Mary Staunton at O'Neil's

Mary Staunton the great Mayo box player and singer is at this very moment leading a session at O'Neill's Pub (45-46th St. & 3rd Ave) with Seán Garvey from Cahirciveen, Kerry.

Seán won the prestigious TG4 Gradam Cheoil award as Singer of the year in 2006. He also plays banjo.

What's on the TV? (or RnaG)

I want to add to the list of music shows on TG4, the following show, hosted by Nioclás Ó Cearbhalláin, the presenter of Siar an Bóthar, which is related to an RTÉ program called West Along the Road.

Ó Cearbhalláin is the archivist at the new Taisce Cheol Dhúchais Éireann that's moved to 73 Merrion Square in Dublin.

This fantastic show on TG4.tv--Siar an Bóthar---uses the RTÉ's considerable archives to pick out choice pieces, I'll give a list of the clips Ó Cearbhalláin chose this week:

April 1979 (program: Aisling Gheal): bodhrán and tin whistle, Johnny McDonagh and Frankie Gavin, reels, Boys of Ballysdare and the Longford Colelctor

September 1989 (program: Festival Folk) Seán Cannon (a Dubliner after Luke Kelly) singing The Banks of the Roses.

April 1987 (program: Mountain Lark) flute and bozouki?, Thomas Guihan and Seán Ó Loinsigh, reels, Cáit an Táiliúra, Charlie Harris', Galway Rambler

1976, Bothy Band, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill singing the rhythmically rich Fionnghuala, a Gallic song more longly called Am Bothan a Bh'aig Fionnghuala (Finúla's Hut).

April 1982 (program: My Own Place: Ciarán Mac Mathúna's Limerick) Bell Harbour a Clare band with Chris Droney on concertina doing the music for a kitchen house dance

April 1987 (program: The Mountain Lark) Jimmy Hartford on box three hornpipes including the Boys of Blue hill for competitive step dancers

November 1988 (program: The Pure Drop) whistle and fiddle, Mary Bergin Peter Sorenson, slide and tune, Pádraig O'Keefe's, Liam Collins',

The show was just great and well worth watching.

George M. Cohan receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor

Importance of Stretching and Fiddle Practice

The fiddle is played on two hands, with a neat drum on one hand, and a precise loom on the other. One arm is more wrist & elbow intensive, while the other is more fingering snipping and dancing on the sharp wires.

The torso is at attention and twisted so that the chin and shoulder become a big toothless jaw, balancing the fiddle like a straw on a cockyman's lips.

There is much in the way of exercise to playing the instrument on target on all sides of the body in a position the fiddler grows into, like a vine branching tree.

But the body is dancing on all sorts of reducing levels of intricacy and detail and fine listening and deep concentration.

The fiddler is alive in a way no other is alive, but in the way a musician is alive. The penalty for hitting false notes is intense for a fidileoir.

Time smoothing out the instrument's shrewing rebuttals to false fingered words is awful and painful and the task is great that brings it to peace.

And once the air is sweetened, and the reel is undertaken and the violin must make dance happen, but within the standards of a gently pulled temper, then it goes mad until the jig is up and the dance done.

A fidileoir undertakes this energetic undertaking by stretching and letting the limbs and muscles extend into the bow and strings.

Broadway Before Broadway

The history of American entertainment is geographical as much as it is story and song. The center of popular culture starts with some bars in lower Manhattan and creeps up past City Hall, along the Bowery, and across Union Square, before it finally reaches Times Square and shuffles off the island to Hollywood.

In that long march, the Irish were a major component of the band, and the statue of George M. Cohan at the crossroads of New York or the institutional Eugene O'Neill Theater are only the most obvious memorials to this living and on-going contribution.



The representation of multi-ethnic New York, in a realistic and idealized manner, begins with Irish-American composer Ned Harrigan, whose name was immortalized by Jimmy Cagney in the song George M. Cohan wrote to honor the man he looked up to as a pioneer. The lyrics to Harrigan can be found here. And a cutesy video of the song can be found here.

Ned Harrigan is a problematic figure in the history of Irish American culture, because he performed and composed at a time when Blackface Minstrelsy was the racist standard in popular entertainment. Harrigan was a contributor to this disgusting genre, but he was also a complicated comedian, whose work with 19th century ethnic stereotypes, included slagging against his own people too.

Wikipedia article on Edward "Ned" Harrigan.

Mick Moloney on NPR talking about early Irish Broadway.

EVENT: film festival: Gaelic movies showcased

A free Gaelic Scottish and Irish language Film Festival is happening...in Scotland, but the movies being shown are available all over the world. It's happening for three days starting on January 22nd.

EVENT: new movie: Brendan and the Secret of Kells

A major Belgian and French animation team has taken inspiration from the Book of Kells, in a new feature film called Brendan and the Secret of Kells. Tomm Moore directs. He is known for his splendid short Irish animation Cúilín Dualch, about a boy born with his head on backwards, who discovers his talents despite all the mocking.

Read more about the movie at Animation Insider.

No word yet for final release date. It was buzzed to come out in 2008, and has been delayed inexplicably. Really looking forward to the premiere. New information as of November 2008 promises the release to be sometime in February of this year.

Learning Irish in NYC, the teachers: Máura Mulligan

Máura Mulligan is a native of Mayo (Maigh Eo, "plain of yew trees"), from an ancient Gaelic Irish family in west Connacht. Her baile dhúchais is Achadh Mór whence she emigrated to New York City to become a writer and teacher. Her website can be seen here.

Her career has included her work as a successful practitioner of traditional Irish arts through her popular Gaeilge and dance classes out of the New York Irish Center, an institution located one stop over in Queens from Manhattan. (Map)

The 2009 learning year is made up of a few cycles of instruction. Anyone who would like to become a mac léinn as offered by the city's múinteoirí, should consider Máura Mulligan's language or dance classes.