Hi Bonnie,

I didn't mean to give the impression that Paddy had never heard of Tomás O Canainn at the time of the interview. What he meant was that, in the 40s and 50s, when piping was unfashionable and only a hardy few were playing, those people mostly knew each other from going to the same events, etc. At that time, apparently, O Canainn was not on the scene, and Paddy never heard of him until much later. (Of course, Tomás lived in England in those days, so even that wasn't really fair--but Paddy may simply have meant the T O C got a late start on the pipes; wasn't he an accordionist first?)

Paddy's feelings may partly be affected by the fact that Tomás has written a biography of O Riada, was in some senses O Riada's successor at UC Cork, and subscribed to the same belief we have all just expressed, that the Chieftains was more or less a development of O Riada's ideas.

Whether this was true, of course, is a matter of interpretation. Paddy's point about Martin Fay was that Martin was the only member of the original Chieftains that he, Paddy, had met through Sean O Riada. The others were already friends known to him in other ways. (Indeed, they may have joined Ceoltoiri Cualann through being Paddy's friends more than through O Riada.) So his ability to draw those musicians into the Chieftains was in no way dependent on their previous participation in Ceoltoiri Cualann.

Paddy's point was not that O Riada's group wasn't important, it was that the Chieftains was bound to happen anyway, whether or not Paddy had first been in O Riada's band. Of course, no one can say what would have happened had things gone differently, so it's all guesswork, even on Paddy's part.

I should say that Paddy was careful to be very respectful of O Riada and what he accomplished, and to say that he had nothing but affection and admiration for his old mentor. He just didn't want it said that The Chieftains was a mere offshoot of O Riada's previous project. His irritation at Tomás O Canainn was, I think, just another reaction to that same idea.