The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163225   Message #3892252
Posted By: GUEST,CJB
05-Dec-17 - 12:35 PM
Thread Name: Radio Ballad Format - who created it?
Subject: RE: Radio Ballad Format - who created it?
Re: " 'The Stones of Tory', based on a local legend from Tory Island, North West Donegal."

I have a faint recollection that this was performed somewhat recently perhaps for a Folk Festival? Are the scripts still extant? In which case I see no reason why it should not be possible to recreate the performance.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/the-legacy-of-alan-lomax-1.1090542

"Readers may be able to help with a missing Irish Lomax item: a recording of a 1950s BBC radio ballad opera The Stones of Tory, written by Lomax and Ennis and featuring several of those he had recorded in 1951 as well as the Abbey actors Walter Macken and Eileen Crowe."

NICHOLAS CAROLAN, Irish Traditional Music Archive, 63 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.

Further there is:

https://www.horntip.com/mp3/1950s/1951--1998_world_library_of_folk_and_primitive_music_vol_2_ireland_(CD)/ireland.htm

"At some point Alan decided that he and Seamus should collaborate on a ballad opera for the BBC to be called "The Stones of Tory," in which Seamus would play the non-Irish speaker from the mainland who gets shipwrecked on Tory Island and is inaugurated into the language and old ways by the locals. I was to play the island girl who spoke only Irish. There was many a bent eye over that. Alan then wrote to many of the singers and musicians he had recorded, and several agreed to make the trip to Dublin, including Kitty Gallagher and Maire O'Sullivan. He wrote to one girl, famous for her rendering of "The River of Gems," and she replied in a three-page letter in Irish. Annoyed, Alan wrote back a two-page letter in Spanish, but it was all settled in the end. For the big parts he got Walter Macken and Eileen Crowe from the Abbey Theater. The tale of Balor was told in Irish, then translated so that Seamus's character could understand. It was full of wonderful music, made by the best Irish musicians of that time."

====