Dear Mary:
We're quite old, older than old. I remember when the idea for Irish music frist struck. I was sitting in a bog with my pal Cathal McConnel, and says I, Cathal, I just took a notion. I pulled a peice of bog wood out from under me and drilled a few holes in it and said, what can you do with that, boyo. Well, I suppose Cathal really got it all started. Within an hour he had a band together, Boys of the Lough. Well, Sorcha Dorcha got going soon after, though I did make the first flute. Well, Cathal, hearing us play said we were the hardest working band he ever heard. We played so much and so loud that the British came over to tell us to be quite and not disturb the neighbors (sorry about that). But, well, a few folks really liked our playing. CuChullain, for example, liked us better than killing folks! He invented Irish dancing, by the way.
Well, around his time, one of my band members, Skippy the Shouk, came up with the idea for Uilleann Pipes. He invented the double reed about six hundred years latter and then we could hear what he was doing, and it was really great. It took me a long time to learn the pipes myself, even after the reed was invented. Then came Edison and his record machine. I didn't trust it at first. I thought it was responcible for the death of my favorite piper, Michael Coombe O'Sullivan, but I later found I was wrong, he died of old age at only one hundred and twenty something, fancy that. He was burried with his pipes, but they were dug up and are still played everyonce and awhile by Liam O'Flynn (who really could be said to have invented Irish music - as much of what we were doing before Liam was Irish noise... but then again there was Willie Clancy...). Well, time when on and we recorded a CD, which you can get from us, if you really want to hear what the origional stuff was and is... but most of the rest you can find out from Ceolas.
Cheers Lorcan Ri na Currachi