"Is that CD still available?"
It is Micheal - it's on the Msical Traditions website, but you might try contacting me.
Back again - I'll get down to responding to requests for the programmes
I have to say that the "native Irish today closing the door to outsiders to their folk tradition because of downright theft of tunes/songs/ etc etc." is a total new one on me.
I've never com across a people more generous and proud of their tradition and more willing to share it - that comes from an Englishman whe has worked with the Irish for nearly half a century and has spent thirty years recording their songs, music stories and traditions.
You learn something every day!!
I remember first being introduced to Mary (by Mikeen McCarthy) in the middle of a field in West Drayton, west of London.
There was a railway track serving the West of England a couple of hundred yards away and she had demanded I started recording her songs immediately (while we were walking back to her caravan) - I recorded three songs before we goth there to the accompaniment of the three trains that had passed in that short period.
Mary's sons once told us of a late singing session in a pub in East London when Mary had had to be pulled back into her chair at one o-clock in the morning when she had decided to "phone Jimmy and Pat" because she had remembered some songs she had not yet sung to us.
We have just been recorded for a programme due to be broadcast in the next few weeks on Irish Radio's 'Newsround' - the producer, J J O'Shea took down quite a lot of information on Mary.
Our collection is to be deposited in Limerick University soon (we hope) and there is talk about concentrating on the Traveller material that has yet to be broadcast - a website has been mooted
L.U. had done some magnificent work in researching Traveller culture, particularly with the Dunne Family - they have been instrumental (pun intended) in helping revive the piping tradition among Travellers
Jim Carroll