When Tom Munnelly first met John Reilly he was at the time living in a derelict House in Boyle, Co., Roscommon.
Around this time Tom had started work as an adviser to D.K. Wilgus, who he introduced to John and who also recorded him
Disturbed at John's state of health, Tom, Jerry O'Reilly and others began to try to organise bookings for him to alleviate his position
A famous Irish Traditional Music organisation (who shall be nameless, but they know who they are), refused to book John as they said he "was not a Sean Nós singer.
On his last visit, Tom found him in a collapsed state and had to climb through a window to get to him.
He was admitted to Boyle Hospital, where he died from the effects of malnutrition.

As I said on the 'Irish Ballads, John's singing seems to substantiate David Buchan's theory that rather than set texts, many singers re-created their songs each time they sang them

Somewhere I have a longer article Tom wrote on John and 'The Well below the Valley'
Below is from the notes of a lecture Tom gave at the Willie Clancy Summer School in 1983 describing his first meeting with John Reilly
Jim Carroll

"With this machine I thumbed down to Boyle in 1965 to record a travelling man whom I had met at a Fleadh the year before. This was John Reilly, a diminutive man who was to prove to be one of the finest informants I would ever meet. He was a great storehouse of traditional ballads, and it is a matter of permanent regret that I only had a small percentage of his total repertoire recorded when he died four years later. None of the recordings I made in 1965 or 1960 survive as far as I am aware. My lack of certainty in this matter is occasioned by my habit of lending tapes. If I was enthusiastic about anything I collected I would surely go to one of my friends and say} "Here, there are great songs on this. You'll have to take a lend of it and have a listen!". I soon learned that, in common with books or records, if you lend tapes you never get them back.

My first illustration this afternoon is a recording I made of John in 1967, it was made in a pub in the village of Gurteen, Co. Sligo. If there are any of you who are not familiar with the late John Reilly, you might be interested to note that Christie Moore has used John's repertoire extensively in performing songs as an individual and as a member of the group 'Planxty'.

Ex. 1. THE RAGGLE-TAGGLE GYPSY-O John Reilly.
(Mention John's L.P. The Bonny Green Tree (Topic 12T 359)

Through John I became aware of the vast amount of song which was to be found among travellers and I spent a considerable amount of time working with travellers after meeting him. However this is a subject I have dwelt on at great length so I will not go in to it in any detail here, though, of course, I would be delighted to answer any questions about travellers and their songs if you would like to put them to me later.