One further thought --

I met and talked with Máire Uí Chéide earlier this year in Milwaukee, during a wonderful sean-nós weekend at UWM. She told me that she grew up with her grandparents, rather than travelling with her parents and brothers & sisters to England in pursuit of work. Her songs she learned largely from an unmarried uncle. Máire now lives in Boston with her husband and family -- all of whom are (unusually) Irish speakers.

In terms of her culture, Máire is actually a generation behind other people her age, having been brought up by people who spoke only Irish (her grandmother knew no English) and who were much older than she. This may explain how she happens to sing a song that seems to have been recorded by few other people in recent years.

Virginia