'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: Helen
Date: 09 Mar 16 - 03:31 PM

keberoxu,

I have a copy of Sheila Larchet Cuthbert's book, The Irish Harp Book: a Tutor and Companion, first printed in 1975 by Mercier Press, and my copy was reprinted in 1985.

I have had it for maybe 30 years, but I haven't used it. As I've said in either this thread or another I am self taught on the harp, and also I never learned piano which would have made it easier for me, I think.

I would have ordered the book without seeing it and when I looked at it I realised it was very daunting for an amateur musician struggling without a teacher. If I had had a teacher I may have had some benefit from it.

It has a lot of Irish tunes in it, including the hauntingly weird My Lagan Love, and some Carolan tunes.

Helen

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Mar 16 - 04:52 PM

The 7 March post quoting "Travels with my Harp" by Mary O'Hara, names the Sion Hill superior, Mother Jordan, and harp-maker Malachy McFall of Belfast. Oona Linnett's thesis "The Irish Harp" (quoted post 6 March) includes a reproduction of a public advertisement dated 1904, by one James McFall in Belfast, which declares:
"In use in all the leading Convents throughout the world." Which supports the repeated assertion that, turning from 19th century to 20th, harps in Ireland were limited to the parlors, drawing rooms, salons, and convents, where it was expected that women, not men, would play them.

Page 50 in "The Irish Harp" brings up Comhaltas Ceoltóoirí Éireann in the 1950's when it was founded. Séamus MacMathuma, interviewed by Linnett for her thesis, confesses:
"I suppose we would generally be perceived as being conservative....The [Irish] harp was looked at as a bit of a sacred cow in the early years [of Comhaltas]. It was something that you paid lip-service to....Probably with Comhaltas it got off to a bad start."
And, on page 102, Mac Mathuma recalls how it was twenty years later, with the breakthrough of a younger generation of musicians.
"I can remember, because I had known Máire Ní Chathasaigh as a young girl, and she was doing wonderful things. I remember the first year the harp was included in the Scoil Éigse [1976]. We would normally have recitals at some stage. There wasn't an expectant hush for the harp, because people hadn't heard Máire playing. But mind you, once she started! Within that week, a whole lot of young people changed their attitude to the harpers....a whole lot of people just accepted it straight away. There were things happening on the harp!"

To reinforce how differently the Irish harp was perceived in the 1950's, another quote from page 50 of the thesis, this time from Aibhlín McCrann, at Cáirde Na Cruite:
"Comhaltas did the harp no favors in the 1950s, because they just totally ignored it, and kind of neatly put it into a little box and said: 'Ah, you're fine for cabaret and the American circuit: "the Colleen behind the harp". '   [Their attitude] was understandable in some ways, because what they were hearing wasn't their perception of what Irish [traditional] music should be."

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 Mar 16 - 08:41 PM

Helen, there are lots of harp lessons on YouTube. Take a look.

If you study piano and you learn music theory, then that will help with harp playing. However, I have talked to pianists who can play well but have never learned any theory. I think that's sad.

"Music theory" sounds daunting, but it's really pretty easy.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Mar 16 - 03:23 PM

"All the dear Spinning Eileens" comes from a review quoted in the OP opening this thread. The names quoted there are "Kathleen Watkins [and] Deirdre O'Callaghan," who made recordings as a duo when young. They are names in an interesting list: Deirdre Ní Fhlóinn [Flynn], Mary O'Hara, Janet Harbison, and many other students. What these harp students have in common is of course their teacher, Mairín Ní Shé. Their teacher was no nun, however she accepted the offer to work as harp instructor at Sion Hill's Dominican College, so it was nuns who hired the teacher.

And their teacher's teacher was a Cork native whose name is variously given as either Caroline Townshend or Caroline Townsend.

What both Ms. Townsend, and the three Ní Shé sisters who all studied with her, have in common, is that none of them seem to have had the kind of music training that goes with classical music instruction. Janet Harbison, who did indeed have such a background as a long-time piano student, states that Mairín Ní Shé did not read music at all, but taught by ear, and relied on those who did read music to perform pieces recorded in print so that she could learn the pieces by ear. Less is known of Caroline Townshend -- I cannot find anyone who says definitively whether or not she ever learned to read music.

One writer who offers information on Caroline Townshend is the late Nora Joan Clark, in her "The Story of the Irish Harp." Because books.google.com only lets me view certain preview pages in this book, I cannot get at Clark's end-notes to see the sources of her quotes. Here is the best I can view online.
"Other sources mention Caroline Townshend, daughter of an eminent philanthropist in nineteenth century Irish life, who '....set herself the task of rediscovering the long-since outlawed Irish harp, the emblem of Ireland....gave free lessons and many copies of her [Welsh] harp were made.'
"Sheila Cuthbert notes that Caroline Townshend was '....interested in everything Irish, the language, culture, music, and she taught the Irish harp to anyone interested, especially to the local girls near her home....in Dublin, she was delighted to find herself teaching quite advanced musicians...the O'Shea sisters and many others.'
(pp. 105 - 106, The Story of the Irish Harp: Its History and Influence)

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 10 Mar 16 - 03:55 PM

Caroline was musically literate alright - she is credited with many published arrangements of Irish music, as far as I can see. An interesting woman in many ways - she turns up as witness in an investigation of Black and Tan brutality during the Irish War of Independence.

The family tree is convoluted but she certainly seems to have been of that clan alright.

Regards

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Mar 16 - 07:58 PM

Thanks, Martin Ryan, for setting me straight about Caroline Townshend. She does sound redoubtable.

Moving on to that trio of sisters:
Their parents were Séan and Caitlín Ó Séaghdha. It seems that all three sisters, when young, studied the Irish harp, and presumably all with the same harp teacher, Caroline Townshend. Interestingly, the sisters pursued differing levels of literacy where music is concerned, no two of them taking the exact same path. In their youth, however, they turn up in notices in archived Irish local newspapers, with the three of them performing as a musical trio; I was left unclear if this was a trio of harps? One or more of them may have sung as well. The paper was unclear about the presentation but their three names were there, as was the emphasis that they were siblings.

Neasa Ní Sheaghdha (1916-1993), when still very young, tried drama; and one book of memoirs from someone outside the family recalls the memory of seeing Neasa as Antigone, a performance that was memorable for all the right reasons. If music remained part of her life, it must have been in a more private, even amateur, context. Also identified as Nessa Ní Shéa, she pursued higher education so as to focus on antiquated forms of the Gaelic, to become literate enough to study manuscript sources containing the great old epic tales of ancient Ireland. Her name appears on a scholarly presentation of the tragedy of Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne / Dermot and Grania / Diarmuid Ua Duibhne and Gráinne from the Fenian saga.

Róisín Ní Sheaghdha earned a B.A. in Celtic studies, studied piano at RIAM (she must certainly have learned to read music), and pursued graduate studies at University College Dublin, in education it appears. She sang to her own harp accompaniment, and participated in many Celtic Congresses. Her career track does not precisely parallel that of her sister Máirín but is close to it.

Máirín Ní Shé / Ní Sheaghdha (1913-1990) is the name which is inseparable from the Harp Room in the music division of the Dominican College of Sion Hill. She was married by then, with a last name variously given as Ferriter or Feiriteir. "Deeply indebted to harp teacher, Caroline Townshend," says Sheila Larchet Cuthbert in her book, The Irish Harp Book: A Tutor and Companion (page 240). She tutored generations of harp students, many of these grist for the "stone castle" mills and Jury's Cabaret. Earlier posts have named the best-known pupils.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Mar 16 - 06:02 PM

The website www.ainm.ie has the goal of putting online biographies in Gaelic, rather than English, of prominent Irish figures. My search for the redoubtable O'Shea family turned up this site. I will have my work cut out for me, making sense of the Gaelic -- with lots of quick-and-dirty help from Google Translate.

The paterfamilias has his own biography page there. He was born John Patrick O'Shea in 1887, in county Cork. By 1912 he was calling himself Séan Pádraig Ó Séaghdha. In spite of a childhood divided between county Cork, and England (Birmingham, where he learned to play cricket), when Ó Séaghdha invested in a house in Dundrum, he named it for the Dingle peninsula in county Kerry: Corca Dhuibhne. Wonder if the house remains in the family? Twice married, the father of six sired all his children during his first marriage.

We have thus far met three daughters of Séan Pádraig Ó Séaghdha: Máirín, the oldest, who taught at Sion Hill; Nessa, the Gaelic-language scholar; Finbarr, "an engineer" according to the ainm.ie biography; Róisín, lifelong musician; Niamh, who played the harp with her sisters until marriage, then became a home economics teacher; and Nuala, born in 1923, for whom I cannot locate a death date although I have death-years for all the older siblings.

Séan P. Ó Séaghdha died in 1971. His daughter Nessa said of him, that the greatest source of pride for him, was that so many of his descendants were raised as native speakers of Irish.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 Mar 16 - 11:27 AM

Mention of the "stone castles" from the original post, opening this thread, would bring the conversation full circle.

Indeed, the cabarets and medieval banquets in said "stone castles" are one of the great cash cows of Irish tourism. Although the phrase "dear spinning Eileens" was new to me, and mystified me utterly, it was far easier to locate references to "cabaret harpers" and "banquet harpers." I have spoken flippantly of grist for the mill, I who have never visited Ireland at all nor been one of the mead-swillers condescended to in that review quote. Not far off the mark, it seems.

Bunratty, Knappog[u]e, Dungaire, Shannon in general, Jury's Cabaret....harps, singing, stone castles, and tourism.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: MartinRyan
Date: 21 Mar 16 - 11:35 AM

I live within a medieval slingshot of Dunguaire, as it happens!

Regards

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Mar 16 - 08:44 PM

ITMA board member Aibhlín McCrann had an article published, January 2006, in the Journal of Music [Ireland]. This article can be viewed online at the Journal's website. Herewith, a relevant quote.

How is it that the Irish harp, our acknowledged national instrument for more than one thousand years, and untouched even by the 'Riverdance' revolution, is only now beginning to assume an authoritative voice and [to] come to prominence? The development of the Irish harp to the point at where it stands today has undoubtably been beleaguered by conflicting social and cultural standards of harpers themselves, other traditional musicians, and various commentators. The efforts of the Ní Shé sisters, Mary O'Hara, Kathleen Watkins, Deirdre O'Callaghan, and the 'castle' players in the 'sixties and the early 'seventies contributed greatly to the raising of public awareness of the harp. While they represented a certain genre of performance, and certainly developed a national identity for the instrument, it has taken many years to cast off the somewhat clichéd "Irish colleen" image of a young girl posturing behind a harp, twinkling at captive audiences as she sings about Leprechauns and crocks of gold.
[endquote]

There is one sentence, further on in the same article, which touches on the tension, already mentioned in earlier posts, between two organizations of musicians in Ireland.

[quote]
Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann, with whom founding members of Cairde na Cruite shared a somewhat tempestuous relationship due to deeply held philosophical differences of musical opinion, began to feature the harp at Fleadhanna Ceoil competitions [in the 1970's].
[endquote]

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Mar 16 - 05:43 PM

Bear with me, because I still can't do Blue Clickie links. But I can submits URLs in a post.

It occurs to me that some readers, who know even less than I did when I wrote the original post, might want examples of the "cabaret harp" being scrutinized here.

Both these pages describe the same recording product.

https://siopa.gael-linn.ie and search for "Amhrain Ghra."

http://claddaghrecords.com/index.php/amhrain-ghra-songs-of-love-by-irish-female-vocalists.html

Multiple singers/harp-accompanists here, including:
Máire Ní Scolaí
Eilidh Ní Marchaigh
Fionnuala Mac Lochlainn
Marjorie Courtney
Deirdre Ní Fhlóinn
Kathleen Watkins
Gráinne Yeats
Mary O'Hara

Seventeen titles, they all appear to be Irish/Gaelic, including "Róisín Dubh."

No, I have not heard any of these records myself.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: Helen
Date: 26 Mar 16 - 06:03 PM

Hi keberoxu,

Thanks for the info. Here are the links:


Amhráin Ghrá

Amhráin Ghrá - Claddagh Records

Helen

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 04:57 PM

www.irishmusicdaily.com/spinning-wheel-song

The above URL is another quick read on the song mentioned elsewhere in this thread. This article supports the position that the poem came first, and was set to music after the fact.

And I have to remark, I have yet to see a reference to the Spinning Wheel song being in the repertoire of any of the "spinning Eileens" themselves, if "spinning Eileens" are defined as the performers in cabarets and banquets in stone castles. Maybe it actually happened, but I have come across no trace of it.

Now watch somebody prove me wrong!

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 05:12 PM

Just found this.

Mary O'Hara's "Songs of Ireland": side two of the LP begins with The Spinning Wheel. Herself has proved me wrong. That said, I think she recorded this album after the death of her first husband, when she was wrapping up her youthful career and headed for the Benedictine nuns....before her comeback. At that time, Mary O'Hara was well established already. I question if she sang this tune before she made the recording, but perhaps she did.

Good heavens, how very high her soprano voice was! She could have sung with a choir of little boys -- such purity.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 06:55 PM

" posturing behind a harp, twinkling at captive audiences"

How does one posture while balancing a heavy instrument on one's shoulder?

Twinkling, we can assume, means "having a friendlier nature than the writer".

captive audience? They paid to be there and are free to leave.
==========
People, this isn't musicology, it's mere cattiness.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 07:44 PM

How does one posture while balancing a heavy instrument on one's shoulder?

Does Deborah Hanson-Conant count? - playing in hotpants so she can damp the strings with a bare thigh?

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 10:51 AM

Yeh, but she cheats! She straps a small harp to her torso. Eileen's grandmother would have a meltdown. (Guy waiting just outside the window probably wouldn't tho... it would definitely make the leap up onto the sill more interesting.) But which leg is she going to use to spin the wheel with?

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 02:37 PM

Welcome, Bonnie Shaljean. I was afraid you would never post to this thread. As anyone can tell, I am no harpist, only an observer on the outside. But you have an inside point of view on this consideration of the Irish harp going into the new millenium.

Has the image of women-singers-with-harps been a distraction for fully committed devotees of the Irish Harp? Please, don't bite my head off.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 03:33 PM

I was just looking up the singers listed for the Amhrain Ghra album, which appears to be intended for the audiences of the Gael Linn Cabaret of another era; the album is on the Gael Linn label. Some of these names have been considered already in this thread.

I had never heard of Marjorie Courtney, however.
In 1991, Eileen Casey interviewed Courtney for a periodical covering Knocklyon. It can be found in a PDF file online; the following quotes will demonstrate that Marjorie Courtney embraced the cabaret world.

[quote]
....it all really began when she became a pupil at the Dominican convent, Muckross Park, which was just a short journey from her home in Dundrum where she was born. 'Oh, I was so lucky,' she says, 'despite the fact that it was an enclosed order, the nuns were light-years ahead in self-development. It was the making of me....Mother Cecilia took me under her wing and opened up a new world to me....I owe so much to Mother Cecilia. She was always so thrilled when I won prizes in the soprano competitions at the Feis Ceoil or the Oireachtas...'

....her career blossomed....she was in great demand for singing at dinners -- the norm was for 6 nights a week. She recalls one busy night when she sang in the upper dining room of the old Jury's Hotel, then in the downstairs room, before dashing off first to the Dolphin and then the Clarence.
[keberoxu: must have been a weekend night?]
Today, Marjorie Courtney is in greater demand than ever -- not as a singer -- she gave that up a few years ago -- but as presenter and provider of entertainment in the grand style. She is an Entertainment Consultant....[an] entrepreneur of singers, dancers, orchestras, pipers, harpists, concerts, cabarets and show bands....

....she arranges every year, the Viennese Ball in the Berkeley Court. A full orchestra, and featured will be Niambh Murray, an attractive, young up-and-coming singer who is off to study in Italy in the New Year.
[endquote]

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens'
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 03:59 PM

[This comment was written in response to Keberoxu's previous post - the above one hadn't appeared while I was typing it.]

Not at all! My only problem is, I'm pretty tight for time at the moment, and can't give this thread the depth of consideration that it deserves, tho I've been lurking. (As you can see, wisecracks, on the other hand, roll off me instantaneously...) So I will be back when I can contribute something of more substance - which means first giving everything here a thorough read, instead of the brief skim that is all I've so far managed, and all I can do right now. (Got writing deadlines.)

Short answer to your (perfectly reasonable) question is no, not really. Not for me, anyway. People pursuing the harp in search of real knowledge, and expending true commitment plus plain hard work, don't have the mental resources to spare for fighting (or even worrying about) shallow, stereotyped views of what we do. (The other problem is us automatically getting consigned to Elf Land - but the same responses apply.)

In fact, the people I spend any kind of time with, or have any kind of time for, don't hold them. And the old clichés are dying out: there are just too many good players out there, too many high quality instruments being made, too much good music (with the rise of decent affordable score-notation software). Also, the internet makes it a lot easier for us to do research and find kindred spirits all over the world, and then talk to each other, hear each other, admire each other's art. There's strength in numbers.

And that's my "short" answer! Keeping this thread on the tracer...

(PS: A suggestion - can you ask one of the clones to interject the word "harp" somewhere in the title? I knew instantly who "dear spinning Eileen" was, but a lot of rewarding input may be getting missed because not everyone will make that connection. Just a thought.)

___________________Your wish is my command. Mudelf______________________

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 07:17 PM

the rise of decent affordable score-notation software

Harp scores tend to use special signs not used for other instruments. What's the most cost-effective solution that provides them?

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 08:19 PM

It really depends on what you want to do. A lot of those requirements are for classical harping, pedal markings, etc. I've been scoring harp music professionally for about 18 years, and there are symbols in place for harp notation, plus good workarounds which also serve the purpose quite well. I run my own publishing company (small though it be), and some of its material is on the ABRSM and Trinity syllabuses/syllabi (take your pick), also the Royal Irish, so it does meet industry standards. Sibelius has been my weapon of choice.

I have friends who use less expensive software for their harp books, and it seems to work fine (I've seen/bought/played a lot of their stuff) though I'm sorry I can't provide specific details on their programmes. But most of the folks I know in that line tend to have Sibelius or Finale. It's not just a matter of symbols, it's also stuff like cross-staff beaming and odd voicing/stem configurations. (That word "affordable" may be a sticking point, I suppose; but we all manage to stump up for computers and smartphone and tablets. I think it pretty much boils down to: one can afford what they want/need to afford.)

But I have not liked Sibelius' upgrade versions for quite some time, and am now not getting them any more. The actual scoring capabilities just get wonkier and wonkier as They mess them about to suit the needs of their precious Pro Tools. But it isn't working. Avid is not in great shape and has downsized yet again.

I'm interested in the new programme Daniel Spreadbury and the Finns (the inventors of Sibelius) are currently developing for Steinberg. At least Daniel will listen to you, and responds to queries promptly. He's a Facebook friend, and publishes a periodic development diary, so I will eventually go with his product. But Sibelius has adequately served my purposes for a long, long time, and continues usable, if increasingly irritating.

So I'd say hang fire and when I see what the new one is like, I'll start a thread. (It'll be awhile though - it's still in beta.)

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: GUEST,ollaimh
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 08:32 PM

there is a distinction between gaelic harping and irish harping. graine yeats was instrumental in the revival of the gaelic harp. that is the brass wire strung harp. there were a hand full of players through the 19th and early 20th century but their traditional links were weak. they played a few tunes of ancient manuscripts but mostly o'carolan and songs. yeats along with a genuine genius jay witcher got access to all the surviving gaelic harps. witcher is a phyicist and air craft engineer a woodworker and was already a decent musician in orchestral music and eastern european folk and the jazz it inspired. unique background. he understood the physics formulas for the resonating string. these are taught to any first year physics student but few apply them to calculating the optimum stringing for ancient gaelic harps. he found several ancient harps that had good design. the lamont, the o'fogarty and to a lesser extent the castle ottway.   he also tyhought that the remnants of the balinderry harp could be extrapolated from, to get the harmonic curve and probably string lengths over the range, and that it was well designed. together with garine yeats they started making gaelic harps. now there are many makers but then it was quite revolutionary. witcher was offered the post as official harp maker for the republic of eire. he turned it down as he was using maple as his main wood and it could be sourced more easily in new brunswick and maine and much cheaper for high quality wood.

now i like mary o'hara and that trfadition. it is certainly as old as most english song traditions which were made up by folk sing mediators in the 19th century. i prefer the gaelic style and try to play it in my own way. so grainne eats had a specific vision of gaelic harping she was promoting and it wasn't the dominant style. now it has had a great influence and people such as ann heyman and siom chadwick have gone to ancient manuscripts and rediscovered a vast repitoire, and have raised the bar of masterufull playing that i am hopelss to ever be worthy of.

the gaelic harp was a different tradition from the lowland and english harp tradition, and much older in all probablity.

the same is true of gaelic fiddling. jack campion is dead wrong about cape breton fiddling and as a lot of lowland scotts do he is spouting a bigoted rant. the scoffing scotman. in fact gaelic fgiddling almost died in scotland. they had a classically influenced style from skinner and others but the gaelic tradition died. that's why almost all the traditional scottish fiddlers came to nova scotia to learn the ancient gaelic style. as did the dancers.

when witcher and yeats started their work there were no gaelic harps available, now there are many makers of fine instruments and the search for the anceint sound has gone deep into many directions, and deep into the intrepretation of the surviving manuscripts. (john skene for instance was collecting harp , fiddle amd pipe tunes in scotland around 1600, although he didn't say which was which. the robert ap huw manuscript is thought to contain many gaelic piecres as well as welsh pieces)

these gaelic cultural revivals do raise the hackles of those who are still deep in british empire colonial bigotry , but it's happening and they are producing beautiful music and beautifull instruments. the reseach is different. previously they ignored gaelic sources but now they are discovering the links and histories bit by bit from those sources. bands like ossian have been open minded and recorded the ancient gaelic style in the poplar folk venues. i would suggest every one give a listen to ann hey man, siomn chadwink, brendan ring and others. they are great players who have revived a great tradition. and ignore the scoffing lowlanders. they are sassenachean after all.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 06:21 AM

Chadwick's harp resource page:

http://www.earlygaelicharp.info/

His personal page:

http://www.simonchadwick.net/

He doesn't claim to be a Highlander and lives in a place where Gaelic has never been spoken. I've no idea where he comes from (I couldn't tell from his accent - at any rate, he isn't a Canadian like you) and he doesn't think it relevant to anything. I agree.

The repertoire he plays on that instrument is significant but it is not huge. Having seen him live, I can see why players decided that other instruments made more effect with less effort and expense.

The Skene Manuscript contains no fiddle or pipe tunes. (I've handled the original and I can read the tablature). The fiddle was pretty near unknown in Scotland at the time. Harp, maybe a few, but most of the contents are arrangements of Lowland songs or adaptations of French court music. The instrument the MS was intended for was a 5-string ukulele.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 06:39 AM

Simon is English, and moved to St Andrews some years after college. Ann is American (as am I, though I've lived in Ireland for the past quarter-century) and Brendan is Irish.

Jack: I've just been looking at the Skene and picking some tunes out to play on my Mulagh Mast replica, but I only have Dauney. What do you think of his edition?

While I'm here: Yo, MARTIN RYAN - can you PM me your email? Something I want to send you.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 07:14 AM

And - since we're posting links:

A gold mine of info and useful reference material is to be found at WireStrungHarp, who also has a Facebook page:

http://www.wirestrungharp.com

https://www.facebook.com/WireStrungHarp/?fref=ts

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: MartinRyan
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 07:37 AM

@Bonnie Shaljean

Done

Regards

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 12:44 PM

I don't recall any serious problems with Dauney, but he isn't very imaginative with rhythm. There are some pieces (Adew Dundie is one) where dotted rhythms bring the tune to life.

BTW the mandour tuning of the Skene MS is relatively the same as (a tone up from) the mandolin tuning that U Srinivas adopted for South Indian music. An opportunity for some cross-fertilization there.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 06:10 PM

Jack's citation of lowland and continental repertoire in the Skene and other such sources puts me in mind of observations made in a major historical study of this period in Scotland which has just come out, reinforcing this cultural diversity:

The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland - Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560–1625, Sebastiaan Verweij
Oxford University Press 2016, ISBN 9780198757290

Blurb sez:

This wide ranging survey of Lowland Scottish literary manuscripts devotes a complete chapter (number 7) to the background to Margaret Robertson of the Lude family and the compilation of her collection of verse. Since at that period such material would have been sung, probably accompanied by one of the family's harps, it is of interest, as its author states as an example that "both Highland and Anglo–Scottish Lowland musical traditions peacefully coexisted at Lude".

(Scroll down to near the bottom of the web page):
http://www.wirestrungharp.com/library/bibliography.html

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 05:35 AM

The only musical connection I knew of for Lude was the splendid strathspey "Mrs Macinroy of Lude" by Joseph Lowe, from 200 years later.

It might well be possible to fill in the gap with other music, if somebody wanted to dig out the relevant genealogies and search for tunes associated with the names therein. (Was Miss Menzies of Culdares, for whom the strathspey is named, the one who married General Robertson of Lude?)

You might like this if you haven't already seen it. (I posted it to another forum in 2002). From the memoirs of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, about being in a big house in the Highlands under her governess at the age of 15 in 1812, getting up at 6am with her sister:

   In winter we rose half an hour later, without candle, or fire,
   or warm water. Our clothes were all laid on a chair overnight
   in readiness for being taken up in proper order. My Mother
   would not give us candles, and Miss Elphick insisted we should
   get up. We were not allowed hot water, and really in the high-
   land winters, when the breath froze on the sheets, and the water
   in the jugs became cakes of ice, washing was a cruel necessity,
   the fingers were pinched enough. As we could play our scales
   well in the dark, the two pianofortes and the harp began the
   day's work. How very near crying the one whose turn set her at
   the harp I will not speak of; the strings cut the poor cold
   fingers so that the blisters often bled. Martyr the second put
   her poor blue hands on the keys of the grand-pianoforte in the
   drawing room, for in those two rooms the fires were never lighted
   till near nine o'clock - the grates were of bright steel, the
   household was not early and so we had to bear our hard fate.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 05:50 AM

The thing about Lude of course is that they owned both the iconic harps in Scottish history (the Queen Mary and the Lamont), so it's on these very instruments that the song accompaniments would have been played.

That quote is one of my favourites! Always loved "martyr the first" and "martyr the second" and know how they feel (minus the ice in the wash bowl). How those two girls managed not to grow up hating music I'll never know. I also like the story about Mama sailing in and taking them out of Elouis' studio because there was a... a... (o dear, how shall I phrase it??)... a man present!!!! Scandalous.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 16 - 03:06 PM

One of the March 7 posts to this thread, was a quote from the memoirs of Mary O'Hara, who studied with Máirín Ní Shé, and first came to attention in the Thomas Moore pageant at the Sion Hill Dominican College in 1951. Note how hard they had to look around to scrounge up three harps for the pageant! MacFall had just one harp left for sale. We know that the Ní Shé sisters themselves had harps; it is recorded that Máirín's sister Róisín possessed a Tara harp made by MacFall.

Ten years later, look at the difference. The following are quotes from the Monday, 8 May, 1961 issue, page 5, of Dublin's Irish Press (English language).

[quote]
The harp concert promoted by Cairde na Cruite in the Royal Hibernian Hotel was a most pleasant experience and showed clearly that our Irish harp is no longer in danger of extinction through neglect. Considering the limitations of the instrument, the range of items on the programme was immensely gratifying. The concert opened with a highly effective arrangement of Brian Boru's March -- for five harps -- by Mercedes Bolger, Gráinne Ní hEigeartaigh, Eileen Kane, Elizabeth Leigh, and Joan Burke.
Noted in the first half: Gráinne Ní hEigeartaigh, performing Irish songs with harp; without citing titles, the journalist remarks approvingly that certain of these songs have associations with Shakespeare which the presentation emphasized.

In the second half, we had the Children of Lir performed by mime and singer, accompanied by Máirín Ní Shé, harp. Róisín Ní Shé brought us harp music and songs from Wales and Brittany, tastefully arranged and performed. She also combined delightfully with her sister Máirín in three songs from the Hebrides: "Mairead Og" especially was moving and poignant.
[endquote]

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 16 - 01:16 PM

I don't have a date for these newspaper quotes, which are surely decades old, archive material. The paper is the Irish Independent and the journalist is Marie O'Reilly.

[quote]
All five of the Ní Sheaghdha sisters learned to play the harp, including the eldest, Máire Ní Sheaghdha, who is now Mrs. Michael Feirtear. Mrs. Feirtear had Mary O'Hara among her students in her harp classes in the Dominican Convent, Sion Hill. She has also been teaching the nuns in other Dominican colleges so that the harp tradition does not seem likely to die in our generation.

Much of the credit, for the current revival of enthusiasm for the instrument that is almost the symbol of Irish music, must go to the late Miss Caroline Townshend, a Cork woman living in Dublin. She herself studied the piano under a pupil of Wagner. She was already well into her seventies when the Ní Sheaghdha sisters joined her classes. Lelia and Moira Sheridan, both concert harpists and teachers, now married and retired, were among her pupils. So was Máire Ní Cáthain who taught Maureen Hurley. Most of the girl harpists who have been appearing on concert platforms at home and abroad, and on radio and television programmes, have been taught by Caroline Townshend or by her pupils.
[endquote]

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Apr 16 - 05:25 PM

Nessa Ní Thuama, the daughter of one of the Ní Shé sisters (Róisín), can be heard singing with her own harp accompaniment on "An Raibh tú ag an gCarraig?" The recording dates back to a live concert in 1969, however it is the concluding track of a compact disc issued only twelve months ago.

Éamonn, Fionán and Cormac de Barra, three of Nessa Ní Thuama's sons, made the compact disc recording: recorded, mastered, produced it, made the artwork for the CD sleeve. Most of the album is trad music, sung or instrumental, with pipes, guitars, bodhrán, whistle, flute, harp, and singing. The song with their mother playing the harp and singing is a complete contrast to the tracks before it. The decision to give the performance pride of place at the end of the album, though, suggests that the De Barra brothers are proud to be descended from one of the Ní Shé sisters and from their tradition.

The album is called "An Caitín Bán."

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 01:20 PM

I have before me a copy of Gael-Linn's "Amhráin Ghrá" compact disc album. It is dated 2011. Previous posts (late March) in this thread provide links to online info about this CD.

A nice little CD-sized booklet accompanies the album because the notes are too copious to print on the album sleeve itself. The packaging is definitely, erm, trying to please.

Plainly every track on this album is Gael-Linn label material. There are some archival tracks that were not previously released, but they were definitely in the Gael-Linn archives -- "cartlann Gael Linn 1960." These three "new" tracks are for the singer quoted in a previous post, Marjorie Courtney, another Dublin-born, convent-educated "spinning Eileen." Here are the booklet sentences on Ms. Courtney:

" Marjorie was, for many years, a leading light with the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society. She passed away in 2008 and, in her memory, the prestigious Marjorie Courtney Rose-Bowl for Musical Theatre is presented each year."

From another page in the same booklet:
[quote]
The singers featured were not from the native tradition of singing, but each with their distinctive style succeeded in bringing an Irish song repertoire to a wide music audience.
This album is a tribute to a style of singing which has been rather overlooked in recent times. It is hoped that this album will re-awaken an interest in, and an appreciation of, the beauty that lies in this evocative Irish singing tradition.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Apr 16 - 08:48 PM

The following quotes are from a paper which was presented in 1996 at the Crosbhealach an Cheoil/Crossroads Conference.
the copyright is dated 1999, Crosbhealach an Cheoil along with the papers' author:
Dublin-born, Ulster-descended harpist Janet Harbison.

[quote]
The harp is the most ancient, the most famous, the most romanticised, the most political, and the most dismissed of members of the family of Irish music.
[E]very century of harping in Ireland testifies to a phenomenally rich diversity in repertoire, performance, and professional situation, along with an emotionally charge romanticism and political significance, particularly from the time that the Irish harp was established as the national emblem. All these have mesmerised modern commentators who, rather than address the depth and variety within each century of significance individually, consistently generalise in the global negative (except for the glories of the early middle ages).

Perhaps it is that the tradition was too hybridised or compromised to appeal to the lesser educated nobility of the planter English and Scottish patrons of the 17th and 18th century; or was it that their tradition was too romanticised, ethereal, and poetically political when cloaked in the heady sentimentality of Thomas Moore's songs, the Celtic Twilight, and the Gaelic Revival period to the turn of the [19th/20th] century; or perhaps, is it that the tradition of the Irish harp has been too contrived, effeminised and commercialised in its association with the winsome wenches working the "begorrah" cabarets of famous Dublin hotels and the medieval castles of Southwest Ireland?

[As a young student,] I was happy to accompany or arrange for my friends and to indulge in the vast dance music repertoire which all my traditional music friends outside school were playing nightly....before long we became aware of the critics. Our first misdemeanour involved our professional engagements. It seemed that our association with the Irish cabaret scene earned us a sleazy kind of reputation. My first summer job as a self-supporting music student, was as a harp player in Knappogue Castle, the sister castle of Bunratty, in County Clare. The label of "Bunratty Bunnies" was occasionally levelled to my great amusement. But we merrily played our Aoyama Japanese harps, perhaps lying occasionally to maintain the myth....I was, in fact, all the while, a student of piano and classical music at a Dublin university, and my life as a formal art musician with the piano and as a social traditional musician with the Irish harp, were clearly defined and never intermixed.

from: Harpists, Harpers, or Harpees? by Janet Harbison, and under copyright

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Apr 16 - 09:24 AM

TG4 is starting a series looking at the role of women in Irish Music:

Mna an Cheoil


The first in the series, to be broadcast this weekend (and available usually on the site after airing) deals with the female harpers.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Apr 16 - 03:03 PM

The name of Seán O'Riada has surfaced a time or two on this thread. Of course he is like an apostle/evangelist for the cause of Irish traditional music, and near the end of his life he was exploiting mass media, as it was available to him, to preach his gospel.

His series for television is beyond my acquaintance, however "Our Musical Heritage" was in time packaged into the form of a book -- perhaps O'Riada was deceased by then.

O'Riada does not appear to use the term "spinning Eileens." He does, however, take note of that adaptation of the Irish harp to the convents, drawing rooms, and finally the banquet/cabaret circuit. And one name in Irish harp teaching/playing is mentioned. It's hard to pull this up online, but I will quote what I may,

from "Our Musical Heritage", Seá O'Riada.

"At the end of the [19th] century, attempts were made once more, mainly by the infant Gaelic League, to get [the true ancient harping tradition] going again, but by this time the nature of the tradition had been forgotten. It was not until the early [nineteen-]twenties, when a Miss Townsend of Castletownsend in County Cork put her mind to it, that any progress was made. To revive the true harping tradition was impossible: instead, a style of harping was developed which was based mainly on Welsh harping, quite different from the Irish style."


Funduireacht an Riadaigh i gcomhar le Dolmen Press, 1982

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Apr 16 - 04:52 PM

His series for television is beyond my acquaintance, however "Our Musical Heritage" was in time packaged into the form of a book


Our Musical Heritage was a production for radio. The music of the series was available as a three lp box set.


I believe RTE revisited the programs recently in connection to O'Riada's anniversary. If I am correct they should be available as podcasts from the RTE website.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Apr 16 - 05:27 PM

Another quote from the Crosbhealach an Cheoil conference in 1996.
Copyright, however, dated 1999, and the copyright belongs to:
Crosbhealach an Cheoil, and
Janet Harbison, the author of:

"Harpists, Harpers, or Harpees?"

[quote]
My harp teacher, Máirín Ferriter (née Ní Shé), taught the harp players of Sion Hill convent by ear. She could not read music and those of us, her harp students, who also learned piano, were often called upon to sound the music which she had in books. While she enjoyed to discover this music, she taught us as she herself was taught by Caroline Townsend; and [Mrs. Ferriter's] most famous students rising to fame after the "An Tostal" post-war celebration of Irishness in 1953 were Mary O'Hara, Deirdre O'Callaghan, and Kathleen Watkins. These were still the stars of our harp room in the mid [nineteen-]sixties.
[endquote]

Page 95
Published by the Crossroads Conference; distributed by Ossian Publications, Cork, Ireland

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 16 - 02:48 PM

I have almost finished listening on my CD player to the Gael Linn anthology, "Amhráin Ghrá." Have now heard all eight of the women singers. The emphasis is very much on singers and (love) songs. Barely half of the tracks have harp accompaniment.

In fact, there is piano accompaniment on a handful of songs. Two or three songs have guitar accompaniment. And finally there are songs with unaccompanied voice. As a long-time choral singer myself, dear Lord! I would be scared to DEATH to sing unaccompanied in a recording studio. Any artist who does so is braver than I!

Here are the artists on the album who accompany themselves on the harp:

Deirdre Ní Fhlóinn
Kathleen Watkins
Gráinne Yeats
Mary O'Hara

Fionnuala Mac Lochlainn is accompanied, on all three of her songs, by a man playing guitar. Her recordings come from the 1960's. Interesting to listen to this artist. This is a singer who obviously knows the business, knows how to put a lyric across and how to phrase with skill and charm. She could hold an audience anywhere, I think. However her voice is not over-polished, aggressive, or shaped by classical singing technique into an operatic instrument: there are a couple of cabaret singers on this album of whom those features are true, but Ms. Mac Lochlainn is not one of them. Her singing sounds conversational, unforced, natural. With experience I am discovering that to sing that naturally, while not showing off your technical prowess, is an art in itself.

I am delighted with Gráinne Yeats too, even though she is at the other end of the axis from Fionnuala Mac Lochlainn. My background is classical, so I feel right at home with Mrs. Yeats, because this is a masterful demonstration of classical soprano singing: she could teach that kind of singing, and teach it well.

Máire Ní Scolaí is not the same as Gráinne Yeats, yet there are some telling things in common with these two women. Ní Scolaí has got classical vocal technique, and she too is masterful, which is to say, she makes it sound effortless; but in fact it is really hard work to sing as effortless-sounding as she sings! Like listening to the so-called "crooning" of Perry Como, who schooled himself on recordings of Enrico Caruso singing opera: his diction and delivery are crafted to sound casual and relaxed, but his technique of diaphragm-abdominal breathing give him all the support and resonance of the opera singer projecting over the orchestra to the gallery. I guess I can see why some sean-nos devotees cringe at the sound of Ní Scolaí's singing, because it is so very polished; no diamond-in-the-rough spontaneity for this artist.

A fascinating time-capsule of a record album!

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpist
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Apr 16 - 06:07 PM

Listening to all the singers on the Gael-Linn compact disc "Amhráin Ghrá" brought me one Susan Boyle moment. To remind you, I recall that moment when Susan Boyle sang "I Dreamed A Dream" to Simon Cowell and the television adjudicators -- was it the English version of The Voice, or some such? She wasn't completely groomed yet, however she had that fully finished singing technique. That was a video that went 'round the world.

Inside the booklet that Gael-Linn supplies with the compact disc, each singer has either a photograph or, in the case of Máire Ní Scolaí, a drawing of her face. Now, Máire Ní Scolaí is represented by three songs, the first two unaccompanied, the third with piano (someone else plays it). A single song follows featuring Eilidh Ní Mharcaigh as the singer, with her sister Úna playing the piano.

There is no photo of Úna; the photo of Eilidh Ní Mharchaigh recalls Susan Boyle in the unpolished phase, complete with caterpillar eyebrows. And then one cues Track Four, and hears her voice: she sounds as though she should be singing "Ah! sweet Mystery of Life, at last I've found you!" from Victor Herbert, with continental-European classical singing technique in full cry. It's a shock!

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpist
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Apr 16 - 07:01 PM

Moreover, what is she singing with that downright operatic vibrato, as though she were auditioning for a Wagner Valkyrie?

Why, the Irish Jacobite "De Bharr na gCnoc," or Over the Hills and Far Away, in which the faithful lady pining for her beloved is Éire waiting for Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Well, this is no longer Eileen at the spinning wheel, but it is the Irish cabaret in the hotels back in the day. Wonder if they still carry on in that fashion now....Sheesh, what a commotion.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 May 16 - 06:45 PM

Back to the theme of "Kathleen Watkins, Deirdre O'Callaghan, and all the dear spinning Eileens may still be charming the blue-rinse Yanks and mead-swilling Eurotourists in stone castles...." with which the OP opened this thread. And wrapping up my comments on the "Amhráin Ghrá" anthology on compact disc from the Gael Linn recording label (dated 2011, CEFCD 201).

Without further comment, I respectfully suggest you listen, compare, and contrast two tracks from this compilation of seventeen Gaelic songs:

#12, "Máire Ní Eidhin"; Kathleen Watkins, voice and harp

#16, "Ard Tí Chuain"; Mary O'Hara, voice and harp

Opinions/critiques welcomed.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 May 16 - 07:09 PM

A further invitation:

The tracks singled out for attention in the previous post do not play on the following link; nevertheless, you can hear bits and snatches from other songs on the same disc, using this player, completely free.

http://www.allcelticmusic.com/music/efb0691e-0f90-11e1-b0f1-12313d01ceaa/Amhrain_Ghra_-_Songs_of_Love.html

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 May 16 - 01:52 PM

Rather than more direct quotes from "Harpists, Harpers or Harpees?", Janet Harbison's paper for the Crossroads Conference twenty years ago (1996), this post will present one of Harbison's arguments in my own words, paraphrasing her statements. I do wish to make clear, though, that the argument is Harbison's and not mine.

Breandán Breathnach is an authority with whom Harbison has a bone to pick, along with the departed Seán Ó Riada and Ciarán Carson. Harbison is indignant with these three writers because their dismissive opinions of the Irish harp were, in Ó Riada's case, broadcast on national radio (subsequently printed and published), and in the other two cases, printed and published in reference books on traditional Irish music.

Harbison accepts Breathnach's carefully researched and documented position that dances, and dance music, largely were brought to Ireland from outside, were patronized by the upper classes first, and worked their way throughout Irish society until, at last, the traditional music learned orally by working-class, labourer musicians included the repertoire of Irish tunes composed for those very same dances. But she responds with heated emotion to Breathnach's dismissal (printed in 1971) of Carolan's harp compositions: Breathnach wrote, "by definition they cannot be regarded as folk music."

Harbison counters (page 99, printed 1999):
"I pose the question: despite the often aristocratic origins of a tradition, does it only qualify as 'folk' when it has filtered through the social classes to the lowest orders? It seems that the spokespeople for Irish music are class-restrictive....Many respected [traditional] musicians have emerged from every social stratum, but fortunately for them, it was not the harp they chose to play. It seems they have become honorary 'folk', a club not evidently open to harpers."

© Crosbhealach an Cheoil/The Crossroads Conference and "the contributors," e.g. Janet Harbison 1999
The Crossroads Conference 1996: Tradition and Change in Irish Traditional Music, edited by Fintan Vallely
Dublin: Whinstone Music, 1999

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 May 16 - 06:47 PM

As for the title of Janet Harbison's influential 1996 paper, it comes of splitting Irish musicians who play the harp -- specifically the Irish harp -- into three categories. I am going to word this my way instead of quoting Harbison directly.

1. Harpist: literate in the tradition of classical, academic, institutionalized, written/printed music. An example would be the late Sanchia Pielou, Irish by birth, and one of the founders of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Pielou is relevant to this Irish-music thread because, before leaving Ireland for Scotland, she was one of the more advanced harp students of Caroline Townsend in Dublin. Pielou remained anchored with her classical-music credentials: besides the Orchestra, she devoted her teaching career to what used to be called the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, where she was made a Fellow. There Pielou taught both the "clairsach," the Irish harp, and the "cruit," which is the Gaelic word inclusive enough to cover both Celtic harps and the big concert harps.

2. Harper differs from Harpist, according to Janet Harbison, in that Harpers focus on traditional Irish music in session playing, and they apply themselves to the dance music repertoire from which, in another century, they were more often than not excluded. The trailblazers here include Máire Ní Chatasaigh.

3. Finally, the Harpee! Invariably, she sings, she has had voice training, and instrumentally she is more of a three-chord wonder, using the harp to accompany her songs. From the teaching studio of Caroline Townsend (would she be limited to any one of these three categories, or would she be a combination of two or three of them?), the sterling example would be an entire generation of daughters of Seán Ó Séaghdha, most if not all of whom studied with Ms. Townsend in Dublin when this pathfinder of the Irish harp was in her seventies. From youngest to oldest, those Ní Shé sisters are, again:
Nuala, born 1923, possibly still living because I cannot locate anything about her death. Married; seems to have stayed out of music entirely once she had her own family/household.
Nuala's older sisters are all deceased now:
Niamh, performed with her sisters on the cabaret circuit until she married, then gave up music and taught home economics.
Róisín Uí Thuama, the widow of actor Seamus Ó Tuama.
Nessa Doran, who after her marriage gave up the musical performances in public, and devoted herself to Irish Gaelic philology and scholarship;
and the first-born Máirín, herself the teacher of Janet Harbison, of whom Harbison writes that she learned the harp from Caroline Townsend without ever learning to read music herself.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 May 16 - 03:38 PM

Tidying up here:

Nowhere does Janet Harbison's paper on the Irish harp mention:
"The Spinning Wheel" or Delia Murphy, although Mary O'Hara gets a mention;

"spinning Eileens," although Harbison does disclose the "Bunratty Bunnies" epithet about the stone-castle/cabaret circuit.

Janet Harbison is much in evidence on the Mna an Cheoil opening episode, An Cruit, about women and the Irish harp, on television; you can view it online.

So far, watching the show without headphones -- I'm in a public library -- I am relying on the silent images, the visual naming of each harpist who speaks on camera, and the English subtitles for remarks in Irish gaelic.   The Ní Shé sisters get their credit, as does the Sion Hill convent in Blackrock. There is no mention that I can see, however, of Caroline Townsend/Townshend, and for shame!

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 May 16 - 03:39 PM

Just watched episode 1, "An Cruit," from the "Mna an Cheoil" television series (TG4). With headphones on, and English subtitles for the Gaelic comments.

Still no Caroline Townsend -- the show jumps straight to the harp rooms in the convent schools, to which Ms. Townsend did not go; students came to her, it is written, at her home in Dublin.

Mentioned on this thread, and paid brief attention in "An Cruit," are:

Róisín Ní Shé, Bean Uí Thuama, singing and playing the harp, surrounded by her grandchildren, in a clip from the television programme "Dílin O Deamhas."

Máirín Ní Shé, photographed alone and with her sisters at their harps.

Mary O'Hara, in concert.

Gráinne Yeats, in concert.

Aibhlín McCrann.
Janet Harbison.
Máire Ní Chatasaigh.
Cormac de Barra.
Laoise Kelly.
Caitriona Yeats.
The Belfast Harp Orchestra (they have another name today I believe)

And the brass-strung "clarseach" is represented by Siobhá Armstrong, first time I ever heard one: wow. Sounds less like a harpsichord than like a hammered dulcimer.

Subject: RE: 'All the dear Spinning Eileens' (Irish harpists)
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 May 16 - 07:39 PM

Starting on March 26, 2016, several posts of mine introduced a compact disc anthology of songs in Gaelic sung by Irish artists, all of whom happened to be women. I have disclosed much of what is in the sleeve notes -- actually a small booklet -- of the compact disc jewelbox, issued by the Gael Linn label.

There is one of the eight artists one this album about whom Gael Linn left some facts out.
The first three songs on "Amhráin Ghrá" are:
An Draighnean Donn;
Seoithin Seotho (or seo - h - o)
Eibhlin A Ruin
sung by Máire Ní Scolaí, elsewhere spelled Ní Scolaidhe.

Contrary to what is true of the other seven artists, Ní Scolaí did not record those three songs around 1971, when Gael-Linn issued a long-playing album, "Máire Ní Scolaí," nor were these songs recorded in the 1960's when the Gael Linn booklet says (which is true for several of the other artists). In fact, although Gael Linn did indeed release that long-playing vinyl album in Ní Scolaí's lifetime (she died in the 1980's, well into her seventies by then), the fact is that Ní Scolaí recorded these three songs -- and, most probably, all of the twenty-one songs on the Gael Linn vinyl LP -- for companies other than Gael Linn.

The 1971 release on Gael Linn record label was in fact a re-issue, it seems to me, of recordings which Ní Scolaí had made in the 1940's and 1950's, some as 78 RPM vinyl for HMV, and some at RTÉ, presumably on radio rather than television. "Eibhlín a Rún" was definitely recorded for HMV and issued as a 78, although I have yet to discover the year/date of the recording.