Seamus Ennis
Seamus Ennis (1919-1982) from the Naul, North Dublin.
Just a short post, I’ll let the music talk.
I’ve been returning to Leagues O’ Toole’s fantastic book The Humours Of Planxty, which has opened me up completely to the music of Seamus Ennis. Ennis essentially served as a mentor to Liam Óg O’ Flynn of the legendary band, and also collected countless songs and sheets of music all over Ireland and indeed the UK.
Seamus spent his last years in a mobile home in the Naul, close to the land on which he was raised and where the sound of his fathers pipes would shape his life. Those very pipes, antique pieces in themselves, were to be played by Willie Clancy and Liam Óg later on in Seamus’ company.
He died in that small mobile home.
Those days will be remembered
Beyond out in the Naul
Listening to the master’s notes
As gently they did fall
Christy Moore, Easter Snow.
The Rainy Day/The Merry Blacksmith/The Silver Spear
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
The late great Seamus Ennis was certainly a most interesting character and dedicated folklorist (see Wikipedia). I remember the excellent bilingual programmes that he presented on RTE radio and tv that were both educational and entertaining. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of traditional Irish music and song. My late mother knew him and his family. He was born in Jamestown, Finglas where he is commemorated by the Seamus Ennis Road that now runs through the Village. His father James came from The Naul, Fingal, north Co. Dublin, where Seamus ended his days living in a mobile home there, and where he is now commemorated by the local Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre:- http://www.seamusenniscentre.com/
A contemporary of Seamus’s was a piper called Johnny Doran. I think he only made one recording in his life but he was generally regarded as one of the best pipers in the country. He’d be welcomed in Tulla in Clare and is still spoken about there.
Johnny was a traveller and had a winter pitch up on Back Lane, where the apartments with the silly Dutch Billy gables are beside Mother Redcap’s. On this night in 1948 he was in the van and a gust of wind collapsed an old wall beside it, burying Johnny in the rubble. He was pulled from the rubble but was paralysed from the waist down. He died a year or two later.
I nearly always head up in that direction this night every year, but hadn’t thought about it tonight. I have now though and we’ll have a few jars for Johnny tonight!
At an open-air concert in County Clare in 1979, I snapped this picture of him: http://chien-noir.com/images/pmurphy/1979/06/slide0065.jpg (sorry about the poor quality; it’s scanned from a 35mm slide that was in fair, not good, condition).
I remember being impressed with his skill on the pipes; he was easily the most accomplished pipe player at the gig (sorry, Paddy Moloney!).
I also remember wondering why he was wearing a suit; it seemed oddly out of place at such a venue. But I guess he always wore one when playing.
Feel free to use the image (it’s subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License; sorry, that’s quite a mouthful!)
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