Recently my brother pointed me towards a priceless archive of Dublin images online, hosted by NUI Galway.
Known as the ‘Pickow Collection’, the archive contains hundreds of priceless images of Ireland, with great emphasis on the capital. Some familiar faces and locations feature, with piper Seamus Ennis for example shown playing to an audience of young children in the Phoenix Park. Elephants giving people lifts around the zoo and masses of cyclists crossing O’Connell Bridge are among other once common Dublin scenes in the collection.
Some background information on the collection is provided by NUIG:
Jean Ritchie, singer, folklorist and dulcimer player was born on 8 December 1922 in Viper, Kentucky. She was the youngest of a family of 14 children, known as .The Singing Ritchies.. Jean graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1946 and taught for a time. In 1952 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to enable her to research the origins of her family.s songs in Great Britain and Ireland. Her husband George Pickow, a photographer, accompanied her and they spent approximately eighteen months recording folk songs and traditional musicians and taking photographs
A selection of images from http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie
You can view and browse the Dublin photos in the collection here.
I think my favourite image in the collection is this one below, showing two once familiar Dublin sights. While Horatio Nelson looks down towards the O’Connell Bridge, a Guinness barge passes under it!
George Pickow Image Collection (NUIG)
Click on the book for more.
Yes, I had the pleasure of meeting Jean Ritchie once, when I used to run the Tradition Club in Slattery’s, 129 Capel Street. My buddy, Tom Munnelly, brought her in. Of course anyone who was interested in traditional music knew who she was. It was 1970s, long after her first trip to Ireland. The programme was re-arranged, she got up and sang her big heart out, and back in those lawless days we waited till the audience left, went downstairs and all she wanted for remuneration was a bottle of Bushmills whiskey to bring home to Kentucky.
Brilliant comment, thanks for that!
So that’s where we got Seamus Ennis road in Finglas! I wonder if the people who pass up and down it everyday know who he was..