Traditional Fiddle Music From Sliabh Luachra With Pádraig O’keeffe, Denis Murphy And Julia Clifford

Rounding out this week’s triumvirate of lost gems is a recording made by Seamus Ennis for the BBC at Charlie Horan’s Bar, Castleisland, Co. Kerry, in September of 1952. As with the Jackie Daly re-release, Pat Ahern provides additional sleeve notes, although Alan Ward’s earlier notes are interesting enough in themselves: among other things, he informs us that on ‘The Old Man Rocking The Cradle’, Pádraig O’Keeffe imitated a baby’s crying “by intermittently muting the bridge of the fiddle with a large door key held between his teeth”. Denis Murphy and his sister Julia Clifford were both students of O’Keeffe, and when the three play as a trio (often with Julia taking the low octave, by way of filling out the sound), the effect is mesmerising.