World Fiddle Day – An Outstanding Success

Job done: PJ Teahan and Jackie Daly remove the blanket to unveil the photographs pf Patrick O’Keeffe and Lyons’ Bar taken by American photographer. Jim Griffith’s in 1957 while on a trip down with Séamus Ennis. Included are Matt Cranitch partly hidden and John Daly who travelled from Boston for the weekend. ©Photograph: John Reidy

At the unveiling of the rare photographs of Patrick O’Keeffe in Scartaglin on Saturday morning were from left: Paddy Jones, Terry Wilson and Jackie Daly, PJ Teahan, co-organiser; Matt Cranitch and Martin O’Connor – who with Paddy Jones were among the last fiddle pupils to be taught by the great man. ©Photograph: john Reidy

One of the last of Patrick O’Keeffe’s fiddle pupils, Paddy Jones playing an air at the unveiling and presentation of the rare photographs of O’Keeffe to Lyons’ Bar in Scartaglin on Saturday morning. Included are Kathy Cook, Pat O’Sullivan and Gerry Harrington. ©Photograph: John Reidy

World Fiddle Day co-organisers, Mick Culloty (left) and Tomás Mac Uileagóid (right) welcome US musicians and guests, Skip Gorman, Rhode Island US and Connie Dover, Arkansas, US at Lyons’ Bar in Scartaglin on Saturday morning. ©Photograph: John Reidy

Calm before the Storm. Lyons’ Bar proprietor, Ned Vaughan pictured on Saturday morning before the events of the day began to unfold. ©Photograph: John Reidy

Young A.J. O’Connor looks and learns the art of sociability from two masters, his dad, Den Joe and John Joe Tangney at Lyons’ Bar in Scartaglin on Saturday morning. ©Photograph: john Reidy

Beyond clear indications of the outright success of the weekend’s activity, there is no visible smoke from the joint, Handed Down / World Fiddle Day stack yet.

The flame is still burning too brightly today for any traces of afterthought and I know from experience that it can take anything up to a week for rational thought to return to its normal lodgings.

I caught a glimpse of Jackie Daly heading off out the Limerick Road this morning and escaping back to normality. He is one of PJ Teahan’s right-hand-men and Jackie played a blinder long before the weekend came to pass.

Broken Pane in Miltown Malbay

There’s the story of the undeveloped, photographic slides and a tall, American photographer, Jim Griffith of Tuscon, Arizona – who, accidentally, put his arse through the window of a public house in Miltown Malbay in 1957.

There was a chance meeting in America some years later with a son of the owner of the pub with the broken pane and the man with the behind which broke it. This led to the bringing-it-all-back-home to the Co. Clare pub of those slides and, in turn, to the accidental discovery by Jackie Daly that Patrick O’Keeffe featured in some of them.

A further voyage of discovery by PJ Teahan and Matt Cranitch led to the framing and presentation of the pictures of Patrick to Ned Vaughan in a wonderful little ceremony in the ‘kitchen’ of Lyons’ Bar in Scart on Saturday morning.

The Abridged Version

There are so many turns and twists about how the photographs wound up on the wall is Scart that it took four of the men there on Saturday morning to tell the story – and that was the abridged version.

At the other end of the full day, RTÉ Radio One presenter Peter Browne gave a full account of the various researchers and collectors who made the journeys into Sliabh Luachra and of the gems they were instrumental in capturing and preserving. He took his full audience on a journey from the work of Séamus Ennis to his own landmark collections of the life, times and music of the likes of: Patrick O’Keeffe, Denis Murphy, Johnny O’Leary and Jerh Collins and Willie O’Connell.

The weekend is now just out of its third, annual staging and it has been blessed by the luminaries of the Irish Traditional Music landscape of today and it can only go on from here.

Whirl of Events

There will be more from the whirl of events over the coming days and we’ll let you have it here.

Just before last night’s concert, co-organiser, Tomás MacUileagóid told me that they were going to play a composition of PJ Teahan’s with the title: The Trip to Kilmurry. This is not, however, the Kilmurry in Cordal but an area in Cork to which PJ regularly plays.

Tomás and myself escaped to a quiet corner and I managed to grab a few bars on the IPhone.