Siblings Agnes (29), Alice (26), and Bernard McCoy (24) huddled together on the deck of the Titanic shivering in the cold. It was about 1:15 am on April 15, 1912. They were on the port side of the doomed ship, which now was decidedly tilted toward the bow, causing everyone to lean toward the…

This winter I was travelling through Mexico -- almost into Guatemala and as far up as the deserts bordering the U.S. The last time I had been down Mexico way was in 2010 when I presented the Irish language documentary…

Chicago River Dyed Green for St. Patrick's Day

[Cross-Post from Chief O'Neill Blog]

What would Chief…

"…

The story of Chief O'Neill owes a great debt to his great-granddaughter Mary Lesch. It was Mary who followed through on family stories and hunted down her famous ancestor's unpublished manuscript. Then, with the aid of Chicago historian…

Francis O'Neill started as a policeman on August 17th, 1873. At that time, Chicago was still recovering from the devastation of the Great Fire a couple of years before. Francis had his own tragedies to contend with: He and his wife Anna lost their first child during that difficult time, and he struggled to keep a steady job in…

Tombstone erected by Francis O'Neill in memory of his parents.

On a recent visit to West Cork, I had the fortune to properly explore Tralibane and the surrounding area. I was bowled over by the…

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

In 1897, Mark Twain was reported to have made this famous statement upon being…

Down the hill from Francis O'Neill's homeplace of Tralibane, County Cork, is an 18th century stone bridge. If you closely read O'Neill's work, Tralibane bridge turns out to be personally very important to him, as a place and a tune. He wrote about the spot a number of times, particularly the "Pattern Dances" the community held there. No doubt this experience at a…

Bill Ochs died on October 5^th after a long battle with a cancer he had largely kept to himself, hoping to tell everyone after he had defeated it.

He was a man whose life was music and the music he most loved -- and he loved many kinds of music -- was traditional Irish music.

He was an excellent player, first tin whistle player and ultimately an uilleann…

Carmel, California -- Before I get to the acclaimed Irish traditional musicians from Donegal who comprise the band, Altan, I’m going to editorialize to put the show I saw the other night into context. When I lived on the western coast of Ireland, it fascinated me to realize that in the…

My friends kid me about one of the websites I frequent, a place called Banjo Hangout (dot Org). It’s a place where banjo geeks like me go and talk about strings and rings, and pots and picks, and necks and woods and, well, banjo makers! And occasionally I receive messages from those fellow Banjo geeks – so I wasn’t too…

While reading Dancing to an Irish Reel by Claire Fullerton, I felt as if I had joined a dance myself, part of a song beyond the ordinary world I’d left behind. The setting, Connemara on the West Coast of Ireland, lives on every page—the coastal pathways, a midnight pier, a hillside graveyard.

Readers meet one of…

It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night when Johnny Og came to collect me, and it was raining—not one of those misty, soft rains, as is often the case on the west coast of Ireland, but one of those howling, unforgiving, relentless downpours that comes from no discernable direction, save for the threatening sky overhead.…

From the air, in the dark 5:00 morning, Dublin is nothing more than a sheet of lights floating on water, glowing like a Christmas tree. I press my face to the glass, feeling the cold seep onto my forehead. The first time I saw Dublin, the sun was rising over the Irish Sea. The water was glossy and sugary pink, a confection for…

It’s now the third and final day for me at the festival.

The Sunday morning after the night before with all its festivities was tricky. I was so tired I managed to sleep through a giant party in the pub downstairs. Anytime I did stir, I listened to the band downstairs and marvelled at their harmonies and the tightness of…

Well, you just have to listen to Davy Spillane's music before you answer my question. Here's a short video that I created of my recent solo exhibition in Áras Éanna on…

I was asked to write a review on the latest offering by Larry Kirwan, "A History of Irish Music."  As a scholar of Celtic music, I looked forward to reading his take on Irish music.  I will say that what I expected to read and what I read, whilst they meshed on some…

I should have posted this a bit earlier in the year as we announced it in late February.  For those of you that have an interest in traditional Irish music I run a traditional Irish music website called…