The Clare Connection
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For the time being, this site is dedicated to the concertina and Brian Merriman's Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court). At first glance, the material is a bit heterogeneous, a bit of a hodge-podge. If a connecting tissue is needed, Ireland's County Clare provides one.
The poem tells a fictional story but it is fictionally set in the Feakle area of east Clare. And, of course, there is no closer identification between place and instrument in Irish Traditional Music than Clare and the concertina. |
Cúirt an Mheán Oíche recounts Merriman's dream (nightmare, in fact) of being brought to account before a women's court in Feakle presided over by the spéirbhean Aoibheal, queen of Craiglea.
In his nightmare, the women of the court beat the hell out of him for his failure to get married. The web site of Pepper's Bar in Feakle (an establishment dating from 1810) notes Brian's association with Feakle: |
As a neat touch, on the outside wall of the pub is a copy of The Maids of Feakle Reel. The reel is a fitting coda for a web site that features both the concertina (identified quite often as the musical instrument of choice for Clare women) and the Maids of Feakle in the Midnight Court assembled. It being Clare, there would have undoubtedly been music made although Merriman doesn't mention it. Neither does he mention that they breathed air.
But even though it was a women's gathering, the concertina would not have been featured since it was not invented until 1829, a generation after the poem was composed. Too bad.
The concertina, with a Clare connection, showed up in a court of a different sort in 1868 when two Claremen were sentenced by a Tipperary court to two months for playing Fenian tunes on concertinas. And it happened again in 1917 in the very vicinity of Cúirt an Mheán Oíche when a group in Tuamgraney were hauled up for participating in military exercises lead by a concertina or melodeon player.
But even though it was a women's gathering, the concertina would not have been featured since it was not invented until 1829, a generation after the poem was composed. Too bad.
The concertina, with a Clare connection, showed up in a court of a different sort in 1868 when two Claremen were sentenced by a Tipperary court to two months for playing Fenian tunes on concertinas. And it happened again in 1917 in the very vicinity of Cúirt an Mheán Oíche when a group in Tuamgraney were hauled up for participating in military exercises lead by a concertina or melodeon player.
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To finally close the circle, the video on the right features the talented Clarewoman, Edel Fox (admittedly a Miltown rather than a Feakle Maid), playing the Maid(s) of Feakle reel in the key of A on the concertina (a less common key than the setting in G shown on Pepper's wall). Edel is the tutor for the basic course on the concertina for the Online Academy of Irish Music. She has issued one solo and two collaborative CDs:
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She was also Ceoltóir Óg na Bliana 2004 (Young Musician of the Year) at the Gradam Ceoil Awards put on each year by the Irish Language station, TG4.
Edel is my very first introduction to the instrument. How about that for it all being wrapped up nicely? Except to note one additional piece of (non-Clare) vicarious connectedness. My folks come Gort, Co. Galway, just north of the Clare border, and many relatives still live in the area. 
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But I grew up across the country in Rathmolyon (pron. Rath-mu-lyon), Co. Meath, nothing
much more than a bend in a road flanked by two pubs (with Harnan's notable for being traditionally rather than touristly
thatched).
Rathmolyon and surroundings was a musical wasteland when I was young. Now, however, it is home to one of the finest concertina players around — Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh. Has to raise the cultural tenor of the place no end. Here he is with brother MacDara and Catherine McEvoy playing three jigs (including Na Ceannabháin Bhána in the middle). |