On January 6th 1951 aged seventy-one years old, Owen Connolly died little more than a quarter of a mile from his home in Coragunt on the Monaghan / Fermanagh border. His life had borne witness to immense changes in the social, economic and political landscape of the Sliabh Beagh region. Born in 1880, the region was marked - not only by the continuation of many older cultural tradition - but by severe economic difficulties, evictions, seizures, boycottings and the anticipated onset of a famine of the same proportions as 1846 . Indeed, according to one submission to The Mansion House Committee, which alongside the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends did much to prevent the onset of Famine during this period states that many families were in a state of actual starvation. Another submission describes the situation in nearby Scotstown: I know of thirty-three homes – if, indeed a tenement without a window could be called a home – in which there is neither food nor fire. I may say there are 15 of these in extreme want. When I reached the hovel it was not dark, yet the family, seven in all, were in bed; and why? Because they had eaten the scanty fare they collected during the day, they had no fire to warm them, and their remedy was to lie in a cold room, on cold beds, with cold empty stomachs and I fear my patient is a cold corpse now amongst them; and if I was constituted judge and jury over the cause of her death, my verdict would be ‘want of food. Musically developed prior to the arrival of mass media in the region, Connolly lifespan serves as an important marker in Sliabh Beagh’s musical heritage, unifying both the modern and pre-modern eras of musical practice in the area. Indeed, he was heralded by Eamonn Murray as a figure of totemic musical importance to the Sliabh Beagh region, embodying the musical practices and traditions peculiar to the Sliabh Beagh region. Unfortunately, no recordings of Connolly have survived and we are left with only the thoughtfully crafted eulogy of Eamon Murray to remind us of Connollys importance to the region and his musical abilities. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owen Connolly - The Fiddler (an appreciation) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There was sorrow not only among the people of the mountains along the Border who loved him, but among the many who enjoyed his music on concert platforms, at feiseanna or over the air, when they heard of the death of Owen Connolly, the far-famed traditional fiddler from Roslea district. The following is an appreciation of the man by one who devoted much time to preserving some of the folk-music peculiar to the district of which Owen had such a store. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An appreciation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owen Connolly is dead. The shy sensitive, soft spoken maker of music has laid aside his fiddle and bow and departed unexpectedly and unobtrusively out over the rim of the world where the mountains and the sky seem to meet. It is difficult to realise that the kindly mentor of one of the best established and perhaps most influential schools of folk music in Ireland is gone, never to return: that the master-mind, so long in supreme and indefatigable control of a dying tradition over a wide area in Gaelic Ulster, has foresaken for ever the countless hearts that throbbed and pained and pined to the melancholy affection of his inspiration. But the stark reality of his demise and of the consequent loss to what must be regarded as the last bulwark of Bardic culture in Slieve Beagh, is incontrovertible. His world-wearied body lies tonight with the ashes of his kin in Roslea, while his soul, freed from the trammels of earthly contact is at peace and rest, and in perfect harmony with choirs of music, the excellence of which not even Owen, in his most ardent moments of satiated musical intoxication could ever dimly visualise. From as far back as I can remember and for years beyond the span of my memory, Owen Connolly’s name and fame as fiddler were household words on every hearth in the mountain. His popularity was unquestionably due to his ability and skill – a skill amounting almost to wizardry – on the instrument of his choice. But to those of us who were privileged to number among his friends and intimate acquaintances, the genial personality and ready humour of the individual man, apart altogether from his music, were a continual source of gratification and entertainment. He lived his seventy years on the spaded lands of his own little farm, but when, as so very frequently happened, he was spirited away, as it were, to entertain in places as far apart as Dublin and Belfast, he had that inherent good breeding, that subtle sense of ease and dignity, that marked him as a man among men, and gentleman always. His countenance, moreover was cast in a most expressive and intelligent mould , and his brow and head had the classical contour that we have learned to associate with men of peculiar and particular genius. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many Broadcasts -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owen was a popular performer on concert platforms in practically every county in his native province, and in this sphere his work for deserving charities was colossal. I have never known of his refusing an appeal to give a public performance, not even when personal anxieties weighed heavily on his mind and heart. As a competitor at feiseanna he was never beaten in his class, and most of us have happy recollections of his talented broadcasts from Radio Eireann. Furthermore, in the obscurity of his mountain home, he had been commissioned to “make” a series of records of traditional Irish airs, and but for some unforeseen technical hitch, or studio negligence, we would have still the privilege and solace of his music, side by side with that of the immortal Coleman. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Huge Repertoire -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- His repertoire of Irish dance music was unique, not only as to number but in the structural excellence of each individual piece, while his memory of older and lesser-known tunes was a cause of wonderment to all understanding men, at all times, and in all places. Perhaps most astonishing still, particularly to those initiated in the intricacies of folk-music, was the fact that he could not read a note of written music. He played “by ear”, but so perfect was his musical awareness that I have heard him perform for hours in company with one of Dublin’s foremost uileann pipers, and the harmony was exquisite. This feat he repeated time out of number with musicians from Scotland, England and America. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Truly Great -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like the truly great man he was, Owen carried his honours lightly. He was unassuming in his poise and in his playing, and ready with a word of praise for the anxious beginner or the enthusiastic mediocre performer. The “sudden turn of unexpectedness” in a swiftly-moving Irish melody brought a light to his eyes and an esctasy to his fine sensitive features that reminded one unconsciously of sun-sprites at play in autumn meadow-lands. If a new tune pleased him he absorbed it as the parched earth absorbs the summer shower and made it his own. The old people who knew him would describe his playing as being “sweet as a nut,” and a step-dancer of international fame asserted that he was the only man he ever heard play who could “put the music under your feet.” And Owen Connolly is dead. He was an institution in our dear, dark mountain, at runaways and weddings, in barn-lofts and country kitchens, at American wakes and at the welcoming of the returned Yankee. Materialists might call him foolish and perhaps so he was, if it is foolishness to be happy. Truly he set little store on the mundane clamour of seasons and crops, but neither did the Gaelic poets whose names are so lovingly remembered when those of their grosser, if wealthier, contemporaries are long forgotten. His riches were self-contained as theirs was, and whether he shuffled along in the dust of the road, or cut scollops in the osier-beds along the river, he was a millionaire a thousand times over in the music that welled and bubbled, that gleamed and sparkled in the innermost recesses of his soul. That the sod may rest lightly over you, Owen, is my wish, and that the happiness you played into the heart of every music-lover who heard the hum of your fiddle may spread a path of brightness before you to your allotted seat in heaven. Ar dheis De go rabh a anam The Mountain Lark (Eamon Murray) https://soundcloud/ourdeardarkmountain/owen-connollys-fling
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 21:53:52 +0000
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