By Brian Igoe
By Brian Igoe
There was an outpouring of music after Independence. Music is in the blood of the Irish, and has been since time immemorial. For many people their first, and for some their only, association with Irish Music are the Rebel Ballads and other popular old songs sung by groups like Clancy Brothers and the Dubliners. Mostly they commemorate the activities of the rebels in the 1798 rebellion, the rising of 1916, the War of Independence, and the subsequent Civil War.
The Great Famine had stopped all music and dancing for a generation, but by the 1900's, things were improving. Malachi Horan interviewed in 1943 in Dublin, remembered:
That is the first paragraph of the chapter, which then goes on to look at 1900, The Chieftains, Seán Ó Ríada, Ceoltóirí Cualann, the bodhrán, the Lambeg, the Seanachai, New Inn, County Galway, and the All-Ireland Fleadh Ceoil, Theatre in Ireland, Minstrels, 'publick' theatres, 'Book of Fermoy', 'The Voyage of Bran', Werburgh Street theatre, John Ogilby was a Scot, Smock Alley Theatre, or Theatre Royal, Albany New Theatre, Paganini, Jenny Lind, Tyrone Power, Dion Boucicault, Colleen Bawn, Charlie Chaplin, Gracie Fields, George Formby, Jimmy Durante, the Gaiety, Patrick Wall and Louis Elliman, Neal's Music Hall on Fishamble Street, Handel's 'Messiah', the Gaiety, 1871, 'She Stoops to Conquer', 'La Belle Sauvage', John and Michael Gunn, Athenaeum Theatre Cork, Bessie Sudlow, Richard D'Oyly Carte's 'Opera Bouffe', Carl Rossa Company, Tannhäuser, Tristan and Isolde. Sarah Bernhardt with La Dame aux Camélias and Frou Frou, Comédie Française actor Constant-Benoît Coquelin, Suderman, Ibsen, Frank and William Fay, Irish National Theatre, 'Fays' Comedy Combination', W B Yeats and Isabella Augusta Persse, Lady Gregory, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, Maud Gonne, St. Theresa's Hall in Clarendon Street, Hibernian Theatre of Varieties, John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, 'In the Shadow of the Glen', 'On Baile's Strand' 'The Playboy of the Western World', the 'Tinker's Wedding', 'The Shadow of a Gunman', 'Juno and the Paycock' and 'The Plough and the Stars', Padraic Colum, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, Thomas MacDonagh, Lord Dunsany, The Abbey, the Gate, Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel and Harold Pinter.
The Book is called 'The Story of Ireland'. It is available either as a paperback, an ebook, or a much smaller "pocket" sized paper back edition (4.2" x 6.8") for travellers.The printed books can be bought online here.
The E-book can be purchased directly from our site here.