Original upload date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Sat, 04 Dec 2021 15:29:32 GMT
Recorded at Kilrush Fleadh Cheoil,County Clare in the Summer of 1967. The singer is a young Dolly Mac Mahon (wife of the late Ciarán Mac Mathúna.)
Dolly MacMahon was born in East Galway. At age 18
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she married broadcaster Ciarán MacMathúna. They met in 1955 when (working with the Irish Folklore Commission) he visited her father Martin Furhey who had a great store of folklore.
She told a journalist in the 1960s that she was interested in ballads and singing "from a very early age, when I was about four or five or six, I think, because our house was always a very open house. There was always a lot of music and dancing, and my mother used to play the melodeon. We had a gramophone and a collection of 78s - all the old jigs and reels. Fellows used to come and play the borán. The borán is a bit like a drum, but more like a tambourine."
She spent four months in New York in 1958, performing in halls and folk clubs. She also sang regularly on Telifís Eireann.