The tradition of telling a story as an integral part of a song has all but gone in Ireland – apart from the usual “explanation” of the song itself given by singers. The two aspects were once inseparable. Nowadays we just get the song. Very occasionally too we get the story but without that connecting song. This whole severing process marks a profound fragmentation of one of our country’s finest indigenous traditions.
Peigín agus Peadar is one such example of this fragmentation. It’s told in Ranafast as a story called “Na Trí Chomhairlí” ~ The Three Pieces of Advice ~ but the song isn’t known there. The song, minus the story, is all you get in Connemara.
Seoirse gives this illustrated talk by telling / singing two Scéal-Amhráin from Ranafast which he collected from one of the last exponents of the art: Aodh Ó Duibheannaigh.
This talk was given in the Cultúrlann in Derry in 2015.
