FTX-164 - A MAN IN LOVE FEELS NO COLD

PADDY TUNNEY

Brigid Tunney, Paddy's mother, who can be heard on FOLKTRAX 163, brought up a whole family of singers. It was time spent in gaol for his youthful political activities that made Paddy more aware of his own family's singing tradition. When he came out he wrote to Peter Kennedy and joined Peter and Sean O Boyle recording Johnny Doherty in Donegal, taking them to meet his mother at home in Belleek. Here are 18 songs, mostly from his mother, Uncle Mick, from Sean O Boyle's father, a ballad from a tinker Peter recorded, some liltings (Mouth- music) and an "Old Hag's Rhyme".

1. WHEN A MAN'S IN LOVE - 3'14"

2. OUR WEDDING DAY (talk before) - 2'41"

3. JOHNNY, LOVELY JOHNNY - 2'12"

4. THE LOWLANDS OF HOLLAND - 3'22"

5. TAVRIN GREEN - 2'40"

6. CRAIGY HILLS - 4'10"

7. THE GREEN FIELDS OF AMERIKAY - 2'51"

8. THE BANKS OF THE TWEED - 2'11"

9. PRINCE CHARLIE STUART - 1'51"

10. MARY ON THE BANKS OF THE LEE - 3'13"

11. THE GREENWOOD LADDIE (from Charles Boyle) - 1'11"

12. THE SHAMROCK SHORE - 2'16"

13. Lilt: PADDY'S RETURN - 0'27"

14. ROCKING THE CRADLE (from Johnny Doherty: song followed by lilting) - 2'51"

15. Scots Bagpipe Lilts - 2'41"

16. THE BLACKBIRD (lilted slow and fast) - 2'22"

17. THE WEARING OF THE BREECHES - 2'08"

18. THE OLD HAG'S RHYME - 2'25"

19. LILTING: Reels & Jigs - 5'15"

20. SON, COME TELL IT UNTO ME (Child Ballad: "Edward") - 3'24"

21. MY CHARMING BUACHAL ROE sung by Paddy's brother, Joe, with Paddy joining in the last verse - 2'30"

Recorded by Peter Kennedy, London, October 1958. Edited by Peter Kennedy and first published on Folktrax Cassettes 1975.

PADDY TUNNEY was born in Glasgow in 1921. He has worked as a forester, a road- roller flagman and as a cobbler. He spent 4 years in prison in Belfast for his youthful idealistic political activities for the Irish Republican Army, smuggling gelignite over the Fermanagh-Donegal border. It was in prison that he studied Irish history, began to write poetry and to sing his own family songs. On release he trained at University College, Dublin, as a health inspector, married, and worked at Letterkenny until his retirement in 1989. He has made a number of commercial records and more recently has become well-known as a storyteller. Here is Paddy's own memory of how he first became interested in his family tradition:-

"My mother was a fine traditional singer. She taught me to lilt and to sing. Her father, Michael Gallagher, used to take me on his knee and sing to me. He knew both languages, Irish and English, and had a fine repertoire of folk-tales and ballads. He could make a good drop of the good old mountain dew, and was well- known to all the travelling journeymen, tinsmiths, tailors, cobblers, weavers and the like, who used to visit the locality in his young days. My father, Patrick Tunney, was a fine reel dancer, so that lilting, fiddling and melodeon- playing filled my most impressionable years".