Notes

1. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, ‘Aspects of the Economy and Society in Nineteenth Century Clare’, Dal gCais: Journal of Clare, 5 (1979), 110-14.

2. Brian Dinan, Clare and Its People: A Concise History (Cork: Mercier Press, 1987), 96.

3. James S. Donnelly, Jr., ‘The Kilrush Clearances during the Great Famine’, paper presented at the annual conference of the American Conference for Irish Studies, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (April, 1998).

4. Clacháns (small rural villages or hamlets) associated with open-field rundale farms (using an infield/outfield system of crop rotation) were common in most parts of rural Ireland in the century before the outbreak of the Great Famine; see E. Estyn Evans, The Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage and History (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1981), 55.

5. Donnelly, ‘The Kilrush Clearances’; Donnelly cites the detailed investigations of the surveyor Francis Coffee who presented his findings on the Kilrush Clearances to Poulett Scrope’s select committee in July 1850. Coffee used local Ordnance Survey maps to track evidence of evictions on the southwest Clare peninsula. See also, Donnelly, The Great Irish Potato Famine (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002), 146-47.

6. George Petrie, The Complete Collection of Irish Music, ed. Charles Villiers Stanford (London: Boosey, 1902-1905), vol. 1, xii.

7. The term swaree from the French soirée is a remnant of the Gallicized vocabulary of the pre-famine dancing masters.

8. The famine years were referred to as ‘an droch-shaol’ (‘the bad life’) in Irish speaking communities. The use of the popular term ‘gorta’ (‘famine’) was a much later development.

9. Cited in Cathal Póirtéir, Glórtha ón Ghorta: Bealoideas na Gaeilge agus an Gorta Mór (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim, 1996), 286.

10. Francis O’Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago: Reegan, 1913), 230-31, 342-43. W.R. le Fanu gives a colorful description of meeting Paddy O’Neill on board the ‘Garry Owen’ (a boat plying the Shannon between Limerick and Kilrush) in his Seventy Years of Irish Life (New York: Arnold, 1898); cited in O’Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians, 230.

11. Harry Bradshaw, ‘Johnny Patterson: The Rambler from Clare’, Dal gCais: Journal of Clare, 6 (1982), 73-80.

12. O’Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians, 18-19.

13. See Margaret MacCurtain and Donncha Ó Corráin, eds., Women in Irish Society: The Historical Dimension (Dublin: Arlen House; The Women’s Press, 1978).

14. J.J. Lee, ‘Continuity and Change in Ireland 1945-1970’, in J.J. Lee, ed., Ireland 1945-1970 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1979), 166-77.

15. Lee, The Modernization of Irish Society 1848-1918 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1973), 4.

16. F.S.L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 53.

17. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, ‘The Concertina in the Traditional Music of Clare’, Ph.D. dissertation, Queen’s University, Belfast (1990), 47-72; see also Allan W. Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), and, on the matter of the patent, Atlas, ‘Historical Document: George Grove’s Article on the “Concertina” in the First Edition of A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878)’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 2 (2005), 61.

18. See Fintan Vallely, ed., The Companion to Irish Traditional Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999). 83. Scates, who imported pianos, harmoniums, and Wheatstone concertinas, traded at 26 College Green, Dublin, a very fashionable Dublin location at the time.

19. I draw here on Allan Atlas, ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835-1870’, forthcoming in the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 39 (2006). Briefly the following members of these families are recorded in the ledgers: Lady G[race] Vandeleur, 1 May 1855 (ledger C1049, 53) and 21 June 1855 (C1049, 58); a Lieutenant Vandeleur, 6 November 1856 (C1050, 38); Lady Elizabeth Toler, 12 March 1851 (C1047, 11); and Lord Abinger (= Robert Campbell Scarlet, 2nd Baron of Abinger and father of Lady Elizabeth Toler), 28 April 1842 (C1046, 13, and C104a, 27). The nine extant Wheatstone & Co. sales ledgers from the nineteenth century are housed in the Horniman Museum, London, Wayne Archive; they are online at http://horniman.info. My thanks to Allan Atlas for sharing this information with me prior to its publication.

20. Seán Spellissy, ‘The Fergus Estuary: Reclamation and the Life of a River Pilot’, Dal gCais: Journal of Clare, 8 (1986), 31-35. See also Kevin Danaher, In Ireland Long Ago (Cork: Mercier Press, 1962), 118.

21. Bairbre Ó Floinn, ‘The Lore of the Sea in County Clare: From the Collections of the Irish Folklore Commission’, Dal gCais: Journal of Clare, 8 (1986), 107-28.

22. In the ‘macaronic’ (half-Irish, half-English) linguistic milieu of late nineteenth-century Clare, Irish language terms and phrases still enjoyed currency in the vernacular speech of rural communities, an uneasy reminder of the cultural cleansing effects of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1850).

23. See Ó hAllmhuráin, ‘The Concertina in the Traditional Music of Clare’, 95, 432.

24. Harry Bradshaw, liner notes to the recording William Mullaly: The First Irish Concertina Player to Record (Dublin: Viva Voce 005, n.d).

25. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin ‘From Hughdie’s to the Latin Quarter’, Treoir: The Book of Traditional Music, Song and Dance, 25/2 (1993), 40-44.