Turlough O’Carolan (1670 - 1738)

Regarded as the most famous of the Irish harpers, Turlough O’Carolan was born in Nobber, Co Meath, in 1670. When he was a child, his father migrated to Connacht in search of cheaper land, and found work with the St Georges in Co Leitrim and the MacDermott Roes in Alderford, Co Roscomon, which was then an Irish-speaking district. Mrs MacDermott took young Turlough under her protection and provided for his education. When he was blinded by smallpox, she made provision for him to learn the harp. Equipped with a horse and guide, he began his career as an itinerant harper at the age of twenty-one. For the next forty-five years, he travelled extensively, particularly in Connacht, and was patronised by Gaelic, Anglo-Norman and Ascendancy families.

At the age of fifty, O’Carolan married Mary Maguire and began farming in Mosshill, Co Leitrim. After his wife’s death in 1733 he took to the road again, although her passing left him severely depressed. His lament for her is one his best-known poems. Unable to overcome his grief, he sought consolation in drink. His doctors warned him to stop, or accept the consequences. He followed their advice for six weeks but eventually broke down in a grocer’s shop in Boyle, where he asked the shop boy for ‘the smell of a glass’. In 1738, he fell ill and died at the home of his patrons, the MacDermott Roes in Alderford (now Ballyfarnon). Tradition holds that he died holding a tumbler of whiskey in his hand but had no strength left to drink it. It was a pity, he said, ‘that two such friends should part, at least without kissing’.

O’Carolan lived at a time when Irish society was experiencing major political and religious upheaval. The old Gaelic system of artistic patronage was on its last legs, while the forced conversion to Protestantism of Penal Ireland was gathering pace throughout most of the country. Astutely aware of his working environment, O’Carolan tailored his craft to suit the taste and status of his audience. His music contains an eclectic mix of Irish and non-Irish tunes, composed in a variety of dialects, from baroque to vernacular dance music. A collection of his work was published during his own lifetime. Like many of his predecessors, he eulogised the two great loves of his life, women and whiskey, in tunes like ‘Bridget Cruise’ and the celebrated ‘Receipt for Drinking’. Much of his baroque work was inspired by Italian composers like Corelli and Geminiani and dedicated to younger members of Dillon family of Lough Glynn and the Burkes of Glinsk, both Norman families with ‘modern’ aspirations. His planxties (from plearácha, or praise pieces) for the MacDermott Roes and the O’Connors of Connacht evoke an older world of the bard and the duanaire.

• The Poems of Carolan by Tomas O’Maille (1916)
• O'Carolan Suite in Baroque Style by T. C. Kelly (1977)
• Silver Apples of the Moon by the Irish Chamber Orchestra (1998)
• ...discography...