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Authority record

O’Keeffe, James George, 1865-1937

  • IE ITMA P00050
  • Person
  • 1865-1937

Seamus O’Keeffe (James George O’Keeffe) was an exhibition dancer for the Gaelic League of London. A native of Kanturk, Co Cork, Seamus was steeped in the language, literature and dance of his native area. He was educated in Blackrock College, Dublin, and moved to London in 1885 to work as a civil servant in the War Office. As a member of the Irish Literary Society and the Gaelic League of London, he taught Irish-language classes. With the League, he and Kathleen O’Brien of Limerick taught step dancing classes in Madame Geree's Ballet Dance Parlours in Leicester Square, and with Liam O’Looney of Cork performed exhibition dances. London-based dance master Patrick Reidy introduced a repertory of group dances or ‘ceili’ dances such as 'The Siege of Ennis' and 'The Walls of Limerick' which were easier to learn. O’Keeffe and O’Brien visited Kerry following the Ballyvourney Feis in 1899 to add to their social dances and meet an increased demand for such dances. The Gaelic League of London played an important role in introducing the concept of Irish ceili dancing to London in the 1890s. The popularity of such social dancing within the Gaelic League movement may well have provided the impetus to share and publish a description of the dances in 1902.

James George O’Keeffe was a respected and prolific editor of Irish-language texts as a member of the Irish Texts Society and Scoil Ard-Léinn na Gaeilge, publishing for example Táin Bó Cuailgne from the Yellow Book of Lecan with John Strachan and Buile Suibhne. In 1914 he was appointed a financial advisor for the British War Office in the United States and was awarded an OBE. in 1918. He died in Richmond, Surrey in 1937.

O’Brien, Arthur Patrick, 1872-1949

  • IE ITMA P00049
  • Person
  • 1872-1949

Art O'Brien was born in London to a prosperous and established family, his father John Francis O’Brien being a native of Cork. He studied civil and electrical engineering and after working abroad returned to London in c. 1899. Late-Victorian London was the home of a variety of Irish cultural revivalist organisations such as the Southwark Irish Literary Club (founded 1883), the Irish Literary Society (1892), the Irish Texts Society (1896) and the Gaelic League of London (1896). Art O’Brien joined the Gaelic League of London in 1899, and gaelicised his name to Art Ó Briain… ‘thenceforth becoming a regular attendant at the classes and other gatherings’.

Art O’Brien was to play a substantial role in nationalist politics following the outbreak of the First World War as a member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in London, and in founding the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain (1920–21). His political career was however marred by financial controversy and he removed himself from political life until 1933, but remained President of the Gaelic League of London until 1935. Under Sean T. O’Kelly he was appointed Irish Minister to France and Belgium 1935–1938. He died in Dublin in 1949.

Ó Raghallaigh, Caoimhín

  • IE ITMA P00063
  • Person

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (born August 28, 1979) is a fiddler, born in Dublin, Ireland, who attended Trinity College Dublin, becoming a Scholar in Theoretical Physics (1999) and earning a First Class BA degree (as the top student of his class) in 2001. He is known for developing a drone-based fiddle style heavily influenced by the uilleann pipes and the music of Sliabh Luachra. Ó Raghallaigh spent several summers working part- and full-time in the Irish Traditional Music Archives in Dublin, opening up a wealth of old recordings which influenced his repertoire and style. Together with uilleann piper Mick O'Brien, he recorded Kitty Lie Over, named No.1 Traditional Album of 2003 by Earle Hitchner in the Irish Echo. He performs regularly with West Kerry accordion player Brendan Begley, and has collaborated many times with sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. He has also performed with Icelandic group Amiina, Sam Amidon, The Waterboys among others. He is a member of two contemporary traditional music groups: The Gloaming (with Martin Hayes, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Dennis Cahill and Thomas Bartlett) and This Is How We Fly (with Petter Berndalen, Nic Gareiss and Seán Mac Erlaine). He has also worked in theatre, having been commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to write music, and works regularly with Gare St Lazare Players. He contributed music to the 2015 movie Brooklyn (film), a set of reels recorded especially for the purpose with Mayo accordion player Fiachna Ó Mongáin.

As well as playing on violin and Hardanger fiddle, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh plays an instrument made by Norwegian luthier Salve Hakedal, a fiddle with five bowed strings and five sympathetic strings, a cross between a Hardanger fiddle and a five string violin or viola d'amore which he calls a Hardanger d'Amore. (first made for American Hardanger fiddle player Dan Trueman, and commissioned by Caoimhín with the head and tailpiece of Salve Hakedal's Viola d’Amore model). Ó Raghallaigh uses crosstunings or scordatura (common in Norwegian and old-time American fiddling), and uses baroque and transitional bows made by Michel Jamonneau. Ó Raghallaigh also used to play a Viola Pellegrina Pomposa by American luthier David Rivinus, a highly asymmetrical five-string viola. Caoimhín also plays tin whistle, flute and uilleann pipes, having been taught whistle and flute by Co. Clare flute-player Michael Tubridy of The Chieftains and Ceoltóirí Chualann.

In 2011 he premiered The Valley of the Lunatics, a work written for him by Dave Flynn, at the Masters of Tradition Festival in Bantry. Part of this piece is used in the soundtrack to the film The Enigma of Frank Ryan

Ó Lochlainn, Colm, 1892-1972

  • IE ITMA P00037
  • Person
  • 1892-1972

Colm Ó Lochlainn was born in Dublin as William Gerard O’Loughlin to an Irish-speaking father who was a Kilkenny businessman-printer, and a Limerick mother from a family of printers. Having studied Irish in University College Dublin under Eoin Mac Néill from 1910 to 1916, and acted with the Theatre of Ireland, Ó Lochlainn taught in Patrick Pearse’s school St Enda’s and was at the time deeply involved in the Independence movement, especially as a publisher and printer. After the 1916 Rising he continued his Gaelic studies, graduated MA, continued his involvement in printing and publishing, and from 1933 to 1943 was an assistant lecturer in Irish and librarianship in UCD. In 1926 he founded the Three Candles Press in Dublin, which would become for decades a leading Irish imprint as well as a general printer, and which specialised in history, biography, topography, bibliography, music and Irish studies. Ó Lochlainn travelled and studied printing techniques on the Continent and designed an Irish-language type-font. From about 1928 to 1957 he was also editor, printer and publisher of the bibliographical journal The Irish Book-Lover. Co-founder of An Óige, the Irish youth hostelling organisation, in 1960 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt.Celt, from the National University of Ireland. He was married to Ailish McInerney; they had three children.

In music Colm Ó Lochlainn is remembered particularly for his two famous collections of English-language songs Irish Street Ballads (1939, reprinted 1946, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1978, 1984) and More Irish Street Ballads (1965, reprinted 1968, 1978, 1984), which were the chief source-books for the 1960s revival of interest in Irish traditional song. He himself was a singer, often appearing with his sister Úna on national radio in the 1920s, and a musician on piano, uilleann pipes, warpipes and harp. In the 1960s he introduced the traditional song series As Zozimus Said on the new Irish television service. He was also interested in Scottish Gaelic songs and edited and published a collection: Deoc-Sláinte nan Gillean: Dórnan Óran a Barraidh (1948). He was also the author of Anglo-Irish Songwriters since Moore (n.d., post-1947), later Song-Writers of Ireland in the English Tongue (1967), and occasionally composed song words and melodies. His Irish-language song publications are considered below.

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