Ceol Cois Tine - Comhaltas Archive

The ChangingFleadh SceneLe Cormac MacGiollaThe Fleadh Cheoil now, if I remember the love of music in our hearts and werightly , a thirty year old baby has proved had the gospel to spread ..........itself one of our greatest if not the great·est exposes of our traditional culture, ofour timeless heritage. Perhaps our Fleadh "#" 1\,may well be thirty one years old as likethe time of the Barmicides of James Clar·ence Mangan "my eyes are filmed , myhead is grey and I'm bowed with theweight of years".Since its inception on a National basisI have served the Fleadh as competitor,administrator, spectator and mostly asadjudicator. It is indeed from the adjudicationtable that I have seen the changesrung over the years. The days of thefifties when I well remember in a certainWestern town Joe O'Dowd that Sligomaestro and I sat through seventy eight"Rakes of Mallow" on a broiling Julyday . God, we were in a stew with thegood teaching nuns awaiting our decision.Competitor 79 was a Barrett or a Hoganfrom Mountbellew as was competitor 80and perhaps 81 . They raised the siegeand with real traditional expertise gave usour bealach amach. Imor was the Barretlad , son of the great Paddy of the square(RIP). I forget the Hogan boy's name ,but Micheal and his charming wife havesince seen many a Fleadh. Myriads ofFleadh Cheoil memories rushed across mymind as I presented the son and heir atthe recent Connacht Fleadh. The earlyfleadhanna , and I know as I was in overmy depth in most of them, were greataffairs now in retrospect. We adjudicatedand if not always correctly then I canswear we were always honest and helpfulin our efforts. We had the love of musicin our hearts and we had a gospel tospread . Later on we became on firstname terms with our competitors. Wedowned small whiskies and pints withthem before and after competitions butwe always adjudicated honestly and explicitlyand were respected for it.17