Magical Kells traditional night
KELLS Summer Festival produced a magical night in Headfort House last Thursday, where some 200 fans and friends gave traditional singers Mairéad and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill a standing ovation.
The sisters have been acclaimed innovators since they debuted with Skara Brae over 35 years ago. Dublin and Donegal had been quick to claim them, said festival chairperson Frances Monaghan. But there had been “a frisson of expectation” around the town as the date of the concert by the sisters from Oliver Plunkett road approached.
Mairéad reminded the many friends and fans present that their grandparents had been among the families who moved to the Gibbstown Gaeltacht in the late 1930s, only to return to Donegal after 17 years as “they missed the sound of the sea”. Their late father, Hiúdaí, had been the first to record native singers on Tory Island, from which they sang his version of 'Dónal Óg' as well as his lament for a cousin who died in a mining accident in Scotland.
The sisters' programme was a skilful mix of comic, love and district songs, many learnt from their aunt Neilí during their summer holidays in The Rosses.
Tríona expressed her surprise to be playing in the great hall of the Georgian mansion but the audience delighted at her playing, not least of her own composition 'Sun on the Water'. The unerring harmonics between the sisters were wonderfully demonstrated in the Donegal and several Scottish songs with Mairéad's lead in the Connemara song about the devil, 'The False Fly', being particularly striking.
The Scottish duets such as Burns's 'Ae Fond Kiss' and 'The Hills of Yarrow' as well as a Breton love song continued to delight the audience, while that Donegal standard 'An Mhaighdean Mhara' left some simply enraptured.
The sisters rounded off their programme with Mairéad's lively take on Frank Harte's version of 'The Spanish Lady' and such was the lengthy applause that an encore was unavoidable. Tríona explained that choice of song to memories of Kells, with laughter following her description of cycling down Carrick Street (a sight unseen for ages on that busiest section of the N3).
The audience joined in as the sisters sang the Marian hymn 'Hail Queen of Heaven' while their brother Conal joined them in closing with a lullaby written by their father. The applause rang on and the audience seemed determined not to go home.