Ronan Browne: Port na bPúcaí on the Irish pipes

This is the beautiful air Port na bPúcaí (The Music of the Fairies) from the Blasket Islands. It was said that islanders heard a mystical music and, thinking it was disquieted spirits, they made this air using the notes they heard in an attempt to placate the unhappy ghosts.

Recent thinking suggests that they were, in fact, listening to whale-song reverberating through the canvas hulls of their boats. In the mid 1990s I went rooting through some cassettes of whale song and there in the middle of the Orca (Killer Whale) section I heard the opening notes of Port na bPúcaí!

This air has been a favourite of mine since I first heard it played by Seán Potts and Paddy Moloney on their 1974 Claddagh LP. It sounds gorgeous on my old 1840/50s Harrington union pipes; the regulators, unable to provide "safe" accompaniment and resorting to discord, paint a fitting seascape for our king Dolphin!

This video was filmed by Fionnula Flanagan during a concert of Róisín Elsafty, Siobhán Armstrong and myself at St. Nicholas' medieval church, Galway in May, 2011. The concert was staged by the Galway Early Music Festival.