By Nicholas McAuliffe
Cahirciveen’s Musical Priest
The Violin
When gently from its silken nest
He draws the old violin,
And holds it close above his breasts
And on its shoulder lays his chin,
And so caressed, caressing so,
Touches the strings with delicate bow
An tAthair Ó Braonáin
The Musical Priest is the title of a reel (No. 12840) in O Neill’s Music of Ireland, which was collected by Francis O’Neill from the Co Mayo fiddle player, John McFadden, towards the end of the century. Around that time, a young man from Caherciveen was about to be ordained to the priesthood in Maynooth, who would later become what Francis O’Neill described as a reverend musician – his name was Father Charles Brennan.
Charles Brennan was born in Caherciveen in 1875. His father, also Charles, was a national school teacher. In fact, it was he who, together with Peter Fleming from Killarney, journeyed to Dublin towards the end of the 19th century to represent Kerry at the foundation of the INTO. The young Charles received his early education from his father prior to attending St Brendan’s Seminary in Killarney.
While teaching at St Brendan’s, he worked very hard for Conradh na Gaeilige and it was at this time that he began to use the Irish version of his name, Cathaoir Ó Braonáin.
One of his most important contributions to the promotion of the Irish language was the publication of a journal called Loch Lein (1903-1905). It was in this journal that Seamus Ó Fiannachta found twenty of the songs of Thomáis Rua Ó Suilleabháin (1785-1848) for his book Amhrán Thomáis Rua, which he published in 1914.
An tAthair Ó Braonáin was a man of many parts. Not only was he a gifted fiddle and piano player, but he was also said to have a most pleasant tenor voice. He wrote poetry in both Irish and English.
For his book Collection of Irish Airs, Marches and Dance Tunes, the author Francis Roche called on Cathaoir Ó Braonáin to write the foreword in 1909. In this very interesting foreword, Cathaoir displayed a deep understanding and knowledge of Irish traditional music and its structures – modes, gapped scales, etc.
The following is an extract from the foreword:
Much of the character of old Irish melodies is derived from the scales on
which they are founded. We may distinguish at least five such scales. They
are constructed by taking each of the notes: do, re, mi, soh and la as tonics
or fundamentals and building on them a scale without the use of accidentals.
Thus we have a tone and not as in modern music, a semi-tone, at the top of
four of these scales – the scales of re, mi, soh and la. Errors in notation have
frequently been made by collectors through ignorance of this fact. They have
written the airs as if they were constructed on the modern major or minor
scales, not understanding that Irish melodies have a scale system all of their own.
Another fact to be noted is that we have three minor scales in old Irish music,
the scale of re, the scale of mi and the scale of la. It must not be supposed
that the airs constructed on those scales have always that plaintive character
which we nowadays associate with the minor scales. Many of our liveliest
dance tunes are written in the minor modes.
Indeed, it could be said that he foresaw much of the development which took place in the music in later years, for instance, his reference to the piano and the orchestra bring to mind the work of Seán O Ríada with Ceoltóiri Cualainn, Micheál Ó Suilleabháin, James Last, etc.
As a priest, an tAthair Ó Braonáin spent seventeen years in Duhallow, from 1920 to 1937. Twelve of these were spent in Millstreet, where he built two Churches, one in Millstreet and one in Ballydaly. He was gifted at collecting money – he collected £ 30,000 to build the two churches.
The churchyard in Ballydaly was to be his final resting place. He died in 1937 at the age of 62 and was buried in Ballydaly where a fine headstone now stands in his honour.
Another Cahirciveen man, Sigerson Clifford (1913-1985) wrote the following lines in praise of The Old School. This was probably the same school where the young Charles Brennan started and where his father taught.
That was a gay place, it planted your feet, Old School
With your windows beckoning the mountains in
So we could watch the hawk’s wings nailed to the sky
While the linnet sang on the whin
Hand on the eye, the old books in the summer weather
And then Master and hawk swooping out of the blue sky together
That was, a grey day I said goodbye, Old School
And you wiped the chalk from your hand and wished me joy
Searching ever, the mind moves down the dust of the years
To see in the lively playground the ghost of a laughing boy
Lingers the longing always for Youth’s green sunlit tracks
Now the harsh old world has broken its cane on our backs
