“Of all the bards this country ever produced the last and greatest was O’Carolan the blind.......he seemed by nature formed for his
profession; for as he was blind, so also he was possessed of a most astonishing memory, and a facetious turn of thinking, which gave
his audience infinite satisfaction.”
Once at the house of a nobleman there was present an eminent Italian composer. O’Carolan
challenged him to a trial of skill. The Italian played an ornate piece and although he had never heard it before, O’Carolan
straight away played it back, missing not a note. He then boasted he could write a better concerto which he composed on the
spot, a tune of great spirit and elegance called “O’Carolan’s Concerto.”
About two hundred of his pieces are still vigorously
alive in the Irish traditional music canon. Although essentially Gaelic, his style has something Italian in it. He was
greatly admired by Geminiani and Vivaldi. His “Concerto” is redolent of that Italian influence on his work.
An early unrequited
love affair inspired one of his songs. Years later, when on pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg in Donegal,
on boarding a boat and recognising the touch of his love’s fingers, exclaimed: “By the hand of my gossip! This is the hand of Bridget
Cruise.”
He solaced his broken heart and married Mary Maguire of Fermanagh. He came to love her tenderly and they
reared seven children. In a house on a small farm near Mohill, County Leitrim, he entertained with more liberality than prudence.
The farm earnings soon were squandered and O’Carolan took to his wanderings again. Mary died in 1773, and when the first agonies
of his grief had passed, he wrote one of his loveliest laments for her.
O’Carolan did not survive her long. Then, feeling
that death was close, he called for his harp and played “Farewell to Music.” On his death-bed he called for whiskey, but unable
to drink he kissed the cup, saying such old friends should not part without a kiss.
A hundred musicians came from far
and wide to send O’Carolan on his last journey, the wake and music lasting four days. His immense funeral, at Kilronan, was
arranged with great ceremony and attended by thousands of people. His harp is in Clonallis House, near Castlerea, County Roscommon.
