Amhráin Anna John Chiot The Songs of Anna John Chiot

In 1935, shortly after the establishment of the Irish Folklore Commission, folklore collector Liam Mac Meanman was sent to the Blue Stack Mountains (Croaghs), a remote region in Donegal, in an effort to collect and preserve the folklore of this true Gaeltacht. Approximately ten years after this, another skilled folklore collector, Sean Ó hEochaidh, was sent to the Croaghs to add to the store of folklore that had been gathered up to that point in the region. Amongst the seanchaí s that both collectors worked with was Anna John Chiot Nic an Luain. Anna John Chiot was one of the Irish Folklore Commission’ s most important sources of tales, poetry and lore from its foundation in 1935. However, it was her great memory for the old songs in Irish which really marked her out. Her repertoire consists of 128 songs, and includes long and short songs, together with verses and parts of other songs. This publication contains, for the first time, all of the songs recorded from Anna John Chiot by the Commission, between the years 1935 and 1937, and from 1947 to 1948.

Pó l ó Seachnasaigh is from Dublin and is a noted fiddle player who has toured widely in Ireland and around the world. His interest in traditional music always went side by side with his interest in the spoken Irish of Donegal, the county of his mother, Pearl McBride’ s family. While working on a PhD in Maynooth University in 2012, Paul read about the large number of songs which had been collected from Anna (John Chiot) Nic a’ Luain in the Croaghs. Her songs presented him with the welcome opportunity of combining his interests in the language and traditional music of Donegal in a single project.