Mikey Duggan the Scartaglin musician and gentleman of the fiddle is being honoured this year at the festival. Mikey will receive The Patrick O’Keeffe Award for Dedication to the Music and Culture of Sliabh Luachra during Sunday night’s concert at the River Island Hotel.

Our thanks to Donal Hickey who passed on the copy from the Sliabh Luachra Journal No 2 from 1983 in which Mikey remembered his days on the road with his late friends, Denis Murphy and Johnny O’Leary. In honouring Mikey Duggan it would be nice to think that the mother who saved the two pounds to allow him buy his first fiddle back in the early 1940’s would, by association, share in that honour. It is yet another story of the appreciation for music and culture which existed in the general Sliabh Luachra area through even the hardest of times. That there was a shop in Scartaglin which sold fiddles is surely another strong indicator of the leanings of the locality.   

The following is an extract from the article, in Mr. Duggan’s own words – which  appeared in the journal at the time:

My Life and Music  By: Mikey Duggan

“Even though my mother and father played the concertina I hadn’t any great interest in it. As a garsoon, I spent a lot of time in Eileen Spillane’s house. She was my next-door-neighbour and, as far as I am concerned, she was the best concertina player in the whole country. She was also a great woman to play the fiddle and for some reason or other I was far more interested in it than the concertina. Maybe ‘twas because my mother and father played the concertina and you know the old saying ‘Too much of anything ....’

Eileen, RIP showed me how to play some tunes and I wasn’t bad at picking them up. She advised me if I could get a few bob together I should buy a fiddle. When I was finished at school at fourteen and a half (I went to school first in Knockeenahone and I spent the last year and a half in Gneeveguilla), I got two pounds from my mother to buy my first fiddle in Paddy Nolan’s (now Tom Fleming’s)  of Scart.

That was a lot of money that time. I suppose the poor old woman was saving it for a long time. As I headed for my home in Knockrour that evening I wouldn’t call the queen my aunt.

I now had my fiddle and my next job was to contact the master himself, Padraig O’Keeffe, for some lessons. My first lesson was on a Small Christmas evening, and he would call then on a regular basis once a week or at least once a fortnight. ‘Twas very easy to pay the poor man – usually a half-a-crown or I should say twelve and a half new pence for the younger people who never heard of a half a crown.

Padraig was one of the very few men in the area able to write music and I’ll never forget that first Small Christmas evening he came. He asked my mother for a piece of paper. He drew five lines on the paper and wrote the numbers between the lines. I thought the lines, instead of the spaces, stood for the for the strings in the fiddle and I asked Padraig “Where did you get the fifth string?”

He knew my mistake and he said  “How many ditches would it take to make four roads?”, I said “Four”. “You’re wrong” he said, “It takes five”, and it was then I caught on.

Another time he gave me half a tune to learn for the next lesson. It took me three weeks to learn it. Padraig got cross to me and said: “ I heard you were a great scholar going to school, but you’re the most stupid young fellow I ever met.” His anger didn’t last long and I’m glad to say I picked up the second half quicker than the first. What I learned from Padraig I practised with Eileen Spillane. Every time I met him, right up to until he died, I learned something new from Padraig.

At that time, Spillane’s was a great roving house and on certain occasions a night’s storytelling would end with a half set. Eileen and myself would supply the music. I suppose the first people to dance to my music were: Donal Riordan, Paddy Spillane, Jack Mahoney, Jack Connell, the Spillane girls and my own four sisters. I can tell you that times were much different then. We would be at home for 10-30 or 11.00pm. Nowadays they don’t start going out until that time. I don’y know what is the world coming to!

I played in public the first time around 1945 for a feis which was held in Donal Kearney’s field in Scart. Charlie Moriarty, who organised the feis, came to my house and asked me to play for the step dancers to following Sunday. There is no need to say I was fairly nervous heading for Scart with my fiddle. I wouldn’t have gone on the stage at all but for Padraig O’Keeffe putting me at my ease. As well as that, he covered up for the mistakes I made. After that, I was asked to play for Stations and house weddings. For the most part, I would be playing on my own as most of the other musicians lives fairly far away from me and the only means of transport was the bike. Such house dances often went on to the late hours of the morning – until the half tierse was gone. Of course, these were special occasions.

In the early fifties, I teamed up with Johnny Leary and Denis Murphy playing for their step dancers at Fleadhanna and Feiseanna. Later, the three of us and Jimmy Doyle joined Michael O’Callaghan and we formed the Desmond Dance Band. We spent eleven years together playing all over Kerry and parts of Cork and Limerick We rarely missed a Sunday night and we played on many Friday nights also.

When Denis Murphy went to America the ‘Desmond’as it was, broke up. Johnny and myself played together on occasions. When Denis returned from America, the three of us joined up again and played together every Friday and Sunday nights at Dan O’Connell’s in Knocknagree. Even though I never took a drink, I think there is a great atmosphere in the pub – that is of course, if people don’t overdo it with the drink. It is the nearest of all to the house dance.

In my early days, I took part in competitions and was the first to win the Padraig O’Keeffe Perpetual Trophy at Scart Fleadh Cheoil.

This side of the country must be the richest of all having so many fine musicians and each is better that the next. There are so many I could never mention them all. I mention Johnny and Denis very often because it was with those two men I played most of my music. We all missed Denis a lot when he died. He was always so jolly and was a great man to tell a story

I really enjoy playing with Johnny Leary. Not taking from any of the others, I think he is the nearest to Padraig O’Keeffe’s style. As well as being a master musician, he is a powerful man to tell a yarn. Like the music, he has a distinct style of telling them and I wouldn’t dare even attempt to repeat one of them here, as no one can tell them like himself.

Before I ever played in a hall, I travelled to lots of them. Thady Willie’s in Gneeveguilla, Vaughan’s in Williamstown and one in Barraduff not to mention Denny Mahoney’s of Knockeenahone and the halls in Scart.

Life has changed a lot since my young days, but as mentioned previously, it gives me great pleasure to see so many of our young people playing Irish music and dancing sets.

Long may it continue and with God’s holy help, I will do my part for our great tradition, while I’m able.”

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