Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

ON JULY 2nd 1942, a young man named Seamus Ennis leapt on his bicycle in North County Dublin and cycled westwards at high speed until he reached Kilbeggan, where he stopped for tea, before continuing on to Ballinasloe and a good night’s rest. The following day he reached Oranmore, near Galway, and immediately set about fulfilling his employers’ requirements, writes PATRICIA CRAIG

“I spoke to an old man,” he wrote. “He sang Is Í Nóirín Mo Mhianfor me.” Seamus Ennis was 23 at the time, and abundantly endowed with energy and idealism, qualities necessary to the successful completion of his work. He was one of a team of dedicated music and song collectors dispatched to remote Gaeltacht areas by the Irish Folklore Commission, founded in 1935.