John Campbell: The Northern Ireland storyteller John Campbell, who has died aged 73, could hold an audience spellbound through long tales and frequently reduced his listeners to tears - almost invariably of laughter. He was a fine singer, expert lilter (mouth music) and player of the Jew's harp.
In the mid-1980s, John began performing with Len Graham, a traditional singer from Antrim, who had moved to Mullaghbawn, Co Armagh, where John lived for most of his life. In addition to solo items - songs from Len and stories from John - they sang duets, including some lilting, and played the Jew's harp together.
They performed all over Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US and had been due to appear at the Smithsonian Museum next year.
They also took traditional songs and stories into schools of different denominations for an Arts Council of Northern Ireland project. They performed in hospitals and prisons and recorded two acclaimed CDs, Ebb and Flow and Two for the Road.
Brought up by his grandfather in Mullaghbawn, John gained his early inspiration from the older generation of storytellers who gathered in his grandfather's house. "The whole conversation was a story - they would just call it a night's crack," he told the magazine Living Tradition in 1997.
Publication of At Slieve Gullion's Foot by folklorist and broadcaster Michael J Murphy in the 1940s had a big impact on John.
In the late 1960s he and Murphy recorded stories in south Armagh for University College Dublin's department of Irish folklore.
He and Hugh Murphy co-authored The Ring of Gullion (2001) on south Armagh's traditions. In the early 1970s he co-founded the Forkhill branch of the traditional culture organisation Comhaltas.
John worked as a barman for 24 years, then took a clerical job. He was made redundant in 1980, after which he kept sheep - taking the Royal Dublin Show's best in show prize in the mid-1990s.
In 1986, Newry and Mourne District Council presented him with its arts personality award; in 1991, with the inception of Northern Ireland entertainment, media and arts awards, he received the traditional arts award.
He did not fit the popular image of the traditional performer, always dressing in a three-piece suit and tie. A friend once joked that he looked like the local undertaker, though he probably laughed too much for someone in that job.
He and his wife Eithne celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last month. He is survived by Eithne, their daughter Mary, sons John, Peter and Patrick, and grandchildren.
John Campbell: born March 27th, 1933; died October 2nd, 2006