Donegal musician Eithne Vallely made ‘enormous contribution’ to traditional music
The Lifford-born musician, teacher and musician collector, who co-founded the Armagh Pipers Club, has died at the age of 81 in a road traffic accident
Renowned Donegal musician Eithne Vallely, who has died at the age of 81 in a road traffic collision, has been praised for her “enormous contribution to Irish traditional music”.
She died following a single-vehicle collision involving a lorry while walking on the Portadown Road area of Armagh on the morning of August 21.
The Lifford native, who had lived in Co Armagh for most of her life, founded the Armagh Pipers Club in 1966, along with her husband, the piper and visual artist Brian Vallely.
Armagh Pipers Club said in a statement that she “brought music into the lives of children for six decades”.
“Her enormous contribution to Irish traditional music was recognised nationally with many awards and honours”.
In a tribute The Irish Traditional Music Archives said Eithne was “a great fiddle player and hugely influential music teacher” and described the Armagh Pipers Club as “a leading force in the revival and transmission of traditional music in the North”, adding that the recognition Eithne and Brian received for their lifelong service to music education and culture, included TG4's Gradam Ceoil, Gradam Comaoine, Special Contribution Award in 2012.
Folk singer Tommy Sands said she was “a kind, gentle and musical matriarch whose sweet legacy of notes will forever echo from the hundreds she taught, the thousands, they taught and the millions who have and will listen throughout the whole world”.
Donegal fiddler Martin McGinley said she and Brian “were a driving force behind the Armagh Pipers Club, helping to set hundreds of traditional musicians on their way over the years and contributing so much to the music”.
Sinn Féin MP for Newry and Armagh Dáire Hughes MP said the “pioneering musician” was “a giant of Irish cultural life in Armagh and across Ireland”.
“Her decades of contribution to music and cultural expression cannot be overstated, evidenced by her countless awards and honours.
“Eithne had a lifelong passion for traditional Irish music and was tremendously gifted, with strong musical lineage and a skill fostered on the tin whistle in primary school that would evolve into piano, violin and more. “Eithne was not only a great musician but she had been collecting and recording traditional music from an early age.”
Gifts presented at her funeral Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh included a photo of her ancestral family in Donegal who were fiddle players and blacksmiths.
Eithne was born in Lifford in 1945.
According to Cairdeas na bhFidiléirí, her father Harry Carey was born in Scotland and moved to live with an aunt outside Ballyshannon.
When he took up a job as a clerk with the Donegal Committee of Agriculture, in Lifford he met Eithne’s mother Mary Doogan, who was from Kilcar.
Eithne learned her first tunes on tin whistle at the national school in Mulroy, from her teacher Seán Brady, the father of singer and musician Paul Brady.
She went to Coláiste Bride in Falcarragh and then St Louis Boarding School in Monaghan.
Eithne started learning piano and violin and began playing traditional tunes on fiddle with her father during the school holidays.
In the early 1960s Eithne went to Dublin to study and earned a degree in Celtic studies at University College Dublin.
When in Dublin she became seriously interested in traditional music, attending regular sessions and becoming involved in music collecting. She married Brian in 1969 and had five children, making Armagh her home.
Eithne is survived by Brian and her children Niall, Cillian, Caoimhín, Lorcan and Máire. She was buried in St Patrick’s Cemetery, Armagh.