Leitrim Guardian 2 0 0 4
Mike Joe Mahon recalls the occasion
T H E F I R S T D I R E C T F L I G H T ever
from Knock International Airport to the
Portuguese Shrine of Fatima took place
on Thursday October 10th 2002. This
west of Ireland pilgrimage was led by the
Bishop of Achonry, The Most Rev Thomas
Flynn D.D. The Spiritual Director was
Fr Patrick Peyton, Bunninadden, who is
a nephew of the famous Rosary Priest,
also Fr Peyton. This priest’s beatification
is at an advanced stage at this moment
in time. Other priests who travelled with
the group were Fr Francis Doyle, Fenagh;
Fr John Carney, Longwood, Westmeath
and Fr Colman Carrigy, Ballinalee,
Longford.
The group was present at the Portuguese
Shrine for the very special ceremonies to
mark the 85th anniversary of the final
apparition of in 1917 Our Lady and also
the Miracle of the Sun. Our Lady first
a p p e a red to the three children, Francisco,
aged 9. Lucia, then 10 and still alive
and Jacinta, aged 7, on the May 13th
1917.
receiving the Blessed Sacrament
removed it from her mouth carefully,
wrapped it in her veil and left the
church. Great drops of blood began to
fall from her veil, so she ran home and
hid the Holy Sacrament in a wooden
chest. In the middle of the night the
woman and her husband awoke and saw
that the house was lit up by mysterious
rays of light which penetrated through
the chest. They spent the rest of the
night on their knees in adoration. At
daybreak the parish priest was informed
and people came from far and near to
the woman’s house to contemplate the
Holy Miracle.
The Blessed Sacrament was then taken
in procession to the church of Santo
Esteváo (St Stephen) where it was
placed in a small case of wax.
Some time later, when the Tabernacle
was opened for adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament, it was found that another
The group paid a special visit to the
Carmelite Convent of Sr Lucia, who at
93 years of age resides there. Unfortunately they did not meet Sr Lucia, but
did attend a very special Mass there.
miracle had taken place. The wax case
was found broken in pieces and the Holy
Sacrament was encased in a beautiful
crystal pyx. The pyx was then placed in a
gold plated silver monstrance and can be
seen today above the high alter.
All of the group climbed the narrow stairway to reach the top of the high alter
through a parting in the Marble Alter
could peer into the monstrance and
plainly see the Blood stained Blessed
Sacrament- a very moving sight.
Another visit worth recalling was made to
the Monastery of St Batalha, a magnificent architectural gem which was started
in 1386 and for which an Irishman was
the main architect. It was the scene of an
apparition of Our Lady in the 12th century.The group returned to Knock Airport
travel weary but well satisfied on October
17th after their recording trip ’Knock to
Fatima’.
West of Ireland pilgrims at the Shrine of Fatima
A highlight of the tour was a visit to the
City of Santarem about 30 km from
Lisbon. Santarem is known as the gothic
capital of Portugal because of its many
beautiful old churches. The Holy Miracle
of Santarem took place in 1247. At the
time there lived in the village of
Santarem a poor woman whose life was
made miserable by her unfaithful
husband. She sought help from a Jewish
sorceress. The witch promised the
woman that all her difficulties would
disappear if she brought a consecrated
Host. She went to Confession in the
Church of St Stephen and then after
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Gaeilgeoir ó Ros Inbhir
T Á L E A C H T cuimhneacháin sa
sean reilig i Ros Inbhir agus is
spéisiúil an méid áta air. Tá sé
scríofa i gcló agus litriú atá as dáta
anois. Séard atá air ná:
1901, bhí Gaeilge agus Béarla ag a
athair. Tá seans ansin, cé gur beag
é, go raibh píosa Gaeilge ag Séamus.
Tá seans ann freisin gur fhreastal sé
ar ranganna i nGlascú agus gur
phioc sé suas an Ghaeilge ansin..
Bhí sé in Albain ar feadh deich
mbliain, ar a laghad, sula bhfuair sé
bás. Ar chaoí ar bith is dócha go
raibh go leor Gaeilge aige le bheith
ina Rúnaí ar chraobh de Chonradh
na Gaeilge faoin am sin.
Connradh na Gaeilge
In n-Albáin
Tógtha ag craobh Naomh Lorcain
Ua Tuathail, Glaschu os cionn a runaidhe
Seamus M Giolla Brigde
(Mac Eamainn ón Goblán) do bathadh
go tionoisceach san abhainn Logan ar an
22ad lá de
Seamhain bliadain 1908, 26 bliain d’aois
Sean M Giolla Brigde Dooard
Fuair bás 11 1959
Séamus M Giolla Brigde Goblan
Fuair bás 25.12.1978
Beannacht dílis Dé le n-anam
Cé hé an fear seo agus cén fáth ar
tógadh leacht os cionn a uaighe?
Baisteadh Séamus Mac Giolla Bríde
i nGob Lán (Gubalaun), Ros Inbhir,
ar an 30 Deireadh Fómhair 1880,
mac le Edward Gilbride, siúinéir,
agus Catherine McGuinness. Is
cosúil gur imigh sé go hAlbain roimh
1901, mar ní raibh sé ina chónaí sa
bhaile lena athair ‘is a mhathair
nuair a tógadh an daonáireamh i
1901. Is iomaí duine ón cheantair
seo, gar do Chontae Fhear Manach,
a chuaigh go hAlbain le linn na
mblianta sin.
Is léir gur ghlach sé pairt i gConradh
na Gaeilge i nGlascú agus go raibh
sé ina Rúnaí ar an gCraobh ansin.
An raibh Gaeilge ag Séamus? Sin
ceist. De réir an daonáireamh i
Bádh Séamus san abhainn Logan i
1908. (Bhí sé 28 bliain d’aois, níl
an aois ar an leacht i gceart). Is
cosúil gur tógadh a chorp ar ais go
Ros Inbhir agus gur chuir lucht Conradh na Gaeilge in Albain an leacht
cuimhneacháin os cionn a uaighe
am éigin ina dhiaidh sin.
Níl morán eolais ag duine ar bith
faoí Shéamus, cé go bhfuil a chuid
gaolta thart ar Ros Inbhir fós ach is
léir go raibh meas mór air i nGlascú
agus gur fear mór Gaeilge ab ea é
thart ar chéad bliain ó shin.
A B E A U T I F U L A C T O F K I N D N E S S Sophie Reynolds
The people of Jamestown, Drumsna and Carrick-on-Shannon have rallied around to
help out Claudia Feitosa in her hour of need. In October, Diogo Henrique , her husband of just two months died from a severe asthma attack at just 20 years of age.The
young Brazilian couple had been living and working in Jamestown for seven weeks –
moving here only two weeks after their marriage. The local communities together
with the St Vincent de Paul raised €12,000 to help defray the cost of returning his
Claudia and Diogo Henrique Feitosa (at back)
having a drink with friends in happier times
before Diogo’s untimely death.
Photo: Danny Butler
remains for burial in his native Brazil. A special Mass in Portugese in Diogo’s
memory was celebrated in Jamestown and was attended by the Brazilian community
living locally. It was a tremendous act of kindness by the locals and is sure to live
on in the heart of Mrs Feitosa for many years to come.
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Leitrim Guardian 2 0 0 4
Mick Woods
A Musicianers’ Musicianer
Charlie McGettigan
They say around Leitrim that there are musicianers
house. He recalls also listening to the music of John
McKenna and Michael Coleman on old seventy eight
records sent home from
America and these records
contained tunes he was to
master himself in later years.
His first tin whistle, a
Clarke’s D, was given to him
as a Christmas present by his
teacher Mrs McRann, who
was actually his aunt, when
she realised that an academic career was not likely
H UMB LE BE GIN NIN GS
for Mick. She used to say
Born on 1st May 1928 in Cornacrannaghy, just out- that if the sums had airs,
Mick Woods in 2003
side Drumshanbo, second youngest in a family of
Mick might have been better
seven, Mick Woods heard his first tunes from the
at the mathematics. He quickly thought himself
musicians who were regular visitors to his home
tunes on the tin whistle and soon Mrs McRann
in the evenings when he was just a small child. In would let him play for the other children at school
those days every house had a fiddle or a flute on
as a bit of diversion. These were Mick’s first pubthe dresser but Mick’s first tunes were picked out lic performances and little did he know they were
on an old accordion, which was lying around the
the start of a long career in the music business.
but then there are musicianers’ musicianers.
A musicianers’ musicianer is someone who is highly
regarded by his peers for his ability with his chosen
instrument and is usually a very adept musicianer
indeed. Mick Woods is one of that rare breed of
musicianer that is both admired by his peers and
the public at large. He is a musician of high
integrity who is equally proficient in the Irish
traditional, classical and the Jazz idioms. A quiet
unassuming man, he is, sadly, one of a diminishing
number of the old style ’pros’ left on the circuit but
thankfully is still a strong force in Irish music.
Mick Woods with his mother
E A R LY RE CO GN ITION &
MIC K’S FIRST FLU TE
In 1936, when he was about eight years of age,
Mick’s love affair with the flute began. He remembers having ‘an awful eye’ for a flute, the same as
a footballer might have for a ball or a carpenter
for a fine tool. He became obsessed with the
sound it made and the way it felt in his hands.
Practising night and day, Mick soon became as
one with the flute and he started playing it in
sessions.
One night at the age of about eleven he was playing in McRanns’ of Mount Allen when a brother of
the late great John McKenna was so impressed
with him that he gave him his late brother’s flute.
This was an enormous compliment to Mick but at
that tender age he didn’t really appreciate what a
compliment it was. Sadly he no longer has the
flute. However, Mick’s sister in law, Nancy Woods,
has the case in her house.
At thirteen years of age and still in short trousers,
Mick won the gold medal, in the senior section of
the very prestigious Boyle Feis Ceoil beating many
fine musicians several years his senior. The win
encouraged him to practice day and night and to
travel long distances to house sessions all around
the area to hear other musicians so that he could
increase his repertoire of tunes.
Mick’s First Clarinet
Mick’s cousin, Barney McCormack, who had a
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Leitrim Guardian 2 0 0 4
cian had begun. Mick played flute, clarinet and a
little accordion in this band.
dance band in Drumshanbo at the time called the
Ideal Dance Band, encouraged Mick to take up
the clarinet seeing that he was so good at the
flute. He was about sixteen years of age at the
time. Christy Armstrong, a renowned musician
and music teacher from Carrick, sold him his
first clarinet for three or four pounds – an awful
lot of money at the time–and Mick took his very
first music lessons from Christy himself.
Mick is indebted to Christy Armstrong, who over
a period of two years taught Mick not only to play
the clarinet but also to ‘sight read’ music.
The first tune he learned on the clarinet was
‘Carolina Moon’, a tune, which he still plays to
this day. Soon Mick was playing everything from
Strauss to Chopin as he avidly absorbed every
piece of sheet music he could get his hands on.
Christy Armstrong taught him not only the discipline of playing strictly the music written on the
page as the composer intended but also the skill
of improvisation which was to prove essential
later in his jazz years.
THE K EVIN WO O DS B AND
First Performances
Around about this time (1944/1945) Mick and his
brother Kevin, who played accordion, formed a
family band with his sister Maureen on fiddle and
his brother Shane on drums. They began playing
in schools and parish halls like Ballinaglera and
even as far away as Doobally Hall. They could
earn a half a crown each per night (about sixteen
cents) and Mick’s career as a professional musi-
The family band soon began to be augmented by
musicians from outside the family and was playing more and more gigs. Around about this time
Mick bought his first saxophone, an SML, in
McCullough Piggott’s in Dublin for £100. His
uncle Jim McRann helped him to pay for it, £100
being an awful lot of money in those days.
THE D ANC E B AND YEAR S
The band now became known as the Kevin Woods
Dance Band and they gradually began playing
further and further afield. It wasn’t long until the
band consisted of maybe two tenor saxes, an alto
sax, a baritone sax, a clarinet, a trombone and
trumpet player plus a rhythm section made up of
piano bass and drums. The band wore red and
blue outfits, which were considered very daring
altogether because bands up till then invariably
wore very formal black dinner suits. Their repertoire consisted of everything from Straus waltzes
to Latin Rumbas as well as the big band numbers
of Glenn Millar and Woody Herman. They would
also include a ‘Siege of Ennis’ or a ‘Walls of Limerick’ for good measure and much, much more.
A new chocolate and cream coloured VW van was
purchased at the Dublin Show so that all the
members and the public address system could
travel to the dates together. This, it seems, was
the first VW van that was ever purchased in Ireland and it cost all of £800. Bookings began to
come in from all over the country. They played
mostly parish halls and ballrooms and they
became one of the most popular bands around
on a par with bands like Mick Delahunty, Maurice
Mulcahy and Stephen Garvey’s Big Band.
They were one of the first bands in Ireland to
hire foreign musicians. Musicians like Fred
Barneix and Alex Frieberg came from Germany.
Mick Woods Band, London
Trombone player and singer, Carl Riley, was a
black man from Trinidad and was an extremely
popular figure around the town. Irish Tourism
was something in the distant future in those days
so to have foreigners living in Drumshanbo then
was quite exotic.
One of Mick’s favourite musicians was Jimmy
Shivnan from Arigna. Mick poached Jimmy from
Barney McCormack’s band and stuck with Jimmy
night and day teaching him to sight-read. He
realised Jimmy’s genius and the two were to form
a long lasting relationship on a musical and personal level, which continues to this day. Jimmy
Shivnan now lives in Los Angeles where he still
plays his clarinet in a band there.
There would have been up to twelve full time
musicians in the band and they were paid about
four pounds ten shillings each per week at this
time (approx five euro). This was considered
good money then although they earned it. He
remembers travelling through ice and snow to
Youghal on St Stephen’s Night for sixty-five
pounds (about eighty euro). In those days they
played from 9:00 pm until 3:00 am.
Although the money was good, it was a tough
business and Mick recalls playing in Kerry three
nights in one week and travelling home each
night because of other engagements. They
played venues like the Glebe Hall in Killarney, the
Hayloft in Cork, Barry’s Hotel in Dublin and the
crowds were enormous in comparison to dances
today. He remembers playing to 4000 people for
example in the Edel Quinn Hall in Kenturk. At one
time they played for sixteen nights running in
Kerry alone. The average mileage was 1700 miles
per week. I don’t know of any band in the country
doing that kind of mileage these days.
Although Maureen Doran was the first singer, the
band had many singers in its history. One of the
most popular was Vera Morgan. Vera was an outstanding singer, according to Mick, and she even
had her own fan club with a branch in Belfast.
The members of this Belfast branch indeed
cycled to Drumshanbo just to see her. Eat your
heart out Daniel O Donnell! It was a great feather
in Mick’s cap to have Vera as the band’s vocalist.
Vera later married RTE broadcaster Val Joyce
who still regularly visits Paddy Mac’s with her.
TH E JA ZZ YEAR S
In the early sixties jazz became very popular in
Britain and Ireland with bands like Kenny Ball’s
Jazzmen, Chris Barber, The Paramount Jazz Band
and Mick’s hero Acker Bilk. This new trend gave
Mick the chance to indulge his interest in trad
jazz. The Kevin Woods band began playing jazz
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and for a period they became quite well known
as one of Ireland’s top jazz bands emulating the
stars of the British jazz scene. Indeed to this day
Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger on the Shore’ is still one of
the highlights of Mick’s stage set.
period Mick recorded his first album ’A tribute to
John McKenna’ accompanied on guitar by Mary
Conroy a sister of Joe Burke’s wife Ann Conroy.
This album was very successful for Mick and was
a highly acclaimed piece of work by all who knew
the music of John McKenna.
TH E SH OWB AN D YE ARS
The end of an era
B AC K TO D RU MSH ANB O
As the sixties progressed the showbands started
to appear on the scene and The Kevin Woods
Dance Band had to transform itself into the Kevin
Woods Showband. This meant a radical change in
the band’s format in that the numbers had to be
trimmed down and the band had to play standing
up whereas before this they would sit down to
play behind their music stands. This took a lot of
getting used to but they did adapt and were to
continue as the Kevin Woods Showband until
1966. By then their bookings had declined and,
with income falling, Mick was forced to eventually disband the band and move to London. It was
a tough decision but Mick had a wife and family
to support and therefore had to bring the Kevin
Woods Band era to an end.
In 1980 the management of the Forum Club
changed and with things looking a lot brighter on
the music scene in Leitrim Mick decided to pack
his bags and return to Ireland for good. He was
quickly back on the music scene here forming
the Mick Woods Band firstly with Longford man
Sean Mahon and his brother Shane and then with
the late great Aidan Canning and Shane on
drums. Soon they were playing five nights a week
on the thriving pub scene as well as the wedding
and dinner dance circuit. This band was regularly
augmented by musicians from outside the area
like Donal Keigher and Mick Harkin for some
great jazz sessions in places like Paddy Mac’s
Thatch Pub, Drumshanbo or the Bush Hotel in
Carrick.
TH E LON D ON YEAR S
Moving to London was not as easy as Mick had
anticipated and he initially had to take work on
the building sites until he established himself on
the music scene. Mick’s first music gig in London
was at a dance in Balham but he eventually
formed his own band, ‘The Triumphs’, which
played a residency at the ‘The Hibernian’ Fulham
Broadway, for seven years. They then moved to
the Forum Club in Kentish Town. They played five
nights a week at the Forum and this residency
was to last a further seven years.
While he was in London, Mick rekindled his love
for Irish traditional music, which he had all but
forsaken for many years. He took a notion to play
concert flute again and bought one from the
renowned musician Roger Sherlock. He used to
play a traditional Irish music session every Sunday Morning at the King’s Head in Fulham Broadway playing jigs and reels firstly on the tenor sax
but eventually on his beloved concert flute. He
also played a little tin whistle in those days but
no one ever asked him to borrow his whistle for
one very good reason – he played his whistle
through his nose! He used to get two pounds for
his Sunday morning sessions and all his pints
were free, which suited him fine.
In the King’s Head sessions Mick was regularly
joined by many of Ireland’s best known musicians such as the legendary Sean McGuire,
Josephine Keegan and Joe Burke. During this
For many years through the eighties and nineties
Mick played a traditional session every Wednesday night at his sister Monica’s pub, Doherty’s
Mountain Tavern, in Aughacashel (now
McMurphy’s). For these sessions he was joined
by his sister Maureen on fiddle as well as
Eamonn and Orla Daly, Camillus Kehoe, Edmund
Doyle, Kevin Dowler, Teresa and Paddy Smullen,
Brendan Farrelly and many more. These sessions
are legendary. Indeed this group of musicians
produced two highly acclaimed and best selling
albums – ’An Tostal Drumshanbo Traditional
Music Group’ and ’Rolling in the Ryegrass’
Mick Woods at 20years of age
regarded bass player who has played with many
of the country’s top singers including Jimmy
Buckley and Eamonn McCann, continues the
musical heritage of the Woods family as does his
son Fergal who is a highly respected
singer/songwriter and guitarist.
Mick Woods, who has contributed so much to the
Irish music scene for over sixty years, remains
the consummate professional he has always
been and continues to entertain all who come to
hear him.
Long may he continue.
P RESE NT TIMES
Mick continues to perform up to this day at the
ripe young age of seventy-five. He now plays with
adopted Drumshanbo man Camillus Kehoe in
their regular Thursday night sessions in
Gertie’s of Keshcarrigan as well as
other venues. The jazz sessions, where
Shane and himself are joined by Donal
and Mick, are still held at Bank Holiday
weekends in Paddy Macs where large
crowds congregate to hear the wonderful sounds of yesteryear. At the annual
Joe Mooney Summer School in
Drumshanbo musicians like Joe Burke,
Brendan McGlinchey and the Keane
sisters make a point of having at least
one session during the week with Mick.
Don Woods, Mick’s son, a highly
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