Leitrim Prehistory

08/14/20 • 33 min

Connecting Through Heritage with Leitrim County Council

Contributors

Donna Gilligan is a museum archaeologist and heritage consultant, who has recently published an authoritative book chapter survey on Leitrim’s prehistory. As part of her work at the National Museum in Dublin, she has also studied prehistoric artefacts from Leitrim found in the museum’s collection. She discusses the significance of several of these objects, and explains the varied groups that settled in Leitrim during the prehistoric period.

Sam Moore is a prehistorian and archaeologist, and a lecturer in IT Sligo. He teaches listeners about the hugely important prehistoric site at Fenagh. The area is best-known for its medieval abbey, but millennia before that a series of prehistoric communities chose this site as a sacred place, building portal tombs and standing stones. Sam reflects on the significance of these monuments, as well as explaining how, in later times, their legacy is mixed with myth and folklore.

Contributors

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Musical Heritage

Contributors

Fionnuala Maxwell is a singer and teacher who has made it her mission to promote and recover Leitrim’s musical heritage. She finds the lyrics or music of often forgotten Leitrim songs in historical manuscripts or publications, and performs her own interpretations of them. In this episode she takes us through a song called ‘The Little Hills o’ Leitrim’ which she found in an old Irish-American newspaper.

Conor Ward is a fiddler living in Cootehall. He learned his craft in local céilí bands, where he was first introduced to the music of Leitrim. He has recently completed a masters on a musical manuscript found in the 1960s, which traces the fiddling tradition of Leitrim and Longford to one nineteenth century source: the style and teaching of Thomas ‘Blind’ Kiernan.