Chiff and Fipple Forums

I’ve been reading Seamus Ennis’s field diary, and have become curious about him traveling around on his bike collecting tunes. Does anybody know anything about his bike? Or are there any pictures of him riding it? I’m trying to picture what he carried on it, etc.

Thanks!

The cover of the Irish language edition of his collecting diaries:



And there's this, at the Seamus Ennis centre:

That’s great! I’m reading the English-language version, which has a different picture on the front.

Interesting placement of the two displays on the bottom picture. From what I remember, he didn't need the bike to collect "The Morning Thrush".

dave boling

Is it me, or does she seem to be "sitting" on an invisible chair ?

I was always amazed at Ennis' cycling ability, leaving Dublin in the morning and arriving in Galway by early afternoon, in spite of my own use of the bike as my main means of transport for the first four decades of my life. The past, a different country and all that.

In a different context, among tributes paid to the late Dervla Murphy, who cycled from Lismore to Delhi in 1962/3, I found this description that, perhaps, nicely sums up the times when riding the bicycle was an everyday means of transport rather than a pastime that requires lycra, special gear and helmets :

"My brothers cycled to matches, the uncles cycled to dances forty miles away, romantic souls of every sort cycled to meet their fellas half way across the country who cycled the other half to meet them. Swathes of all sorts of citizens criss-crossed the island.And came back to work or to the farm in the early hours. Men wore their caps; women wore their headscarves. We whooshed down hills, shouting at the wind!"