Not HK, not Great War - just Ireland's oldest Brass Band

pmeosullivan
1 day ago
2 min read

A couple of days ago I had a very welcome call from Eddie Cody, nephew of John Delahunty, the only Irish HKP to lose his life in the Great War. Eddie has given me a huge amount of really useful material which I'm using in the forthcoming book (Answering their Country's Call - Hong Kong Police in the Great War). And it's magnificent to have such a close link to any of these men - just one generation! I think its perhaps more frequent in Ireland than elsewhere that the very long generational stretches mean that we can be within 'tocuhing distance' of men who died over a century ago. (My own grandfather was born in 1876. Wikipedia tells me that this was the year that the ubiquitous grey squirrel was introduced into England.)

Well, to continue the digressions away from this website's main topics ...

Eddie lives in rural Kilkenny, in the south east of Ireland, and he was telling me how much he'd enjoyed playing in the concerts his brass band gave over Christmas, including the performance on Christmas Day itself. The band is Graiguenamanagh Brass Band, and it is the oldest brass band in Ireland, having been started in 1760. There's obviously a lot of history here, and perhaps inevitably, its gone through highs and lows. Eddie recounted a neat little piece of the story to me - in the middle of the last century, the band was in the doldrums, when an Englishman and roving cornet player, Cyril Cooper, arrived in Graiguenamanagh. The local baker, John O'Leary, was a great supporter of the band, and thought that Cyril was just the man to reinvigorate it and bring it back to its former glory, but how to keep him in the village? Well, he could do with some help in his bakery - so offered Cyril a job. And thus the band was restored and has continued ever since.

With instrumentalists from Graiguenamanagh and the surrounding townlands, aged between 16 and 91, it seems to be in great shape! There's a lovely video on the band's Facebook page (and, with apologies, I've pinched the picture from there. I'm very much hoping to hear them when I'm next down that way.