East Meadow Public Library Gets Its Irish Jig On

It was a great day to be Irish at the , as the rousing music of the Irish band Fiddler’s Green had patrons feeling--many of them "Wearing The Green" in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

In fact, it was a great couple of days to be Irish -- with a special appearance the day after St. Paddie’s Day by WHRU Radio host Eileen Cronin, who offered up plenty of Irish laughs, games and folklore. Supplementing Cronin, whose Long Ireland Show airs Saturdays from 3-5 p.m. and features Irish traditional music and listener participation, were traditional Irish foods and tea.

The Fiddler’s Green foursome consists of the core duo, long-time musical collaborators Larry Moser and John Corr, with the additional participation of fiddler Mary Nagin and smooth-singing Irish tenor Patrick O’Rourke. Their repertoire for the day consisted of a range of musical numbers, all with an Irish flair, but featuring a wide variety of moods and tempos.

There were fast-paced instrumental jigs and reels, and even a air polka rendered by Nagin. There were near-operatic songs, like "Come Back To Erin," lovingly sung by O’Rourke over the accordion work of Moser.

There were William Butler Yeats poems set to music, like "Down By Sally Gardens" and "Poet To His Beloved." The former, written in 1889, was sung particularly beautifully by O’Rourke, mesmerizing the audience with such classic and plaintive verses as It was down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet/She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet/She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree/But I was young and foolish, and with her did not agree.

There were songs so familiar to the average listener, such as "Molly Malone," that they are nearly embedded into our DNA.

And of course there were bawdy drinking and "Irish Rover"-type numbers.

The entire set was based on the underlying musical dynamo of Moser (accordion) and Corr (guitar, banjo, pennywhistle). This solid core was supplemented by Nagin’s brawny down-home fiddling, and O’Rourke’s capabilities not only on guitar but also the Irish Bodhran drum.

The between-song patter added color to the proceedings. Moser in particular offered up anecdotal explanations of the origins and inspirations of the group’s repertoire -- including such sources as Kings Park lawyers, visiting Japanese students and even a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

All in all, a rousing afternoon of songs and sensitive ballads -- just the thing to get East Meadow Public Library patrons doing figurative jigs in celebration of the festive day.