Francis O'Neill

Francis O'Neill was born in Tralibane, near Bantry, County Cork, where young ears drank in the music of Peter Hagarty, Cormac Murphy and Timothy Dowling before he fled to sea at sixteen. That Cork sound followed him across the Atlantic, into Chicago police halls and later into printed books that carried thousands of Irish tunes into the world. The boy who listened at home became the chief who remembered, proving that a life can be a vessel for music long after the dancer has left the room.