Children of Lir take flight again with folk-rock retelling by Fermoy brothers
SMALL-TOWN Ireland in the early 1970s was an unlikely wellspring of musical innovation. Yet it was on a dull day in Fermoy, north Cork that, in the summer of 1972, Brian O’Reilly, a local songwriter and session player, conceived of a remarkable progressive folk-rock retelling of The Children of Lir.
With his band Loudest Whisper, O’Reilly imagined a rhapsodic blend of Celtic mythology and Crosby, Stills and Nash revival folk. The connections between ‘prog’ and Irish mythology would later be explored by Thin Lizzy and Horslips. With the Children of Lir double album, Loudest Whisper got there first.
