'We were a natural pairing': Paul Brady and Andy Irvine on their 1976 classic

Here is the story of how this remarkable meeting of minds came to be

Andy Irvine and Paul Brady.

One of the greatest musical adventures of Andy Irvine’s life began with a boatman leaving him high and dry on Sherkin Island in West Cork in the late summer of 1976.

“We were on Sherkin playing a festival. At the time there was a special ferry to Baltimore,” the esteemed folk musician remembers. “We were due to take a flight from Cork to Bristol. Our instruments were handed down into the boat. Then the boatman must have decided the boat was getting over full. Without changing his expression, as we looked at him, he slowly steamed out of the quay.”