My Childhood with Sharon Shannon: 'Mother would read us books and we’d re-enact them'

Irish musician shares some stories from her childhood

Sharon Shannon: “I remember taking my first steps, but I can still hear their excited praise and feel how thrilled I was.” Picture: by Brendan Duffy.

Tue, 14 Jul, 2026 - 01:00

Sharon Ní Chonchúir

Sharon Shannon is reluctant to share her earliest memory. Not because it’s so precious, but because people often doubt her ability to recall something that happened when she was so young.

“Here goes anyway,” says the musician with a laugh.

“I remember taking my first steps and tottering into the outstretched arms of my mother and older brother and sister. I can still hear their excited praise and feel how thrilled I was.”

Shannon is the third of four children. Garry, Majella, herself, and Mary grew up on the family farm in Ruan, Co Clare, where they spent their time inventing games.

“Mother would read us books like The Famous Five, and we’d re-enact their adventures,” she says.

“Or we’d make hideouts in the bushes, and have tea and conversations with an imaginary character called Pock. We’d do acrobatics, often using Mary as an object to swing around, or make obstacle courses for our bikes.”

All four of them loved animals and enjoyed caring for the farm dogs, cats, horses, sheep, and cattle. They would help out with other tasks too, including what Shannon describes as the “back-breaking work” of sowing potatoes and the more exhilarating task of bringing in the hay.

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“We had a 15-foot-high trailer, and the four of us would stack the bales onto the trailer as high as we possibly could,” she says.

“Then we’d sit on top of the bales on the way back to the hayshed, swaying from side to side around the bends and ducking to avoid branches and electricity wires. It was scary but exciting.”

School was the one blot on the landscape of her childhood. Even during the holidays, Shannon says it was “like having a cloud on the horizon. The day I had to go back to school was edging closer, so I felt I was never fully out of jail.”

Looking back, she wishes she had been homeschooled. “I was terrified of the teachers who were so strict and cross,” she says.

“And I felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. School was only ever bad for me and, if I had to do it all again, I wouldn’t go to school at all. Mother could have taught me the reading, writing, and maths I needed at home.”

Music was a constant soundtrack in the Shannon household. Her mother Mary would sing songs and both she and Shannon’s father would “turn the radio up full blast whenever Irish music came on, and dance across the kitchen”.

Sharon Shannon playing the fiddle as a teenager

Their children first become interested in playing music when Garry started tin whistle lessons in the nearby village of Corofin.

Shannon was eight years old at the time and says that “Garry taught the rest of us the tunes he learned, and we all took to music like ducks to water”.

Garry then decided the others should learn different instruments; telling Majella to learn the violin, Mary to learn the banjo, and Sharon to learn the button accordion.

The siblings practiced long and hard and eventually began playing music at local events, including the Friday night céilí in the parish hall.

They were also asked to join a local band called Dísirt Tola, with whom they made an album and toured America as teenagers.

Despite her obvious passion and talent for music, Shannon’s path to becoming a professional musician wasn’t straightforward. Her mother wanted her to get a third-level qualification.

“Mother had brains but hadn’t had the opportunity to go to college, so she was determined that we would,” says Shannon. “That led to a lot of tension in my teenage years. She wanted me to go to college and I wanted to do anything but.”

What transpired was that Shannon sat her Leaving Certificate at 17, and then spent the summer playing music in Doolin before going on tour in America.

“I arrived back in November, looking forward to seeing my family and the dogs and horses, only to find Garry waiting for me at the airport,” she says. “Mother had everything arranged for me to study Irish and German at UCC. My bags were packed, and he was going to drop me there. I must have known it was happening, but I’d blanked it out. I got a rude awakening when I landed in Cork.”

She completed the year, but hightailed it to the Willie Clancy Festival as soon as her exams were over. She says she was “delighted to be surrounded by music and able to forget all about college until I met Garry who told me I’d failed my exams and that mother was filling out the forms for me to repeat. I hadn’t a notion of going back and as I’d turned 18, I told mother she couldn’t tell me what to do anymore.”

That was a teary conversation. “Mother cried as she begged me to go back to Cork, and I cried as I begged her not to make me,” says Shannon.

They eventually arrived at a compromise. Shannon’s sister Majella was about to enrol on a six-month secretarial course and Shannon agreed to join her.

Her mother was happy she had some sort of qualification, but immediately started worrying again when her daughter returned to playing music once the six months were up.

“She didn’t stop worrying until I got offered a job playing music for a Druid Theatre production in Galway when I was 20,” says Shannon. “That was an official job with proper pay cheques, tax contributions, and everything. Mother and daddy came to see the play, and I think she understood then that music could offer me a good life.”

It certainly has done since. The baby who took those first tentative steps into her mother’s arms is now an icon of traditional Irish music.