My Childhood with Eleanor Shanley: 'I was flighty and loved being around other people'

The Ghost of You is Eleanor Shanley's debut art exhibition and is on show in Kilkenny’s Pembroke Hotel from now until August 16.

Eleanor Shanley was eight when she won a singing competition, with the judges saying her voice could fill a big room.

Eleanor Shanley may be known as a folk singer but her latest venture sees her returning to her childhood love of painting.

“Music was one of my favourite subjects at school but art and English were my other favourites,” says Shanley. “Art took a backseat for a long time but I returned to it about 15 years ago and fell in love with it all over again.”

Shanley’s childhood was spent on a farm outside the small village of Keshcarrigan in Leitrim, where her father Patrick farmed and worked as the local postman. She tells a story of how her mother Eileen would make use of her father’s postman’s cap to trick herself and her siblings into behaving.

“My older sisters Geraldine and Josephine and my younger brother John and I all slept in the same bedroom and we’d often be up late chatting,” she says. “Mother would threaten to call the guards if we didn’t go to sleep. She’d eventually put on our father’s cap, stand outside our bedroom window and cough. We’d fall for it every time and would instantly be quiet, fearful of the guards.”

The four Shanley children were close, and Shanley says they still are. She credits her mother for this because “she was such an amazing peacemaker. We were never allowed to close the door on a row.

Eileen and Patrick Shanley with their children — John, Eleanor, Josephine, and Geraldine.

“We had to sort things out before we left the room.”

Of her three siblings, Shanley spent most time with her younger brother when they were children. She remembers how she, John, and her friend Clodagh were “always together, playing house, climbing trees or trying to scale the face of the nearby quarry. We’d also rob orchards. Our neighbour had the brightest red apples. They were also the sourest apples you could ever eat but we enjoyed robbing them anyway.”

When asked what she was like as a little girl, Shanley said she was “as flighty as could be”. She gives the example of being sent to the village shop by her mother.

“I was so easily distracted that I’d have forgotten what she asked me for by the time I got there,” she says. “Or I’d meet someone and start chatting and my sisters would eventually be sent to find out why I hadn’t come home with the messages.”

In hindsight, she thinks she always enjoyed being around other people. It’s a trait she says caused “constant battles” with her mother when she became a teenager: “My older sisters were going to dances at that stage,” says Shanley. “I felt like I was missing out and would throw tantrums because they wouldn’t bring me with them. I’d beg my parents to let me go. Father would have let me but there was no way Mother would. We had so many rows until I was old enough to go.”

Shanley has many happy memories of those dances, particularly of the songs she and her sisters would sing on the drives there and back.

Music had always been woven into life in the Shanley family. Her mother’s sisters and brothers were all singers, and Shanley recalls how everyone would be asked to sing a song on visits to her maternal grandparents’ home.

“My uncle Thomas was an extraordinary singer,” she says. “You could always tell where he was because he would constantly be singing or whistling a tune.”

Shanley remembers the exact moment her mother realised she might also be an extraordinary singer. She was eight years old and came in from school singing. Her mother remarked that she had a fine voice and decided she should enter the Tóstal singing competition.

“I won,” says Shanley. “I still have the adjudication slip which says, ‘this little girl’s voice can fill a big room.”

Shanley says her brother John was a good singer too, as was her cousin Gabriel. They would all sing together as youngsters.

“But Gabriel died in a car accident when he was 21 and I was 18,” she says. “That was a life-changing event for me. It made me value every day. I’ve often wondered since if Gabriel would have gone on to have a musical career like me.”

That musical career came about by chance. By the time she finished school at 17, Shanley says she “couldn’t wait” to follow her sisters to Dublin. She got a job working in Fás on Baggot St, and the sisters lived together on the South Circular Rd.

“We had a great life,” she says. “We’d get cake at the Kylemore Bakery at weekends. I studied drama with Betty Ann Norton and also joined the Leitrim Wild Roses, a group of Leitrim people that would take part in Tops of the Town.

“We’d travel the country like a touring circus, putting on shows and competing against other groups. It was a huge thing at the time and I loved it.”

She would occasionally sing at sessions in The Merchant pub. “But I never dreamed of singing for a living,” she says. “I had a permanent pensionable job with Fás.”

That changed in 1990 when Shanley was 21 and Dolores Keane left De Danann. “Ned O’Shea, who ran The Merchant, rang the band and told them to come listen to me,” says Shanley. “Two weeks later, I said goodbye to the job and started touring the world with De Danann.”

• The Ghost of You continues at the Pembroke Hotel, Kilkenny until August 16.
• Eleanor Shanley is touring nationwide with Mike Hanrahan throughout 2026. See eleanorshanley.ie for details.