Irish fiddling and dance music on Beaver Island

Theme

Eras: Irish eraModern era
Concepts: music-folkloreheritageirish-arranmorecommunitycelebrationperformance
Within: Beaver Island

A seated man in a pinstriped suit plays a violin in a wood-paneled room. — 11pat_bonner_at_the_king_strang.jpgBeaver Beacon (individual photographers credited per image) · © the individual photographers and/or the Beaver Beacon. The gallery's own footer states, verbatim: "Copyright Note: You must obtain written permission from the copyright holder before using any of these images for any commercial purpose. Contact the Beaver Beacon if you have any questions or need to contact the copyright owner of a specific image." The site footer adds: "© 2002-2010 The Beaver Beacon. All Rights Reserved." No licence, public-domain dedication or terms-of-use page was located anywhere on the gallery; the note above addresses commercial use only and is silent on non-commercial republication, and that silence is recorded as silence rather than read as permission.

Summary

Irish fiddling and dance music on Beaver Island are documented through several different kinds of evidence: cataloged sound recordings, later archival catalogues, published interpretation, retrospective island journalism, and contemporary festival programming. They should not be collapsed into one uninterrupted or fully reconstructed tradition. The strongest direct evidence is that Patrick J. Bonner appears as a performer in the Library of Congress’s 1938 field-recording metadata and in a 1952 Ivan Walton catalogue entry for fiddling and a country square dance.¹²

Recordings and interpretation

The Lomax records preserve catalog titles, performer labels, dates, and place; they do not by themselves prove who taught a tune, its age, melody-level continuity, or a performer’s Irish-language use. Walton’s catalogue similarly identifies a 1952 square dance at Pat Bonner’s home and a Bonner fiddling session, but it is not a transcript or a full social-history record.¹²

The 2024 Islands of Fiddlers / Oileáin na bhFidiléirí launch report says its authors link Beaver Island to Donegal fiddling, transcribe 111 Bonner tunes, and interpret earlier migration and musical relationships. That work is important scholarship and a modern cross-island connection, but its specific historical claims remain attributed until compared with the book itself, cataloged audio, archival documents, and migration sources.³

What the retrospective record claims

Between the 1938 recordings and the 1990s the held periodical record is thin on fiddling as such, and the fullest narrative of it is a single retrospective: Robert Cole’s March 2002 Beaver Beacon history of St. Patrick’s Day. Cole writes that “[d]ancing, fiddling, and the occasional brawl usually made up the entertainment” of the nineteenth-century holiday, quoting an unnamed islander’s recollection that the 1885 observance finished “with a good masquerade ball in the evening”; that through the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s “[l]ocal musicians would set the tunes from the kitchen while furniture was cleared away for dancing” at “the now legendary ‘house parties’”; and that the 1960s to the 1990s were organised around the St. Patrick’s Day Dance at the Parish Hall, played by “[v]eteran Island musicians like Ed Palmer, Jewell and Danny Gillespie, and Glenn McDonough.”⁴

These are Cole’s claims, published in 2002, with no archive, minute book or interview named for the nineteenth-century material. They are recorded here because they are the only continuous account found, not because they have been verified; Beaver Island St. Patrick's Day celebrations dates its series by 1885 on the same attributed basis. The one detail they share with an independent source is the venue-and-house pattern: Walton’s 1952 entry also places a square dance in a private home, Pat Bonner’s.²

The festival-era continuation

From the late 1990s the Beacon documents ceili and dance programming regularly, because it had become part of the island’s scheduled public calendar rather than of private evenings. This is the layer that connects the recorded tradition to the present festivals, and it predates the Emerald Isle Irish Féile by two decades.

Inside Museum Week. The June 1999 issue announces a free Ceili Dancing workshop in the Parish Hall, with the Ceili Dancers and their band opening that evening for the Irish band Murphy, Paige, and Smith — who had “launched [their] first CD at last summer’s concert” — and notes that Tommy O’Halloran “put off a trip to Dublin to join them again.”⁵ By July 2000 the week carried both “Music on the Porch” and a Saturday-night “Hooley,” with some performers appearing at each, and the Ceili Dancers again gave a free class.⁶

As standalone instruction. In April 2002 the Beacon advertised “Step In Time” with Pat Hoekje, an Irish dance instructor from Traverse City, teaching Irish step jigs and ceili dancing “featuring a live fiddler and guitarist” at the Beaver Island Community School and at Holy Cross Hall, with a jigs-and-reels combination and a fiddle workshop the following day.⁷

Around the Arranmore exchange. Sixty Chicago-Irish visitors who came to the island from 30 September to 2 October 2005 wrote to thank their hosts for “ceili and set dancing” at the Hall: they brought their own dance teacher, Ann O’Brien; Cindy Gillespie-Cushman “arranged for the wonderful local musical talent” and “even imported a fiddle player from the mainland for the occasion.” Their letter also offers the analogy that “[t]he hall full of set dancing was like a hundred and fifty years ago, when the Irish first populated Beaver Island” — a visitor’s felt comparison, not a historical finding.⁸

Attached to the Bite of Beaver. By October 2007 the Chamber’s autumn food weekend carried a two-night programme — “Ceili Friday Night. Learn the Irish quick step, the waltz, and the Irish set dance. Saturday Night is the big Irish Hooley” — at the Parish Hall, $10 on the Saturday, with “arrivals, some coming all the way from Arranmore.”⁹ The following month’s issue reports the outcome: “[a] Hooley took place at the Hall … and though it was sparsely attended this year due to another musical event, it was great fun.”¹⁰ That pairing — an announcement and then a report that qualifies it — is the model preferred here for any festival claim.

The archive feeding practice. The clearest documented instance runs from the 1938 recordings to a working fiddler. In an October 2007 letter Brian Roman, a visiting fiddler for whom the island had just held a benefit, writes that about four years earlier he “first heard the fiddle playing of Patrick Bonner on a recording made in the 1930s” — “[w]as it the Irish trills, the wave-like rocking of the bow, the hard square dance sound…?” — and that this is what brought him to Beaver Island.⁹ He does not say which recording, so the link is to the Bonner corpus generally, not to a specific catalogued item.

Contemporary festival programming

The Emerald Isle Irish Féile carries the same forms into a ticketed festival. Its 2019 programme included a presentation on Alan Lomax’s recordings of island fiddlers, “The Fiddler and the Song Catchers,” alongside live Irish dance; the 2023 festival opened with a dockside welcome led by the Arranmore Pipe Band; and the 2025 festival included a performance billed as “Two Islands, One Soul” by Arranmore and Beaver Island musicians together.¹¹

For 2024 the held record is finer-grained. Festival board members Linda Wearn and Bridget Martin were reported to be training islanders in céilí dancing ahead of Friday and Saturday “Hooley in the Hall” evenings (Céilí practice and Hooley in the Hall at the Emerald Isle Irish Féile, 2024); a free Irish dance class taught by Anne Connaghan was scheduled at Convent Green (Irish dance workshop at the Emerald Isle Irish Féile, 2024); dancers from Ardan Academy of Irish Dance were listed in the lineup; and the October 2024 report of the festival names the visiting Arranmore musicians Jerry Early, John Gallagher and John Flannagan among the performers.¹¹¹² Both 2024 sub-event articles are marked unverified because their source is an advance programme, not a report that the evening took place.

The 2024 Féile also connected Bonner’s documented performance legacy to Glenn Hendrix’s contemporary work as a fiddler and preserver of Bonner material, through its Hall of Fame.¹³ This demonstrates how historical music is remembered and activated in a present festival; it does not establish that every displayed tune or modern performance is an unchanged nineteenth-century form.

Open questions

Can the book’s 111 tune transcriptions be crosswalked, one by one, to LOC and Walton records without assuming a match from titles alone?
Which performers, teachers, dance sites, and sessions can be confirmed from primary sources beyond surname or community tradition?
What permissions govern listening, transcription, quotation, and publication of recordings and tune transcriptions?
Which recording did Brian Roman hear in about 2003, and through what publication or copy did a 1930s Bonner performance reach a mainland fiddler?
Who were the “Ceili Dancers” of the 1999–2001 Museum Weeks — an island group, a visiting one, or a class formed for the occasion? The Beacon names them without describing them.
Is there continuity of tune repertory, and not merely of dance form, between the 1938 and 1952 recordings and the ceili and hooley programming of 1999–2007? No held source addresses this.

Sources

BI Pirate and participants, "Toasts for St. Patrick's Day," Beaver Island Forum, March 17, 2018, topic 12804.
Participants exchanged Irish toasts, quotations, a song link, and memories of a Bloody Mary brunch. This documents contemporary community folklore and convivial practice, not a formal St. Patrick’s Day program or verified authorship for each toast.
forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012804
Library of Congress, Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings, Beaver Island sound-recording item metadata, 24–29 August 1938.
The held metadata records Patrick Bonner as performer on dated 1938 Beaver Island items. It is catalog evidence, not a complete tune transmission history.
audio · lomax_michigan_1938_beaver_island
University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, Ivan Walton recording AFC SR127 catalogue entry, 1952.
Catalogue describes a 1952 country square dance at Pat Bonner’s home and a Bonner fiddling session. It is not a transcript, exhaustive participant list, or rights clearance.
web · bentley_walton_catalog
Donegal Live, “Book to be launched celebrating link between Arranmore Island and Beaver Island,” 8 April 2024.
Launch report describes the 2024 book Islands of Fiddlers, names Hendrix and Mac Aoidh, and reports the book’s claims about Donegal fiddlers, Patrick Bonner, and tune transcription. These claims require attribution to the book/report unless independently traced.
web · donegallive_2024_islands_of_fiddlers_launch
Northern Islander, August and November 2024, Hall of Fame and “A Beaver Island Journey” coverage.
Documents 2024 heritage commemoration and publication context; it does not supersede item-level recordings or immigration records. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
charlevoix · northern_islander_2024.11
Robert Cole, “The Great Day: St Patricks' Day History on Beaver Island,” Beaver Beacon, March 2002.
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. Cole's retrospective supplies this article's only narrative of pre-1938 dance music: an unnamed islander's account of the 1885 holiday ending in "a good masquerade ball," "[d]ancing, fiddling, and the occasional brawl" as the usual entertainment, "house parties" of the 1910s-1930s at which "[l]ocal musicians would set the tunes from the kitchen while furniture was cleared away for dancing," and the 1960s-1990s Parish Hall dance with named island musicians. Written in 2002; no underlying archive, minute book or interview is named for the nineteenth-century material. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2002-03_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, March 2002, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held thirty-nine-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2002-03_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, June 1999, Beaver Island Historical Society Museum Week column.
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. Announces a free Saturday 17 July afternoon Ceili Dancing workshop in the Parish Hall, with the Ceili Dancers and their band opening that evening for the Irish band Murphy, Paige, and Smith, which "launched its first CD at last summer's concert"; says Tommy O'Halloran "put off a trip to Dublin to join them again." An announcement, not a report. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1999-06_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, June 1999, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held thirty-three-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1999-06_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, April 2002, “Step In Time” workshop notice.
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. Advertises Pat Hoekje, "Irish Dance Instructor from Traverese City" (as printed), teaching Irish step jigs and ceili dancing "featuring a live fiddler and guitarist" at the Beaver Island Community School during school hours on Friday 26 April and that evening at Holy Cross Hall, with a Saturday "[c]ombo of Jigs, Reels & Ceili dance workshop! Fiddle workshop as well." Tentative times; an announcement, not a report. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2002-04_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, April 2002, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held thirty-four-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2002-04_Beaver-Beacon
Cathie and Michael Boyle and the Chicago-Irish Tour Group, letter of thanks, Beaver Beacon, December 2005.
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. Sixty Chicago visitors who came 30 September to 2 October 2005 describe "ceili and set dancing" at the Hall with their own dance teacher Ann O'Brien; say Cindy Gillespie-Cushman "arranged for the wonderful local musical talent" and "imported a fiddle player from the mainland"; and offer the interpretive comparison that "[t]he hall full of set dancing was like a hundred and fifty years ago, when the Irish first populated Beaver Island." A visitor's letter — a participant account and an explicit analogy, not a historical finding. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2005-12_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, December 2005, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held forty-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2005-12_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, October 2007, "Island Events" and Brian Roman, "Thank You to the Island."
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. The events column advertises a "Ceili Friday Night" and "the big Irish Hooley" on Saturday at the Parish Hall over the Bite of Beaver weekend, with "arrivals, some coming all the way from Arranmore." A separate signed letter by the visiting fiddler Brian Roman says he "first heard the fiddle playing of Patrick Bonner on a recording made in the 1930s" about four years earlier and travelled to the island as a result. The letter is a personal statement of influence; it does not identify which recording he heard. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2007-10_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, October 2007, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held forty-four-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2007-10_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, November 2007, "The Irish Return."
Read in the in-repo `data/` tree. Reports that Chicago and Arranmore visitors came after seeing photographs of the new Grotto and that "[a] Hooley took place at the Hall (with thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for use of the hall, insurance and liquor license) and though it was sparsely attended this year due to another musical event, it was great fun." A short post-event report. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2007-11_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, November 2007, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held forty-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2007-11_Beaver-Beacon
Project article, Emerald Isle Irish Féile (hub).
Described in this archive: Emerald Isle Irish Féile.
Records year-by-year programming, including the 2019 Lomax fiddle-recordings presentation, the 2023 Arranmore Pipe Band dockside welcome, the 2024 acts and dance workshops, and the 2025 "Two Islands, One Soul" performance by Arranmore and Beaver Island musicians, each attributed to the source that names it. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
kb · articles · events · emerald-isle-irish-feile
Project article, Festivals and public celebration (theme), citing Katie Johnson, “The 2024 Feile,” Northern Islander, October 2024.
Described in this archive: Festivals and public celebration.
Its source block records the October 2024 report naming returning Féile performers and the Arranmore musicians Jerry Early, John Gallagher and John Flannagan. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
kb · articles · themes · festivals-and-public-celebration
Photograph titled "Pat Bonner at the King Strang"; Beaver Beacon photo gallery, folder 520, gallery photo 262.
Opened and checked: a seated middle-aged man in a pinstriped suit playing a violin in a wood-panelled room, with a microphone stand at his right. No third-party collection watermark. The identification is the Beaver Beacon gallery's own caption, cited as theirs; the sitter is taken to be Patrick J. Bonner (1882-1973), whom the Beacon's obituary calls "Beaver Island's celebrated Irish fiddler". The King Strang is a venue on the island, not a reference to James Jesse Strang - this photograph was rejected for the Strang article earlier for exactly that reason.
websites · www.beaverbeacon.com · gallery · images · 520 · 11pat_bonner_at_the_king_strang

Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Irish fiddling and dance music on Beaver Island”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/themes/irish-fiddling-and-dance-music/, accessed [date], citing BI Pirate and participants, "Toasts for St. Patrick's Day," Beaver Island Forum, March 17, 2018, topic 12804. (and 19 further sources listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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