Dermot Bolger

Field recordings were remarkable, often made in houses without electricity, the only power source being the battery of a car left running outside.

When I encountered him, Dorothy was 74 years old and the last living link to her tradition of wandering harpists.

Although he died in 1980, his music survives on several posthumously released CDs.

His extraordinary generation, men like Joe Heaney, Seamus Ennis and Mary Ann Carollan, kept Irish music alive, sometimes in poverty and neglect,

until a new generation brought it to a worldwide audience in bands like Alton and Planxty.

Sometimes I hear a tune on the radio played with gusto by young musicians.

I remember those same notes played by that solitary old travelling man, his eyes and hands alive with passion, to a small gathering in a pub who knew we were in the presence of greatness.