Track 6: Fonn Mall Acla (3:18)

Colm writes:

Slow airs hold a special place in Irish music. Unaccompanied, relatively unadorned but with irregular rhythms of pining, mournful notes grasped at and released, they are the reflective tunes reserved for solo play. 

I went to school at Coláiste Chilliain, in Clondalkin and we had a great grúpa ceoil, directed by our great teacher and piper Ciarán O’Máille and also aided by legend concertina player Mícheál O’Raghallaigh. One year they taught us the great Tommy Peoples’ slow air, An Feochán. 

The slow air I’ve recorded here is based in part on that air, and for the longest time went with no name. After a visit to Ciarán’s native - and stunning - Achill Island, off the west coast of Mayo, the air took on the name Fonn Mall Acla (“A slow air for Achill”). The place and the tune suit each other.

(One of Achill’s northern Bays, photo by Colin Whittaker). 

Cuan was always intended to be a straightforward album with guitar and vocals, and we decided to include a slow air as a sort of intermission - a little breather halfway along the journey of songs. 

For a few years now, I’ve been arranging and playing the air on piano - an instrument that gives the air a more ethereal wistful sensibility. So by way of a small bonus track, here’s that too.