Familiar with the name “Francis O'Neill”? The current wave of interest in Celtic music owes him a great debt – he's the person collected and published the music for thousands of Celtic tunes, making available to musicians all the world. O'Neill was born in 1848 in Ireland. When he was 16, he to the United States. his life, he was a rancher, a teacher, a Chicago policeman, and fathered ten children. He also the flute!

O'Neill (also known as “Chief O'Neill”) loved Celtic music. At that time, the music passed downtune at a time from one musician to  .

O'Neill did not read music – he played ear – but he became convinced the value of saving Celtic tunes for prosperity by transcribing them into musical notation for generations. With the help of a fiddling sergeant in the Chicago police department who did read music, he managed to do so. He would play the tunes had learned other musicians; the sergeant would transcribe them into musical notation.

By the time O'Neill died in 1936, he collected and transcribed nearly 3,500 tunes – of them dating back hundreds and hundreds of years!

article written by Joey Robichaux

About the author:
Joey Robichaux rides the Road Warrior circuit and has been playing some musical instrument for the past way-too-many years! He maintains the Free Sheet Music Downloads website offering thousands of free sheet music downloads at www.freesheetmusic.net