Restringing
‘The Stone Fiddle’
Releasing a new edition of Paddy Tunney’s (The Man of Songs) memoir: The Stone Fiddle: My Way to Traditional Song
Restringing The Stone Fiddle
In 2024, the Tunney Song Tradition Trust brought Paddy Tunney’s landmark memoir, The Stone Fiddle: My Way to Traditional Song, back into the world for a new generation of singers, readers, storytellers and lovers of Irish traditional culture.
First published in 1979, The Stone Fiddle is much more than a songbook. It is a vivid evocation of Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century, rooted especially in the Donegal–Fermanagh hill country above Lough Erne. Through song, story, memory and folklore, Paddy Tunney opens a window onto a world shaped by family, community, politics, superstition, humour, hardship and beauty.
A Living Song Tradition
Born into one of Ireland’s great singing families, Paddy Tunney inherited a repertoire that stretched back through generations, into the years before the Great Famine. His songs carried the voices of family, neighbours, travelling people, local characters and tradition bearers whose lives were woven into the cultural fabric of the border country.
In The Stone Fiddle, Paddy gathered more than 60 songs and gave each of them a story. His voice on the page is unmistakable: direct, lyrical, funny, tender and full of life. Reading the book, one has the sense of sitting beside him at the hearth as he brings people, places and songs vividly into being.
The New Edition
The new edition, published by the Tunney Song Tradition Trust, preserves Paddy’s original text while enriching the reader’s experience with photographs, maps, a full index, the original foreword by Benedict Kiely and a new introduction by Paddy’s son, Dr John Tunney.
It allows today’s singers to return to the oral sources of songs such as ‘As I Roved Out’, ‘The Mountain Streams Where the Moorcocks Crow’, ‘The Rollicking Boys Around Tandragee’, and other gems from the Tunney family repertoire, including songs that have never been recorded.
"My father had always intended for this book to reach as many people as possible – for his songs to be sung, his stories to be told. Because that is at the very heart of our traditional culture in Ireland, the sharing of music, song and story and the way we pass these on from generation to generation. This is who we are, this is our beating heart."John Tunney
The Launch Tour
To celebrate the relaunch, the Trust created Restringing the Stone Fiddle, a series of performative launch events that carried the book across Ireland. These gatherings combined readings from the memoir with live singing, storytelling and shared memory, transforming the publication of the book into a living act of tradition.
The tour visited An Góilín in Dublin, Charlie Byrne’s in Galway, Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy in Miltown Malbay, Ceol na Coille in Letterkenny, Belfast TradFest, the Ulster Fleadh in Dromore, Co. Tyrone, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann at the Opera House in Wexford, and Fleadh Nua in Ennis.
Voices Across Ireland
Across these events, two generations of the Tunney family appeared alongside singers and guests from across Ireland. The performances celebrated not only Paddy Tunney’s book, but the wider community of singers who continue to carry Irish traditional song forward.
Guest singers included Mairead Mooney, Rita Gallagher, Lillis Ó Laoire, Brian Mullen, Shauna Mullen, Gerry O’Reilly, Fergus Russell, Máire Ní Chróinín, Gabriel McArdle, Cathal Lynch, Kate Ford, Róise Ní Mhurchú, Niamh Parsons, Aileen Lambert, Seamus Brogan, Edel Vaughan, Seán Lyons and Eva Carroll.
More Than a Book Launch
At its heart, Restringing the Stone Fiddle was not simply a book launch. It was an act of renewal. It honoured Paddy Tunney’s life and legacy while returning his songs and stories to the places where tradition lives best: in the voice, in the room, in the company of others, and in the passing on of culture from one generation to the next.
The project gave new life to a classic work of Irish traditional song and helped ensure that Paddy’s stories, songs and memories continue to travel, be sung, and be shared.
“The publication of The Stone Fiddle coincided with my discovery of the world of traditional singing; and learning songs from this book, and from the Tunney repertoire, has been a lifetime obsession ever since.”
[Rita Gallagher, TG4 Singer of the Year 2017]
“In this book of more than 60 songs, music and verse, and rich warm, joyous bubbling lore, Paddy transports us to another world, ‘a world beyond’. The very essence of folksong and music springs from every line.”
[Tomás Mac Ruairí, Irish language and culture activist]
“The Stone Fiddle is a rare book about rural Ireland and growing up in a country house where there was song and music and dances. The blend of folklore and folksong, of times remembered in the Thirties, of the people and how they lived will be treasured and welcomed even more than those who liked my own 19 Acres and it belongs on the same shelf.”
[John Healey, Author and Journalist]
“Paddy, I have been a great admirer of yours for many years, having listened to you singing on records…I really enjoyed The Stone Fiddle, and, as you know, included a tale from it in my own collection of Irish Folktales … on behalf of all lovers of Irish tradition and Irish beauty, thanks for everything.’
[Prof. Henry Glassie, Folklorist and Ethnomusicologist]
Purchase the new edition of The Stone Fiddle