About

Fergus Russell, an engineer and teacher by profession, was born in Dublin in 1950 and learned to sing at his mother's knee. He is father to three grownup children and very recently became a granddad. He was keenly interested in rock, and folk singing in his teens and twenties, but became more interested in traditional and sean nós in his thirties and forties.

He met Frank Harte when singing at An Góilín and Frank encouraged him to collect songs. When he finds a song that interests him, Fergus will try to track down the original air, but if that proves futile he will write a new air to suit the song. Some of the songs he has revived have proved popular and are now beginning to be reabsorbed back into the tradition.

                Fergus singing a short excerpt from The Mountain Pheonix, December 2010

Stage One | Research and Performance of Existing Song

The Mountain Pheonix

I came across some of the lyrics of this song at the Bodleian Library's online collection of ballads and broadsheets. The lyrics seemed confused and to lack sense until I realised that one of the women mentioned in the song ‘Sweet Lizzie Easy’, was an error. The name was not a reference to a woman but referred to a place; the village of Lissycasey in Co. Clare. The exact date of the composition is unknown but lies somewhere between 1840 and 1860. The air is a variant of the jig known as ‘The Ship in Full Sail’. 

                 Fergus singing The Dunghill Boy, May 2011