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From when he first met him, Séamus Ennis was very taken with Dudley Cloherty, his music, his lilting and his personality. In his diary on 1.7.43 he described Dudley as ‘an old man, a little over 70 years of age’ with ‘a very sweet voice’. According to Ennis, Dudley liked to make people laugh… ‘you would die laughing at his antics’ which included using a walking stick to imitate the fiddle and whistle with his most comical trick being the way he raised his left foot over his right knee in imitation of piping. This slip jig transcribed from Dudley is a variant of the slip jig ‘The Silvermore’ in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (No. 1141) and is closely related to ‘The Humours of Whiskey’ in Ceol Rince na hÉireann 1 (No. 66).
