• Accessibility

    Font sizing
    Contrast
    Monochrome

    Sign up to ITMA Archive

    Signing up to the ITMA archive provides the ability to save content you find across the site and access directly from your own dashboard.

    Register now

    Login

    Donate

    The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.

    €10

    Help ensure that the well of Irish music, song and dance is preserved for present and future generations.

    €20

    Donations of any level help ITMA digitise, preserve and offer free universal access to valuable materials that would otherwise be lost.

    €100

    The support of donors ensures ITMA can deliver an increasingly better service. Without private support, the transformative year we experienced in 2023 would not have been possible.

    €200

    Make your donation go further: a donation of €250 or more in any tax year is worth an additional 44.93% to ITMA. So for €50 more, ITMA can claim an additional €112.33 tax back from revenue.

    €250

    Irish-based donors can see their donations augmented by the State through the CHY3 form, which makes any donation above €250 worth €362.33 towards ITMA’s archival work, at no additional cost to you.

    €500

    ITMA is eligible for 501(c)3 donations, so for potential donors based in the USA, donating to ITMA can be a tax efficient way of making more and more archival material accessible to remote users.
    Brenda Castles
    Home > Saothar

    Compositions by Brenda Castles

    Saothar Composer February 2024

    Brenda Castles is a concertina player from County Meath and the compositions she choose for Saothar are from her suite ‘The Plight of the Bumble Bee’.  These tunes were written to highlight the diminishing bee population in Ireland and are the soundtrack to a film that documents the importance of the honeybee to our ecosystem, and examines their role in Irish folklore, religion and Brehon law.

    Plight of the Bumble Bee Logo

    For more information see Beewise.ie 

    Compositions

    1. Planxty Gorman [comp. Brenda Castles]
    2. Telling the bees [comp. Brenda Castles], jig
    3. The piping queen [comp. Brenda Castles], hornpipe
    4. The waggle dance [comp. Brenda Castles], polka
    5. The bee wise reel [comp. Brenda Castles]
    6. St Gobnait’s well [comp. Brenda Castles], reel

    Photograph by Joey Gavin, May 2023

    • 6 Tracks
    • • Now Playing:

    Planxty Gorman [comp. Brenda Castles] / Brenda Castles, concertina

    0:00
    0:00

    • Planxty Gorman [comp. Brenda Castles] / Brenda Castles, concertina

    • Telling the bees [comp. Brenda Castles], jig / Brenda Castles, concertina

    • The piping queen [comp. Brenda Castles], hornpipe / Brenda Castles, concertina

    • The waggle dance [comp. Brenda Castles], polka / Brenda Castles, concertina

    • The bee wise reel [comp. Brenda Castles] / Brenda Castles, concertina

    • St Gobnait's well [comp. Brenda Castles], reel / Brenda Castles, concertina

    1 Text • Currently viewing:

    Brenda Castles' Compositions

    1. Planxty Gorman [comp. Brenda Castles]
    2. Telling the bees [comp. Brenda Castles], jig
    3. The piping queen [comp. Brenda Castles], hornpipe
    4. The waggle dance [comp. Brenda Castles], polka
    5. The bee wise reel [comp. Brenda Castles]
    6. St Gobnait’s well [comp. Brenda Castles], reel

    In this Collection