Love Is Teasing

Recorded at Kilrush Fleadh Cheoil,County Clare in the Summer of 1967. The singer is a young Dolly Mac Mahon (wife of the late Ciarán Mac Mathúna.) Dolly MacMahon was born in East Galway. At age 18 she married broadcaster Ciarán MacMathúna. They met in 1955 when (working with the Irish Folklore Commission) he visited her father Martin Furhey who had a great store of folklore. She told a journalist in the 1960s that she was interested in ballads and singing “from a very early age, when I was about four or five or six, I think, because our house was always a very open house. There was always a lot of music and dancing, and my mother used to play the melodeon. We had a gramophone and a collection of 78s - all the old jigs and reels. Fellows used to come and play the borán. The borán is a bit like a drum, but more like a tambourine.“ She spent four months in New York in 1958, performing in halls and folk clubs. She also sang regularly on Telifís Eireann.