(b Jamestown, Co. Dublin, 5 May 1919; d Naul, Co. Dublin, 5 Oct 1982). Irish traditional musician, singer and collector. Having learnt uilleann piping from his civil-servant father and worked in publishing, Ennis became a music collector for the Irish Folklore Commission in 1942. He made important Irish-language collections on paper, aided by his gifts as a performer. In 1947 he transferred to Radió Éireann, Irish state radio, to work with its new mobile recording unit, and in 1951 to the BBC in London where he was a major contributor as a collector and performer to the highly successful radio series As I Roved out, and to the collecting projects of Brian George and Alan Lomax among others. From 1958 he was a freelance performer and broadcaster. Chiefly known as an outstanding uilleann piper with a distinctive personal style, he was also a whistle player and singer, storyteller and translator from Irish. As a piper and as a founder-member in 1968 of Na Píobairí Uilleann (the Society of Uilleann Pipers), he was a major influence on an emerging generation of performers. As a broadcaster on radio and from the 1960s on television, and as a recording artist, he played a leading part in bringing the older music traditions of the countryside to a new postwar urban audience.
The Best of Irish Piping, Tara TARACD 1002/9 (1995)
The Bonny Bunch of Roses, Tradition TCD 1023 (1996)
The Return from Fingal, RTÉ RTECD 119 (1997)
NICHOLAS CAROLAN