(b Fuhirees, Co. Cork, 30 May 1879; d Macroom, Co. Cork, 2 June 1956). Irish traditional singer. Reared in a bilingual area of rural west Cork with strong oral and literary traditions in Irish and in English, Mrs Cronin, married to a farmer, learnt her large repertory of several hundred songs in both languages from her grandparents and parents, farm servants and travelling beggars. These included dandling songs, lilts and songs of local interest as well as broadside narratives and classic ballads (notably Lord Gregory or The Lass of Aughrim, her version of the Scottish Lass of Roch Royal). She took some part in Gaelic League language-revival music festivals in youth, but confined her singing mainly to farm work, the domestic circle and local social occasions. Discovered in the decade before her death by a series of Irish, English and American collectors (including Seamus Ennis, Brian George, Alan Lomax and Jean Ritchie), she became familiar to international audiences through the highly popular BBC radio series As I Roved Out in the early 1950s, and such commercial recordings as the influential 1960s LP series Folk Songs of Britain.
Folk Songs of Britain, Caedmon TC 1142, 1145, 1162, 1225 (1961)
World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, ii: Ireland, Rounder CD1742 (1998)
D. Ó Cróinín: The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Irish Traditional Singer (Dublin, 2000) [incl. CDs]
NICHOLAS CAROLAN