The old ballads of ‘Cinty’ Loftus

William ‘Cinty’ Loftus was born in Graffy around 1881. He was a farmer and labourer who worked for Jack McGloin of Greyfort in Currower. He would often boast that Jack McGloin had “blue blood in his veins”. In their leisure time, they would go out into the hills around Graffy and Carradoogan hunting for game.

William was a ballad composer who would observe people, places and events and compose songs about them. The people could be Anthony Flannelly, Johnny Mulherin or Sandy Durcan and the places were Graffy, Ellaghmore, Ballymore and Lissardmore to mention but a few. These were all areas around the parishes of Attymass and Bonniconlon. The events could be the opening of a drain, the striping of a farm, the building of a road or a row in the local hall.

There were other people in the locality who liked to compose songs and they would come to ask assistance from William if they were experiencing difficulty and he would add in the lines they were looking for. On one occasion, Harry Slack from Carradoogan was looking for lines to finish a lament that he was writing for Thomas Naughton, a neighbour who had died. His nickname was ‘Tarpey Tom’. ‘Cinty’ thought for a moment and he said:

Tarpey Tom is dead and gone, 

May his soul rest in peace, 

The night he died the Banshee cried 

on every fort and field.

‘Cinty’ wrote a song about the fight at Goodwin’s Hall in Ellaghbeg on St Patrick’s Night and he commenced the composition with the lines:

Come all ye loyal Irish men of the noble Irish race 

I tell ye that St Patrick’s night has brought us great disgrace, 

For surely it would cause St Patrick shame 

To think that sons of Irish men would scandalise his name.

He also composed a ballad about the building of a road from Ginley’s Cross to the townland of Ellemountain. It began as follows:

It was at the crossroads of Ellaghmore where the wanderers often meet.

The Congested Board was building a road at thirty bob a week.

It was built by brave John Hegarty in 1921 

til the only one to condemn it was Jamsey Slobber Ceann.

Then he goes on to describe the various people who were involved and he laments the fact that because he is a Graffy man he will not get a job on the building of the road.

Here comes Cinty Loftus with the hair growing through his hat 

Begob we’ll have no Graffy man, we’ll have no more of that.

He challenged local merchant and councillor Martin Bernard Durcan, or ‘Sandy’ Durcan, when he bought the farm at Lissardmore in the early 1940s.

The song praises the land of the Lissardmore farm and he writes that the plains of Moyne nor the bogs of Allen cannot compare with sweet Lissardmore. He also praises Graffy in another song of that title by writing:

Of all the spots Saint Patrick blessed 

There is none so dear to me 

As beneath the blue Ox Mountains 

In the village of Graffy.

In another song, he writes:

The frost and snow is gone my boys and the days are getting long, 

The swans out on Lough Brohly’s lake. they have composed my song, 

Both night and day you pass that way you’ll always hear them sing, 

More water in Lough Brohly’s shore and long life to Martin Quinn.

Johnny Mulherin had a shop and guest house in Attymass, as well as a travelling shop. Cinty composed a ballad called Johnny Mulherin’s van where he wrote:

You can hear the ding going down the glen of Johnny Mulherin’s van.

He also wrote a ballad about the ghost of Ballymore Lake and many other ballads. Unfortunately, many of them were lost with the passing of his daughters Mary and Bridget over 20 years ago.