Arranmore Pipe Band to visit Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, USA

Arranmore Pipe Band (Banna Píob Árainn Mhór) is heading overseas shortly to take part in the ‘Emerald Isle Irish Féile’ on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, USA between September 8-9. 

The Arranmore Pipe Band was founded in the early 1930s. Young people from Arranmore who were working as ‘tattie-hokers’ on large Scottish farms took pipes back home with them and from that time on, there has been a strong piping tradition on the island.

In addition to playing at local events and festivals around Donegal, the band was invited to open the Highland Games in Alva, Scotland. Over the years, the band has opened these games three times. Alva was one of the areas in Scotland where a lot of islanders spent their youth picking potatoes. 

In 2013, the band was invited to play the national anthem in the Aviva Stadium for the international soccer game between Austria and Ireland. This is, however, the first time that the band has been invited to play in America. 

There is a long connection between Arranmore and Beaver Island. During the Great Famine in Ireland, 168 people were cleared from their land in Arranmore and the local landlord paid their passage to Quebec.

Black John O’Donnell, who hailed from Rutland (a short distance from Arranmore) had visited Beaver Island, a place where there was abundant fishing, and sent word to some of his friends from Arranmore. At that time, the state government in Michigan was offering 25 acres of land and $25 to people who would come to the area and cultivate the land within 6 months. 

The first people from Arranmore who got land on the island sent word home that it was a good place for fishing and logging. Money was sent home to pay for the passage of relatives and more and more people from Arranmore came to live on Beaver Island.

By the 1880s there were about 300 people who had been born on Arranmore living on the island. Irish was the main spoken language on the island during this period and, in 1866, Father Peter Gallagher from Tyrone, a priest who was a fluent Irish speaker, was appointed to minister to the island community, an appointment he fulfilled for 32 years. The last native Irish speaker on Beaver Island, Mary (Duffy) Gallagher, died in 1971.   

Quite a few of the current members of the Arranmore Pipe Band have relations who emigrated to Beaver Island in the past and when a large contingent of Beaver Islanders visited Arranmore as part of an official twinning in 2002, the pipe band welcomed their lost cousins when they arrived on the island.  

During the summer, Arranmore Pipe Band lost its pipe major, Alec Browne, a proud Scotsman who had come to live on Arranmore with his family 15 years ago. Alec was instrumental in the planning and organisation of this trip and, despite his untimely death, this historic trip to America will be a chance for the band and the local community to raise their spirits, to celebrate Alec’s life and to strengthen the connections between the two islands. There will be approximately 100 islanders from Arranmore accompanying the band on this trip. 

After their three-night stay on Beaver Island, the band will visit Chicago where they will play alongside the Shannon Rovers Pipe Band in the Irish-American Heritage Centre. A lot of the Arranmore diaspora used to play with the Shannon Rovers in Chicago, and to this day there are pipers and drummers from Arranmore who live in the windy city and play with the band. 

The Arranmore Pipe Band and those travelling with it will depart from Arranmore on Tuesday next, September 5 and return on Thursday, September 14.