RIP eithne vallely, 1945-2026

I can’t begin to say how saddened I was to hear of the tragic loss of Eithne Vallely.  I hardly knew her but, like many, I felt deeply touched by all she did, and found her sudden death very upsetting. 
 

I thought I would share these beautiful words from Brian Finnegan, a poem from his sister, and a tune that he wrote for Eithne, may she rest in peace surrounded by choirs of angels. 

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Brian Finnegan posted the following tribute on 23 August 2026: 
 
Eithne!
 
I was 8 years old when the story of my young life would cross paths with the story of yours; somehow, miraculously I found my way to that first Armagh Athletic Club training session with Brian and then through the door of the Armagh Pipers Club. 
 
I saw behind your sternness, your no-nonsense discipline in a class of young snotty nosed whistlers, and soon enough you saw me. You'd asked for one tune to be practiced, I arrived the following week with a few extra, just because I was curious, just because the ember had started to glow. I saw the softening in your eyes as you saw me, not a word said but that singular moment of recognition was the moment, and how often were you witness to the very same moment in countless young lives. 
 
Thereafter the lines between where my family stopped and your family began were blurred, so interwoven at times it seemed; the cross countries, and Fleadhs, the track and field meets and Féilte, the mountain races and CBS Slogadh competitions, there I was in the rear view mirror!! 
 
During the darkest days of the Troubles when there were those who told you both that culture was a waste of time, you doubled down and opened the doors of the Pipers Club and your hearts even wider. 
 
In all my life, I've never known your equal, never been more inspired to swim against the flow; 'be yourself' you said, 'anything less is a false salvation.'
 
You also once told me what a privilege it was as a teacher to have a generation of talent through the club like the one I was part of, that it happened perhaps once in a teacher’s life if they were fortunate enough. The truth was Eithne, the generational talent kept on coming and eyes all over the musical world looked towards Armagh. Brilliant young players, former students returning to teach, inspired to teach with a love of teaching handed down by you. 

Too many stories, but perhaps one of the most beautiful moments I've ever been witness to in music, and to this day fills my heart with pride was in the summer of 2013 at Celti'Cîmes Festival in the French Alps village of Albiez-Montrond. On the Saturday night of the Fest, there was a thunderous session in full swing in one the pubs with the brilliant young Armagh Pipers Club protégés Cúig in full flight. Yourself and Brian arrived and as the crowd parted to give you space and offer stools, Cúig, without fanfare shifted down through the gears with such subtlety and grace and landed on Cooley's reel as way of inviting you both to join in. It was such a moving display of respect and a triumph of the spirit from this brilliant young maverick band that it took my breath away. 
 
Your loss is incomprehensible to me Eithne, my heart is broken, but you live on in all my tunes, in the decency of your children and their beautiful families and in your immeasurable influence on all our lives. 
 
My love and blessings to Brian, Niall, Cillian, Caoimhin, Lorcan and Maire and all the Vallely clan. 
 
Suaimhneas síoraí duit, a Eithne 
   (rest in peace, Eithne)

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The Tune (for Brian and Eithne), written by Morna Finnegan, Brian's sister: 

When you intercept a child’s 
life with a tune, 
you don’t know 
what that tune will do. 
Inside the child’s body, 
in her ribcage, 
in her larynx, 
in her long, string legs. 
What confrontation occurs 
between the child’s 
private terrors and 
the invisible tremor of 
mercury under her brow 
the tune is now? 
 
Years later, it still yields 
windfalls of notes 
like apples, 
bringing sense and meaning 
where sense and meaning 
happen to fail. 
A tune is a subversive. 
The angel-puff of resin on a bow, 
the backward scrape of a wrist, 
the coil of umber flung 
from the chewed fingertips 
of the child who isn’t even, 
necessarily, the most gifted,
the most dextrous, 
but who, for reasons 
best known to the tune, has swallowed 
the tune.
 
To teach a child to listen
is to teach a child to sing.
To pull chords from the air like ribbon 
and braid them into a child’s hair
and heal them to her wing-
stumps, is to honour 
the dark thumps 
of the child’s obscure 
ache, curling slowly to a flake 
of fiddle scroll –
how can you know
what haunted roads
that child will walk down later
kept safe, not by the tune
necessarily, but by having 
known and loved and swallowed 
the tune.
 
When you gather 
the crusty-nosed cubs 
from their sunken estates, 
or from the raw 
countryside of an occupied land, 
and teach them to speak 
their indigenous, musical tongue
(which is propulsive in its hum 
at the back of the neck, 
base of the spine) 
you equip them to face 
the fists of the world better 
than if you’d passed them a gun: 
nothing but the sublime 
intuition for rhythm. 
They’ll learn to lob it from the catapults of their mind at every ogre. 
Which is what saved us 
once upon a time, 
and will save us again. 
Ah, tunes of earth, 
with your peaty, 
seed-meal lines, 
your subversive and redemptive beat: 
sustain us. Find our children. 
Tap their feet. 

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​You may wish to read this entry about Eithne on a Donegal Fiddle website, click here

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A jig for Eithne, by Brian Finnegan