Welcome Sheila Barfoot

Here is correspondence from Sheila Barfoot, Grandaughter of Billy Barfoot, musician, and lifelong friend of my father, even through the darkest, most evil times. This lovely note from Shiela is included here with her permission. Quotation begins:

Dear Leo

I am sorry I have been so long in replying to you. I have not been reading my emails as I have had a dose of flu for the last 10 days.  Firstly thank you so much for replying and giving me the link to your website.  It has sparked so many memeories and emotions that this reply may not be very coherent. There are so many things I just want to spill out. You are uncannily like your dear Dad and I am delighted to learn that you play the guitar and have a love of music too.

I am 64, a retired civil servant and the second child of Lily Hanna and Billy Barfoot(there are 9 of us 5 girls and 4 boys). My mother was the eldest child of Nellie Ginley and James Hanna and she married my father in 1944.  My father was the eldest son of the William Barfoot who appears in the band photograph on your site. My grandfather William Barfoot who was a Prebyterian had a great love of traditional Irish music and met John, Leo and Tom at the Ard Scoil in Divis Street. He brought my father and his brother Robert( Bertie) to sessions in Quadrant Street and it was there my mother and father met.

As a child I spent a lot of time in my Granny Hanna's in Irwin Street and she would bring us to John and Rosie's where I first heard your Dad play. We grew up in the sure and certain knowledge that he was a genius, according to my Granny and confirmed by my mother and father. He and my father were avid readers and had an encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects and of course there was the chess. I have no clear memory of you although I must have seeen you at some stage but I do remember Susan and Virginia.

 I think Susan did very well in nursing and may have gone to America.

I was interested in Irish music and the language and went to an Irish speaking club, Cumann Cluain Ard in Hawthorne Street( off Cavendish Street) up until the late 60's when "the Troubles" intervened. Your Dad and Tom played there in a band, the Seamus Whyte Ceilidh Band every Sunday night and we used to have great times. Leo would play solos, Meditation, Air on a G String, Czardas and many more to great acclaim.  I am very grateful for the gift he passed on to us, a love of great music which has been a comfort to me all my life. I don't play an instrument myself but it's great that you have the gift as well and as far as I know Tom's daughter also plays the flute so the great Ginley tradition goes on.

I suppose it is a sign of ageing but I realised recently that I didn't know all that much about my parents' families which is why I was looking on the net for information about the Ginleys and luckily met you. I am not as proficient on the computer as you but I will get my nephew to show me how to scan photographs and will send any I think may be of interest. 

I hope this ramble doesn't put you off keeping in touch! 

Best wishes to you and your lovely family from a proud distant relation.

Sheila 

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