Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Mrs Crotty was born Lizzie Markham in 1885. She was born in a small townland called Gower, in Cooraclare, in the beautiful county of Clare.
She was a musical child in a musical family. Her sister Maggie also played concertina and her mother played the fiddle. Lizzie was largely self taught.
Lizzie and Maggie played at various house dances, christenings, wakes and so called ‘American Wakes’. (A ‘wake’ held for a person who was emigrating to the US. The dramatic nature of the gathering was based on the belief that that person would never return to Ireland and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.)
At that time, house dances and the like were restricted to single or married men and single women. Married women were expected to keep house and refrain from these get togethers. Elizabeth, as a single woman until her late 20s, enjoyed a substantial taste of freedom attending social gatherings and dances as she pleased.
It was probably this freedom coupled with her late marriage (for the time) that informed her somewhat more liberated views on life. At 29 years of age, she married returned emigrant from the US, Miko Crotty (pronounced ‘Crutty’ locally). Her husband’s new world views no doubt enhanced her own particularly progressive views on a woman’s place in traditional Irish music.
Mrs. Crotty passed away on 27th December 1960.
Here she plays two of her favourite reels:
"The Wind That Shakes The Barley" and "The Reel With The Beryl"
Mrs Crotty was born Lizzie Markham in 1885. She was born in a small townland called Gower, in Cooraclare, in the beautiful county of Clare.
She was a musical child in a musical family. Her sister Maggie also played concertina and her mother played the fiddle. Lizzie was largely self taught.
Lizzie and Maggie played at various house dances, christenings, wakes and so called ‘American Wakes’. (A ‘wake’ held for a person who was emigrating to the US. The dramatic nature of the gathering was based on the belief that that person would never return to Ireland and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.)
At that time, house dances and the like were restricted to single or married men and single women. Married women were expected to keep house and refrain from these get togethers. Elizabeth, as a single woman until her late 20s, enjoyed a substantial taste of freedom attending social gatherings and dances as she pleased.
It was probably this freedom coupled with her late marriage (for the time) that informed her somewhat more liberated views on life. At 29 years of age, she married returned emigrant from the US, Miko Crotty (pronounced ‘Crutty’ locally). Her husband’s new world views no doubt enhanced her own particularly progressive views on a woman’s place in traditional Irish music.
Mrs. Crotty passed away on 27th December 1960.
Here she plays two of her favourite reels:
"The Wind That Shakes The Barley" and "The Reel With The Beryl"
