Thanks for reminding me.

I have updated the spreadsheet with the 2026 spring tour and I added Eiméar to the performers list.

I started working on a massive overhaul to align data from different sources, but need to put that revision on hold for the forseable future while I tend to other things.

Thank you so much!! Good luck on the overhaul!

https://youtu.be/7VF31dv1wdc

𝗡𝗘𝗪: The Mask and Mirror Definitive Edition 🎭🪞 (available October 9)

𝐶𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 1994 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑎𝑙𝑏𝑢𝑚, 𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑢𝑥𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑-𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝐶𝐷𝑠, 𝑎 𝐷𝑉𝐷 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑜 𝐵𝑙𝑢-𝑟𝑎𝑦 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐, 𝑎 32-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑙𝑒𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑛𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 — 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ𝑠, 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠, 𝑎 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑟-𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝐿𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓, 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑖𝑟𝑐𝑢𝑚𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑒ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘.

I’ve heard about this!!! I’m so excited!!!! 😁 My birthday’s only a few days afterwards, so hopefully I can get this 🙏

I will read thru your post shortly. It's neat how you put Foggy Dew at the top of your list. As you probably know, here are some of the lyrics to Galway Shawl (PFI).

I played "The Blackbird" and "The Stack of Barley",
"Rodney's Glory" and "The Foggy Dew",

Also, Lynn sings a very soothing version of Raglan Road on "Celtic Heart" from Tim Janus (PBS special).

I'm not recommending this song, but I am curious if CW could pull it off. I heard CT cover it, and they did a good job.
- Gaudete : "Gaudete" is a sacred 16th-century Christmas carol that means "rejoice" in Latin.

That’s a good observation! However, I think the “Foggy Dew” mentioned is the traditional reel instead of the poem, which was set to the same air as the Moorlough Shore. There’s some other cases of songs sharing names with tunes (in Irish music, a tune is an instrumental and a song has lyrics), such as The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which is both a reel and a poem set to music. (On that note, that would also be a great song for CW to cover, especially sung by Muirgen, although I’m unsure if CW would cover a song with those darker themes. That was something I had to keep in mind when making this list.)

Gaudete could be interesting…two other Christmas songs that I think would be good for them to cover are Noël Nouvolet (may be misspelled) and Good King Wenceslas. And while it may be a bit too soon to cover a Mairéad Carlin solo, it could also be fun to see a version of Emmanuel in its original Latin.

There hasn’t been a thread such as this in a long time, and, with theories of a new album amok, this might be a fun thread to create.

I’m definitely more of a fan of Celtic Woman’s folk side, so that’s what most of my ideas for their songs are. But everyone on this forum has different musical experiences, which is part of why these sorts of threads are so much fun! Since we don’t know much about how Eiméar will fit in, I’m mostly not going to specify who would be covering what song, unless it’s an instrumental or the song is just too perfect for someone (usually Muirgen, as she’s my favourite member).

Anyway, here’s some of my favourites for them to cover:

-The Foggy Dew (Irish rebel song)
-Aililiú na Gamhna (Irish-language traditional song; you may recognise it from Órla’s The Water Is Wide. No matter who’s singing, Kate absolutely must be playing harp on this number.)
-On Raglan Road (Irish poem most commonly set to the traditional air “The Dawning of the Day”, which CW covered on Postcards, as I’m sure most, if not all, of you know. I think this would work best as a solo with Kate on violin.)
-The Rocky Road To Dublin (Irish traditional, could work as a song or a fiddle instrumental for Kate)
-So Early In The Spring (English traditional, my favourite version is a capella, which might work best for Caitríona as she’s trained in an a capella tradition. But CW could make many things work.)
-Citi na gCumann (traditional Irish instrumental, you might also recognise this from Órla’s Lore. Could work on harp or fiddle.)
-Brian Boru’s March (Irish traditional tune. Best played on harp—speaking from experience!)
-My Johnny Was A Shoemaker (English traditional if I recall correctly.)
-Past the Point of Rescue (this is probably best known as covered by the American country singer Hal Ketchum, but it was originally performed by the Irish treasure Mary Black and written by Irishman Mick Hanly)
-Na Buachaillí Álainn (Irish-language traditional. Also performed by Órla on The Water Is Wide)
-Wexford Lullaby (this song was actually written by classical guitar legend John Renbourn, but set to the music of The Wexford Carol, which is probably pretty recognisable to most of ye. It’s actually been covered by a lot of artists, so I don’t see it as too odd for them to cover it.)
-I Will Find You (Clannad. I think CW covering this could be a good tribute to Moya Brennan, whose success is probably in part why later groups like Celtic Woman have been as successful as they were. I was honestly kind of disappointed that all CW did was just post an Instagram story honouring her, especially when they put out a whole article honouring Paddy Moloney—another incremental figure in popularising Irish music—when he died. I think this would do well as a Muirgen solo, as her emotive voice suits the song, but it could also work well performed by all members. Also, fun fact: the performance of the song live from Christ Church Cathedral features Rebecca Winckworth, as she was with ANÚNA at the time.)
-A Maid In Bedlam (traditional English. Méav covered this on Silver Sea.)
-Chì Mì Na Mòrbheanna (Scottish-language traditional, as an instrumental, usually best known in English as The Mist Covered Mountains of Home.)
-Cumha Eoghain Rua Uí Neill (Turlough O’Carolan, the famous blind harpist who wrote many of the most beloved Irish harp pieces. I recently went to a harp camp and he was constantly mentioned, even to those not as familiar with Irish folk music.)
-Cucanandy (Slip jig. Could work for either harp or fiddle.)
-The Swallowtail (another slip jig, this one sounds heavenly on a fiddle. This is a personal favourite of mine that I think deserves more recognition.)


Anyway, these were some of my favourites. I also loved many of the new songs we got from the New Era tour—especially Muirgen’s Róisín Dubh!—and hope we can see those in the future. Jolene would also be a very timely song for them to cover. RIP Dolly Parton! 🥀🕊️💖

What are some songs ye think CW should cover?

I'm really sorry Megan left CW.  I thought she had an opportunity to be the next "face" of CW.

She kind of was for PFI, at least from what I can see in retrospect. Sometimes, especially in the four-member lineups, with the singers, there’s sort of three roles each member takes on (the legacy, or the member who’s been there the longest and is now taking a bit of a backseat, also usually the oldest; the face of the group, or the one who gets the most attention, stands out most, usually in between the other members in how new she’s joined; and the newbie, or, as the name suggests, the newest—and often youngest—member, may be a bit shy, and generally still trying to get her foothold within the group). Megan got more solos than any other vocalists and was overall featured pretty heavily throughout the album. Maybe Chloë appeared more in the promotional material because she’s arguably the most popular member, even after 21 years, and having an original member rejoin would be good for marketing.

I think Muirgen might be the “it girl” now, but since we haven’t got an album, it’s hard to tell. If we did at this stage, it might be like Destiny where the other two singers are newbies and then there’s one who’s the most prominent. Muirgen and Susan are actually in fairly similar positions, where after a relatively short amount of time, they’ve been catapulted from being the newest member to now being the face of the group and one of the longest-serving ones.

It's official. CW announced Mairéad has left the group.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HaAauPMh6/

Well, that’s tragic. But the new member does seem cool. We’ll have to edit the Wikipedia page and create a board on here for her. This is the third member from Northern Ireland.

Eiméar seems to have a very traditional background, and with Muirgen and Caitríona also singing very traditional material as their CW repertoire, I wonder if this could mark a musical shift away from their more classical-crossover-esque sound.

I’ll try to find some clips of Eiméar. I’m very sad that Mairéad is gone, but I do get a good feeling from Eiméar. Maybe it’s just that she kind of looks like Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh to me, and that’s one of my favourite musicians.

This does make me wonder if this was a decision on Mairéad’s part or management forced her out, but that’s a different topic for a different day….

Edit: here’s (https://youtu.be/b6EN-cGCP_YiQkoUPAvmxyj9kpN) a clip of her singing. While her voice isn’t as high as Mairéad’s, she seems quite fit to take the high soprano role.

I also find it important to note that in the site announcement of Eiméar’s membership, they said

We hope to welcome her back to the Celtic Woman family again soon.

So I do wonder if this is supposed to be temporary. But you’d think they’d find an old member if this spot was just temporary. But this is also an odd thing to say if she’s leaving permanently. Does anyone have any insight?

Edit 2: I updated their Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Woman#History). This makes this the first lineup where none of them have their own Wikipedia pages. However, I do think that Kate and Muirgen (possibly Eiméar, too) are worthy candidates to get their own pages. (I’m unsure if Caitríona would qualify under the notability criteria). Could someone please help in getting those set up? But that’s for another thread. There’s a lot of updates that need to be made on the womens’ Wikipedia pages.

Good lord, I’m updating this response like The Guardian’s “breaking news” threads 😭.

Mairead hasn’t announced her departure yet. Maybe she’ll be on this tour then she’ll say this will be her last.

Megan did the same. She knew ahead of the CCFI tour that she’d be departing, but waited until the tour was done

Or she could stay…🥺👉👈…obviously, having a kid would complicate things, but she wouldn’t be the first to do so.

Went into the comments section of this one video and someone’s claiming Tara’s coming back for the Silver Bells Tour? Is there any evidence at all for this? It seems like an odd thing to lie about, but I’ve seen far worse in comment sections…including on other CW videos!

Also, let me know if I need to add an image description for this.