The unexpected death of Con (Neilus) Herbert prompted an outpouring of grief in Cork, Limerick, and beyond, at the loss of the man who was described as an exceptional accordion and concertina player, and an inspirational teacher.<\/p>\n
The West Limerick native, a founder member of two branches of Comhaltas Ceolt\u00f3ir\u00ed \u00c9ireann, and a founder of Craobh Chr\u00f3n\u00e1in Comhaltas in Freemount in North Cork, where he taught at its national school from 1979, retiring as principal in 2011.<\/p>\n
Mr Herbert had also won a Limerick senior county hurling medal in 1980 with Killeedy.<\/p>\n
Margaret Kiely, Cork Comhaltas cathaoirleach and Craobh Chr\u00f3n\u00e1in leas-chathaoirleach, said Mr Herbert laid the foundations for nurturing traditional music in Freemount\u2019s classrooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe ensured that every child in the school learned an instrument,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe school took part in Sc\u00f3r, Sl\u00f3gadh, and Read\u00f3ir\u00ed; everything at first was school-based.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis led directly to the founding of CC\u00c9 Craobh Chr\u00f3n\u00e1in over 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tim Collins of the Kilfenora C\u00e9il\u00ed Band, described Mr Herbert as his \u201cmentor\u201d, adding: \u201cHe had that rare gift of making music feel alive. He didn\u2019t simply teach notes and tunes; he passed on tradition, history, values, and a deep love for our culture.<\/p>\n
\n Con devoted his life to promoting Irish culture, traditional music, the Irish language, and Gaelic games. He understood that these were not separate pursuits, but strands of the same rich tapestry that gives meaning to community and identity.\n <\/p>\n
Though honoured with awards, \u201chis work was never about recognition or applause\u201d, said Mr Collins. \u201cIt was about ensuring that what he loved would continue to flourish long after he was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hundreds paid musical tribute to Mr Herbert at Ashford\u2019s Tigh Cheoil before his funeral at St Ita\u2019s Church, where, among those performing, was ex-pupil Elle Marie O\u2019Dwyer, singing Mr Herbert\u2019s own composition, Where the Allow Waters Flow.<\/p>\n
Mr Herbert is survived by nieces, nephews, grand- and great-grandnieces and nephews, and a vast family in music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unexpected death of Con (Neilus) Herbert prompted an outpouring of grief in Cork, Limerick, and beyond, at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[79,93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-572747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cork-news","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}