Poignant days for our local pipers

FOR THE FIRST time in 61 years, there is no trip for Millstreet Pipe Band to the International Rose of Tralee Festival.

The popular pageant, which had been scheduled for the coming days, is cancelled, the correct decision given unprecedented times where health and safety remains the most important consideration.

The great Millstreet bastions of piped music have maintained a long-standing engagement in Tralee since its founding in 1959.

Millstreet’s association began when a new festival concept replaced a carnival and the selection of a queen.

The first Festival in 1959 was built around the famous song, ‘ The Rose of Tralee’ with Roses representing Tralee, London, Dublin, Birmingham and New York participating.

Millstreet Pipe Band were invited to perform at the inaugural Festival, and hackney cars transported the band members to a new beginning and a phenomenal link with the Tralee

Festival.

During the early years, a cavalcade of entrants was met at the county bounds at Fealebridge, where the visitors were ceremoniously handed their passport to the ‘Kingdom of Kerry’. The Millstreet Pipers led the cavalcade through Castleisland and onto the streets of Tralee. Down the through the years of both recession and boom, Tralee carved a distinctive place for itself on welcoming thousands into the town. The Millstreet Band was part and parcel of the Mardi Gras atmosphere that unfolded in the Kerry capital each August.

And for many years, in the height of the Tralee Rose Festival, it was home only to re-convene and deliver a recital at the Michael Collins Commemoration in Béal Na mBláth. Again, the 2020 staging was cancelled.

Better news for Millstreet Pipe Band, thanks to IRD Duhallow CLG, will see the band receive €25,000 in funding to defray costs for new uniforms and equipment.