Murphy's Lore is a Bournemouth/Dorset based celtic band, performing mostly traditional Irish music, for ceilidhs or barn dances and general good craic! Perfect in many ways for weddings, parties, an anniversary or any excuse to have a Hooley! Welcome to our website, have a look around and get a feel for what we do!

We perform a good selection of traditional and contemporary Irish music - tunes to dance to and songs to sing along with. If you don't know the dances, our caller will teach you. If you don't know the songs, just tap your feet and clap your hands!

We also perform a range of Scottish tunes and songs to compliment our Celtic feel, some English tunes and songs also, as well as some of Richard's own compositions which reflect his musical influences from across Europe. This allows us to cater for specific requests such as a Scottish 'flavoured' Ceilidhs, although for most Barn Dance/ Ceilidhs we would keep it mixed (dances as well) to allow dancers of all experience levels to enjoy themselves. Our aim is to 'entertain, not educate', it should be fun after all! To hear us, use the player to the right on this and other pages. Most clips are live, so what you hear is what you get!

At the beginning of 2008, to use a musical analogy, we fitted 'new strings', retuned and returned with a fresh new sound. This line up works very well, and is now firmly established. 2010 surpassed all our expectations and 2011 was a great year too. Forward bookings have also been going very well for 2012! For a quick check on our availability, click on the dates link at the top of the page for a list of our current bookings.

We will cover Dorset, Hampshire and South Wiltshire in general but you are welcome to try us if further afield.

News and upcoming events

Our first gig of 2012 was a pub gig at The Dean Park Inn opening their Beer and Cider festival. There was a good crowd and we found them in good voice as well as a drinking mood, sipping the many beers and ciders on offer. A good tipple was the 'Jack Frost' Beer and 'Fanny Bramble' Cider.
Andy Stone was depping with us, as our Fiddle player was absent. Andy is a gifted guitar player and also provided us with another singer perfect for a pub gig! We performed a good mix of songs we like to perform, tunes and songs the crowd want to join in with. These included 'Rare Auld Times', 'Skewball', 'Rout of the Blues' and audience friendly 'Fields of Athenry','Wild Rover', 'Irish Rover' and Whisky in the Jar' amongst the 3 sets. The tune sets did manage to get a few people dancing in the little space there was, particularly the Polkas.
A thoroughly enjoyable evening and a good way to end a week at work! Hopefully we'll be asked back to do it all again sometime?

Video clip from our 'Help for Heroes' Ceilidh in Netherhampton.

Ceol agus craic!