Feis Ceoil Cup

"The Feis Ceoil has been part of many families’ lives since the late 19th century. My grandaunt, Rhoda Sinclair Coghill, won this silver rose bowl ‘The John A Pigott Memorial Cup’ in 1918, 1919 and 1920 so she got to keep it! It was presented to the winner of the piano solo. Her name lives on in the Feis as the Rhoda Coghill Cup for violin and piano duet. She was born in 1903 in Dublin, the youngest of eight siblings, not long after the Feis competitions had started. She suffered loss at a young age when two of her brothers were killed in the WW1 when she was a young teenager. She attended Trinity College Dublin in the 1920s (MusB degree) where she composed ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking in 1923. This was included as the finale of ‘A Century of Music in Ireland 1916-2016’ that was put on in the National Concert Hall in Dublin in September 2016 by RTE, when a large number of her grand-nieces and nephews met to celebrate her life and work. She arranged music to accompany some of Padraic Colum’s poems, among others. She published two books of poetry in the 1940s and ‘50s, ‘The Bright Hillside’ and ‘Time is a Squirrel’, and was known as a pianist, composer and poet over her long life. She died in 2000 still extremely interested in life and learning and doing the Irish Times’ Crossaire. "