Sean Dempsey- The Piper of Airton Lodge who played for Hitler

 

THE PIPER OF AIRTON LODGE WHO PLAYED FOR HITLER

Sean Dempsey, one time resident of Airton Lodge, Greenhills, Tallaght, grew up literally a stone’s throw from Tallaght Aerodrome.  An ex-pupil of Tallaght National School, he was in the 1930s, one of the only licenced civilian pilots in Tallaght. With qualifications in engineering, he went on to become a flight engineer and in later years the first maintenance manager in Shannon.

He was also generally, and more famously, considered to be one the finest Uilleann Pipers the country had ever seen. A pupil of the well-known virtuoso and teacher, Leo Rowsome, he collected scores of trophies from around the country.  His playing was broadcast by the B.B.C and Radio Eireann.

The ‘Champion Piper of All Ireland’ in 1931, he went on to appear in several movies.  By the time he was 24 years old he was one of the most prominent musicians in Ireland and one of Tallaght’s most notable citizens, regularly travelling to Europe to play in the Royal Albert Hall in London and in venues in Paris, in Munich and in Berlin.

 

1934 – Hollywood comes to town

  In 1934 when the film ‘Nora O’Neale’ was being shot in Ireland, Dempsey and his associates were drafted in to provide music and dance sequences. After weeks of filming and playing, Sean Dempsey gathered with the Comerford dancers and an assorted cast of extras, dancers and musicians to bid farewell to the production company who were returning to the UK. Standing on the quayside in Dublin, Dempsey played their ship out to sea, sounding “Coulin”, “Keel Row”, “The Londonderry Air” and “Auld Lang Syne”.  Standing there on the quayside he was a man at the very top of his profession, and at the top of the world in Irish Culture and cutting edge show business

Playing for Hitler

In 1936, he was one of a small number of Irish musicians and dancers invited to perform at the Congress of Leisure Time and Recreation which opened in Hamburg, Germany on the 23^rd of July.  He was accompanied by the Irish dancers Rory O’Connor, Miss Sheila Maher, Miss Comerford and a number of others.  They departed from Cork on the SS Paris, on which they would give a number of performances, before being guests of the German Government.  All performances and displays in the Congress itself would be broadcast to a wide European audience.

On July 31^st 1936 Dempsey and eight Irish Dancers were invited guests of the German Government at an official state reception in Berlin.  Among the select audience was Adolf Hitler and his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels.

While eight Irish dancers readied themselves for their performance in anticipation of the music commencing, Dempsey stood looking around quizzically in search of a chair on which to sit and play his pipes.  Noticing they were short of a chair for the invited guest, according to Dempsey, Adolf Hitler arose from his seat and summoned over an SS Guard, into whose ear he whispered.  A moment later, the dutiful storm trooper promptly walked over to Dempsey before kneeling down before him and bending into a crouched position.  Hitler then courteously invited Dempsey to be seated upon the obedient guard, which he duly did, before launching into a traditional Irish air.

At the end of the evening, after a rousing ovation, Hitler presented Dempsey with a small memento of the occasion- a gold fountain pen.  The Irish party gave a number of other performances the following week. At the end of the Congress they gave a final farewell performance at the Olympic stadium on August 10^th 1936.  Dempsey returned to Ireland, bringing with him an international reputation and his own extraordinary account of the visit to Germany.

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In the summer of 1937 Dempsey was invited to represent Ireland on an ‘Irish Hungarian Friendship Tour’, promoting Irish Arts and Culture, visiting Munich, Vienna, Venice and Geneva where they were met by representatives from the League of Nations. The tour was being filmed for showing in cinemas in Dublin. The Lord Mayor of Budapest invited the Irish party, led by the Hungarian Consul to Ireland, Hubert Briscoe, to a special banquet on Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube. That night, the 17^th of July 1937, a special broadcast of Sean Dempsey playing traditional Irish pipe music was transmitted throughout Hungary.  Not bad, for the boy from Tallaght.

They finished their tour with a concert in Paris for the Paris exhibition. 

1938 A miracle at Lourdes

Shortly after his return from Europe,  Sean was struck down with a serious bout of rheumatic fever, which he attributed to “having got a bad wetting’ when he was forced to make an emergency plane landing in a marsh outside London due to bad weather. 

For nine months Dempsey lay on his bed in Airton Lodge, crippled with rheumatic fever. A doctor told him he would never use his right hand again.  For the finest Uilleann Piper in the land, this was not good news. The inside of Airton Lodge looked like a chemists shop.  Dempsey decided there was only one thing for it- he needed a miracle. He instructed his mother to break all the medicine bottles in the house.  He was going to Lourdes!

In May 1938, the 28 year old piper and erstwhile pilgrim was brought on a stretcher from Tallaght to Lourdes.  When there he had four therapeutic baths in the famed and holy waters.  After the first bath, Dempsey reported feeling so good that he could ‘jump over the crowd’.  Before the last bath, he reported having severe heart palpitations, which subsided after the bath.  Having been stretchered from Tallaght to the baths in Lourdes, Sean Dempsey was reportedly cured. On the journey back to Ireland he was well enough to play an accordion, which the other travelling pilgrims had bought him.  On arriving back in Tallaght, he said “It is the first time in nine months I know what it is to be without pain”.

 

Sean Dempsey was not the only local from Tallaght and District, to have a story to tell of Adolf Hitler  Bridget Dowling, who had grown up across the fields from Airton Lodge in Kilnamanagh, had the somewhat unfortunate distinction of having married Adolf Hitler’s brother, Alois, a porter in the Shelbourne Hotel.   They called their son Paddy Hitler.   But that is another story!

 

Sean Dempsey died in Clontarf in June 1953 at 43 years of age. He was survived by his widow and two children.

Albert Perris

A Ramble About Tallaght