“Johnny McKeagney has travelled all the old roads.
He has found the gaps the hedges and stood in deserted hearths.
He listened to the wind in the trees, he spoke to the old neighbours and friends.
Then he took up his pen and drew. Not just what his eyes had seen, but also what he had been told, and how he saw it in his mind’s eye,
A photograph may capture an instant.
Johnny’s drawings convey centuries.
When we open the pages of this great great book, we will venture up those old lanes that we so often passed in a hurry and finally we will find out what lies at the end of them.”

— Séamus MacAnnaidh at book launch in Enniskillen Museum 25 October 2010

https://folklorebook.com/ for **Tempo Designs, Nashville, TN**

In this video, my dad talks about the village that he lived is life in. My inspiration and creativity comes from having grown up in our family coach building yard in Tempo, Northern Ireland. My journey as a Master Wood Designer began here. And, my Dad and Tempo are with me in my heart and soul for every project and every person that I meet as part of Tempo Design. It is truly wonderful to know that I am a branch off of this tree. It is wonderful to be replanted in Nashville, TN. I look forward to meeting more people and getting involved in our community in the same spirit that I was taught by my father. I hope you enjoy this small trip down memory lane with me. If you get to know Johnny McKeagney a bit, you get to know me, as well.

~ Gabe

My dad, Johnny McKeagney, in our village, Tempo, Northern Ireland https://folklorebook.com/

Jonny McKeagney spent 40 years collecting stories, events, crafts, traditions and ways of life from people around Co. Fermanagh and neighbouring Ulster counties. In the Ould Ago, published in October 2010, has won international book awards and is due to be displayed in a dozen university libraries in North America including Harvard, Notre Dame, Library of Congress in Washington, UCLA, Boston College and New York Public Libraries.

Though McKeagney was a self-taught historian and artist, his work was of a quality that attracted academics, many of them contributing prefaces to his works. In the foreward Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh, Archivist, National Folklore Collection, UCD writes ‘For forty years Johnny collected folklore by pen and tape recorder. He details stories and events then sketches all the salient points with a fine nib so that With the aid of camera, recording device and pen, he has pieced together much of the fabric of tradition in the places he has visited. The skills of craftsman, draughtsman and artist which he combines are used to great effect in the richly-detailed and frequently humorous tapestries he has drawn. The passion and excitement of uncovering an ancient monument, piecing together the former outline and function of a building or object, recording a distant craft process or local legend, all are vividly expressed in John McKeagney’s drawings. They form a unique and invaluable pictorial record of Fermanagh’s hidden past.’

~Excerpt from the Irish Literary Society