Pádraig O’Keeffe was the schoolmaster here for some time, and though he was remembered by his pupils as a fair, if distracted, tutor, he eventually lost interest in being a teacher and gave it up after only five years for a less stable but wilder life. His father Sean was schoolmaster before him, nicknamed “The Roaster” for being an especially hard disciplinarian, and Pádraig’s sister Nora took over after him. One of his young pupils was Terence “Cuz” Teahan, who grew up to be a notable musician in his own right. In his book, The Road to Glountane, he wrote “Pádraig came to the school when I was probably in the first grade. I had already been three years with his father, Sean O’Keeffe. Then later Nora O’Keeffe Carmody became the teacher. So I had all three while I went to school. The O’Keeffes lived right across the road from the school. You’d have forty-five minutes for lunch, and in the summertime they’d come out with two fiddles and they would march us maybe a mile and a half up the road and back. We were drilled in school. We were drilled by Pádraig O’Keeffe, the whole bit like the army would do around here.”
The Music of Sliabh Luachra 