- Music
- 27 Oct 22
"She was a kind, sensitive and thoughtful woman who ought to be playing with her grandchildren, but instead she, among many other Irish women, was terribly let down, and suffered unnecessarily," Mick Flannery has stated.
Mick Flannery has shared an album on his Bandcamp page originally released by his late mother, Elaine Flannery, in 2007.
Keepsake, which features 13 of Elaine's favourite songs, has been released online following news of her widower having settled a High Court action over the alleged misdiagnosis of her smear slide, taken under the CervicalCheck programme in 2010. She was diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer in 2012, and died two years later.
Outside the Four Courts this week, the Flannery family read out a statement: “What harm would it have done for the HSE to have said a simple sorry? Wednesday is eight years to the day since our beloved Elaine was taken from us. She had been bravely battling cancer for the best part of two years when she died 17 days after her 59th birthday.”
All proceeds from Keepsake – available to purchase via Bandcamp below – will be going to Marymount Hospice in Cork.
"Sadly the title Keepsake became poignant a lot sooner than we would have hoped," Mick stated on Twitter last night. "I loved my mother very much, as did all my family, her family and her friends
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"She was a kind, sensitive and thoughtful woman who ought to be playing with her grandchildren, but instead she, among many other Irish women, was terribly let down, and suffered unnecessarily."
Among the songs on the album is 'Lament for Michael O'Sullivan', a song about Elaine's grandmother's brother – "who was shot, aged 23 years, having defiantly broken his rifle and refused to surrender, during the Irish Civil War in November 1922."
"The song was in my family but nobody was singing it," Elaine said around the time of the release. "So it would probably have died, had it not been recorded."
Keepsake also includes songs by Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Peggy Seeger, Julie Miller, and traditional songs – as well as an original by Mick.
Mick also duets with Elaine on the cover of Dylan's 'Oh Sister'.
Keepsake, produced by Pat "Herring" Ahern, is available to purchase on Bandcamp below: