AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY

WHAT is the worst thing your child could grow up to be, do you think? A violent criminal, perhaps? A drug abuser?

Many parents will have their own special fears of children developing interests in fast motorbikes, or slow horses, or number theories guaranteed to win the Lotto. Often, the parent's fear will relate to something he or she is, or was, or could have become.

Indeed, one mother's pride is another's dread. There are many who have been quite happy to see their children slide into a career in advertising or the law, horrible as that might seem to most of us.

But these are all minor tragedies, which a well adjusted family unit can survive. The thing you really, really don't want your child to turn out to be is a music prodigy, especially one whose talent requires a violin. Just ask Liam and Collette Daly.

A disaster

To have one musical genius in the family might be considered unfortunate. To have three is something between a disaster and an Act of God. But Just such a fate befell Liam and Collette.

The Dalys were ordinary people minding their own business when their first born, Decian, arrived on the scene in 1970. His early habit of crooking his neck, passing his right arm back and forth over his left, and humming Vivaldi's Four Seasons in a high pitched voice was dismissed as a childhood idiosyncrasy. He'd grow out of it, they thought.

But soon the dreadful truth dawned: the kid was a musician. A "serious" musician. And before long, his special "needs" could he met only by a violin, and a good one at that.

Decian was barely two years old when his sister Diane was horn. Tragically, she too exhibited musical symptoms at an early age and again the violin was involved. (We won't even mention pianos the story is bad enough as it is.) The Dalys sighed at their misfortune and dreamt about having a normal child, one with an interest in accounting or something equally sensible.

After a decent interval of six years, Dara was born. By this stage, Dara's brother and sister were beyond saving and the new arrival offered hope of a brighter future. But - cruel world - Dara's first teething cries were to the tune of one of Beethoven's more obscure concertos, and all hope was lost. There was to be no relief.

String quartet

Wisely, the Dalys gave up having children at this point. Another one would have meant a string quartet and, had they persisted, the house could have been home to a full blown chamber orchestra, at which point the social services would have had to intervene.

While the Dalys' fate was almost certainly preordained, there were some sinister elements involved notably the children's late grandmother, Maureen Daly. Maureen was a music teacher but when her daughter in law, Collette, asked her to teach a few chords to young Declan, she was thinking in terms of some harmless party pieces. Nothing serious and no music exams, she said naively.

But when Decian exhibited a tendency to play pieces by Rimsky Korsakov from memory, Maureen couldn't resist encouraging him. So before anybody (except, the suspicion is, Maureen) knew what was happening, Decian was travelling 70 miles to Dublin every Saturday - for lessons at the Royal Irish Academy, and his young siblings were close behind.

There were a few compensations. Decian has since blazed a trail that has taken him around the world and showered him with prizes. He has led the National Youth Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, among others, and in 1991 he secured, for a five year term, the 100 year old Heineken violin, worth £50,000.

He is now recovering from the trauma of the break up of his five year relationship with the Heineken, which is now in the arms of another rising young star. And this is where having three musical prodigies, in the family is such a profoundly bad idea. Because when you play as well as Decian and Diane and Dara do, you really can't afford to be heard dead with an instrument worth less than - oh, say £25,000.

An old violin

Such violins do not grow on trees (well, they do, I suppose, but you know what I mean). So if anybody has an old violin lying around the house unused - especially if it's a Stradivarius - it would be very welcome in the Daly household. If you have three of them, they would be even more welcome. Barring this unlikely development, a few sponsorships would come in handy.

I have not mentioned that the Daly phenomenon occurred in a place called Loughmourne, which is near Castleblayney, Co Monaghan. The "three Ds", therefore, are part of a cluster effect which science or medicine has yet to explain, because the Castleblayney area has seen a very high incidence of musical prodigiousness.

Until now, however, the place has been best known for Big Tom, Paddy Cole and Anna McGoldrick. The Dalys, at last, represent a chance to undo some of the damage. (Message to Big Tom, Paddy Cole, Anna McGoldrick, and their solicitors: allow a Carrick man his little joke.)