Chatting to The Derry Journal in his Greencastle home, Patsy said “having done songwriting for a long time” writing the book had been on his mind for “quite a number of years”.

The launch of his new book, 'Between the Loaning and the Lane' with special guest Daniel O’Donnell, will take place in McGrory’s of Culdaff, this Sunday, October 18, at 3pm and everyone is welcome.

People locally will be familiar with Patsy’s famous Cairn Visitor Centre shows, which have entertained local, national and international visitors over many summers.

“One day 10 years or more ago, a school tour was visiting The Cairn and it went very well,” recalled Patsy. “We did a stage performance and some songs.

Singer / songwriter Patsy Cavanagh who is launching his memoir: Between the Loaning and the Lane on Sunday.

placeholder image — Singer / songwriter Patsy Cavanagh who is launching his memoir: Between the Loaning and the Lane on Sunday.

“As I was waving the bus off, I said to my wife Margaret, ‘It is amazing the different roads your enterprises can bring you’ and she said, ‘You should write a book about it, all the different wee things you have done’. Sadly Margaret died in August 2024. I thought we would have had longer,” he mused.

“Then at the beginning of this year, all of a sudden, I started thinking back to when I was a child in Carihue (a townland in the Parish of Moville). I am a great age now. There was no electric. People coming from a town may find that hard to believe. There was a lamp up on the wall; there was a well up the lane; and there were two horses to plough the fields.

“It was a totally different way of life. People even coming along maybe 10 or 15 years later would have had electricity and running water in their homes, and machinery on the farm.

“So that’s where I started off thinking about my book and the different things I’d done when I was a young fella, like walking to school, which was about three quarters of a mile away, down towards Shroove.

Daniel O'Donnell who will be launching Between the Loaning and the Lane on Sunday.

“The schoolhouse is in ruins now but it inspired one of my songs, The Old Schoolyard which is quite a well known song in the Irish Country scene,” smiled Patsy, who described himself as having then “just sort of rambled up through my life”.

“I took on a summer job, even when I was maybe 10 or 11 years of age, doing gardener for some, as we say, the big houses in Greencastle, and went on from there. I went to fish when I was coming 16,” said Patsy, “with a man who was also called Cavanagh but was no relation.

“There is a bit in the book about the National Fisheries College in the village. I didn’t attend it but I worked in the garden where the college is now built. That was a big orchard for the house, which was owned by a family called Doherty,” he added.

“I suppose it would be considered peculiar, the thing I did was correspondence courses for three GCE’s - English, Maths and Geography. I sat the exams in Derry Tech on the Strand Road. I always remember, there was a wee shop just up along the Strand Road a bit above it, and I used to buy two cigarettes before I went in to do the exam.

“About that time, there were quite a lot of people who stopped school when they stopped primary school. I did one year at the secondary school, and then there was work to do on the farm, so that was my education.

“But there were always things that I had an interest in and I still would have followed up on them, through correspondence courses or by buying the book. I always had a great deal of interest in the local history and genealogy and things like that.

“After that I went to Dublin for a while, where you took whatever work you got. I worked on a building site, drove a van, different things,” said Patsy.

Patsy’s fate was sealed when his older brothers went to work in England, and one of them brought home an old guitar.

His brother taught him two or three chords and Patsy’s musical career progressed from there.

“A funny thing, I would never have considered myself to be a good singer,” said Patsy, “but I could keep the air of a song.

“I then began singing in bars and lounges but it wasn’t seen as being a very worthy thing to be doing. I always found that amusing. Maybe it was because, maybe years ago, the man singing in the public house was a man that was drunk. That was the image,” observed Patsy, whose songwriting career did not come along until he was “close on 30”.

“The first song I had any success with was called Foyle Waters about emigration. This was at the time of the pirate radios - Radio North and NWCR (North West Community Radio). They were very good for local singers,” he added.

“That was my kind of first break into songwriting or getting my songs recognised. It went very well and was very popular. The next song I had then was recorded by Brendan Shine, who was quite a big act at the time. It was called Can’t Hold the Years Back.

“I was living here at the time and I called down to see my mother one day, and she had written down an address that she got from the radio. Shay Healy was presenting a programme in Dublin and he was inviting people with original songs to send them in, and I sent in Can’t Hold the Years Back, and I got the invite to go up to Dublin and do it on Radio Éireann, as it was then. That is where it started off.

“I often think you know, nowadays between Facebook and Instagram and all of the social media, you could sit and write a song and have it on radio in half an hour’s time. That wasn’t the case back then. As the man said, a culchie like me wouldn’t have got on Radio Éireann for love nor money.

“I hope people enjoy Between the Loaning and the Lane,” said Patsy, who is looking forward to Sunday’s launch.

Between the Loaning and the Lane will be available at the launch and in all local bookshops, and The Bookmark in Letterkenny and Mac’s Bookshop in Buncrana.