Once the most maligned instrument in the tradition ("if there's music in Hell it'll be played on the accordion," Declan Lynch once memorably opined), the accordion has undergone a rehabilitation of such colossal proportions that it would put the best graduates of the Betty Ford Clinic to shame.

Squeeze boxes have gradually insinuated their way back into the tradition. These days they ride high in the firmament; Mβirt∅n O'Connor, Sharon Shannon, Shane Mitchell (Dervish) and D≤nal Murphy (Sliabh Notes) are just a few of the artists who have enhanced the accordion's sound, and few can match the mania of Baile na bPuc's Seamus Begley when he plays his accordion.

It's impossible to pin down the essence of Begley's style. And that's how it should be, since the music is as rakish as its player is. Maybe some of Begley's propulsive force comes from the parallel existence he has alongside the music. A cattle farmer until two years ago, he sold up and took to contracting as a baler of hay and silage for the lucrative (but brief and unpredictable) summer months. These days he's no longer pinioned to the milking shed in the dark days of January. Instead he can follow the music wherever it take him - from the seafaring port of Freemantle in Australia to the folk festivals of Ballyshannon and Miltown Malbay, and from Baltimore Cork to Baltimore Maryland.

These days his vocal chords are getting a fair airing too. For too long Begley hid his voice but lately he's happy to give it the breathing space

"I think my earliest memory of singing is milking the cows", he offers, in between mouthfuls of crab claws that taste as though they've been plucked from Brandon Creek (a mile up the road) minutes earlier. "Everybody (he's fifth in a family of nine) had to milk a couple of cows by hand, and we had two cow houses so everybody'd sing. Both my mother and my father were great singers. And the cows knew you were in good form too, when they heard you singing. They knew you wouldn't beruffle them.

The young Begley took to the accordion easily. "It was a natural thing to pick up the box and play it because everyone else was doing it", he recalls.

"Mβire, my sister, was great for listening to the radio, learning them and teaching them to us. Then there was Maurice Quinn from back the road, and I always loved his style, especially playing jigs. We didn't play too many reels around here. It was mostly jigs we played in this parish - and polkas. Reels are harder to play - that's be my excuse! I have loads of reels but I can't play them the way I'd like to."

Begley's accordion playing has always been inextricably linked with dancing. Without the dancers, there would have been little impetus for playing - or for bringing his playing to a pitch that would satisfy the pickiest of high steppers. Breandβn ╙ Beaglaoich, his father, owned the local dance hall in Muir∅och, so there was little room for musicians who wanted to confine their playing to the fireside.

"That was my job", Begley explains, "to play at a cΘil∅ seven nights a week. I got my big break at about 12 when I was asked to play in An C·inne (a local pub in Cuas, west of Ballydavid) for the students at the C·rsa Gaeilge. I played with Risteβrd ╙ Murch·, who used to play an oul' black battered melodeon, and he'd have to sit half way down the hall - there was no microphone - to be heard. The following year I played for the whole summer and I got £10 into my hand. £10 that time was like £10,000 today . Oh God, I used to love it - playing for the dancers."

The dance is the thing. It's the fulcrum on which the music turns, Seamus Begley insists. Without dancers, the musician is merely shadowboxing.

"These concerts give me the shivers, when people are sitting down and here I am, playing. I find it very hard to play polkas and slides with people sitting down. Even if only one person gets up and dances, it's great. It's almost an insult to me if people don't get up to dance. My job as a musician is to get people up off their backsides and up to dance. If you can do that, you've done a great day's work. You feel your music is worth something.

"My heart isn't fully in it; it's hard work when people aren't dancing, but it just flows out of me when people are dancing. When they hit the floor and you hit the floor with them, or when you change key and they start screaming, then you know it's right."

Begley has been busily re-building his profile after an acrimonious split with his long-time musical partner, Australian guitar supremo, Steve Cooney (with whom he recorded Meitheal in 1993) which saw the once inseparable duo part company three years ago. "Cooney was a fantastic man to play with, because he brought out the best in you and pushed you, even when you didn't want to play", Seamus says. "He had this dra∅ocht of coming under you, lifting you and making you want to play. He had that gift. But I was too dependent on him. I couldn't play without him. I was always short of self-confidence. Like Peter O'Loughlin said one time: "Tis hard to play without shelter". But there came a time when we just couldn't play together. In the end I was delighted that we broke up because it had become unbearable. I don't know whose fault it was but I simply couldn't play with him any more."

Now partnered by young Mallow musician, Jim Murray, (also a member of Sharon Shannon's band), who caresses and coaxes his guitar like a choreographer does a dance, Begley has finally renewed the passion that fires the box when it knows it has come home.

"It's a new lease of life for me, playing with Jim", he acknowledges. "To err is human, and Jim Murray understands that very well. If I make a blunder, I just look at him and say sorry, and Jim just laughs. It's music and it's natural and that's what we do."

The cattle are sold, the land is let. The baling keeps him busy these days and (at least while the sun shines), Seamus Begley doesn't ever envisage a life where music is his livelihood. The gifts of the gods are precious, and not to be packaged and marketed as readily as other commodities. He ponders the possibilities of a full-time career in music and is unimpressed.

"I don't know. Even though I'm 52 years of age, I don't think I'm ready to depend on music because no matter what way I look at music, music to me is a pastime. It always was for enjoyment and the only way I can play music is when I'm happy and when I'm enjoying it. I did a load of gigs all over the world where I forced myself to play. I never want to go back to that again. I laugh at this thing I have, with the box. I'm not proud of it and I'm not ashamed of it. Some people like it and that's enough for me."

Seamus Begley and Jim Murray's new CD, Ragairne is now available on Dara Records