Musician donates guitar to student in viral video

When a video of a teen guitarist and singer performing the Adele song ‘Someone Like You’ at Rochforts Superstore in Mullingar went viral, it popped up randomly in the Facebook feed of Castleblaney man Paul Ogle, and he was deeply impressed.

In fact, so impressed was Paul at the talent of Spaniard Lucia Margallo, a student at Wilson’s Hospital School, that he decided to gift her a valuable guitar that ill-health has robbed him the chance of playing himself.

The video that sparked the remarkable gesture by the Monaghan man has now been viewed more than 185,000 times, and garnered over 5,000 likes on Facebook, and since Saturday, Lucia has been owner of Paul’s beloved Godin guitar. When actor Niamh Algar shared the video, that significantly raised the number of views.

The story began three weeks ago when Transition Year (TY) student Lucia, a native of Barcelona, was assigned a position at Rochforts in Dominick Street as one of the three week-long work experience jobs TY students undertake.

Edel Mulvaney, girls boarding manager at Wilson’s, explained that the school sought a placement for Lucia at Rochforts – which sells musical instruments – because of her proficiency as a musician.

Tomas Nally of Rochforts was, however, unaware of how deep Lucia’s interest in music was: “She and her friend came in here for work experience. They are both Spanish students and absolutely brilliant kids, and they worked really hard for the whole week.

“Then, at the end of the week, on the Friday – she never let on that she could sing or play or anything – but she asked one of the guys here to just take a little video of her playing.” The staff at Rochforts were wowed: “We put the video up online afterwards because we were all blown away with how good she was and her voice is amazing,” says Tomás.

The video started to go viral: “We were just putting it up as a thank-you for her because she was so good – but it got huge views,” says Tomás, who paid tribute to Paul Ogle for his generosity in gifting a valuable guitar to Lucia:

“It’s a phenomenally expensive guitar. It’s not a run of the mill guitar. This is a really high end guitar,” said Tomás, who went to Paul’s home last Friday to collect the instrument, which was handed over to Lucia on Saturday.

Paul admitted to the Westmeath Examiner that he had loved the guitar but due to ill health, he was no longer able to play it: “I would have played guitar up until about 10 years ago.

"I had an older guitar and then I saw this new one: it was an expensive guitar but I was mad after it – but then, within I’d say six months, I noticed the power in my hand just wasn’t what it used to be, and I ended up getting diagnosed with a muscle-wasting thing that affects your hands and your feet.”

It’s a hereditary condition, and Paul is remarkably sanguine about it: “It is what it is,” he says. “I’m still walking; I’m still working, but just the power went in my hands and my fingers and I wasn’t fit to play [the Godin] any more, so I was sort of always on the lookout for someone to give it to.

“I didn’t want to sell the guitar because, well, money comes and money goes and I just thought more of the guitar than money so it sat in a case under my bed for years.”

When he saw the video of Lucia, Paul decided she was the rising musician he would like to see have his guitar, and he contacted Rochforts.

“I thought she was very talented. I thought she’s obviously got a gift for music and she would probably enjoy it.”

See the video here: Rochforts Superstore - Mullingar Music