Twin brothers Noel Duggan and Pádraig (Patrick) Duggan () were born on 23 January 1949 in
Gweedore, County Donegal, to Maire and Aodh Ó Dúgáin. They were the youngest in a family of seven. The brothers learned to speak Gaelic as their first language and acted on stage with a local theatre group from an early age. They took piano lessons, then learned to play guitar in their early teens. Both trained on a radio officers' course as preparation for going to sea, but chose music instead. They played in the Slieve Foy Band, an Irish showband whose members included their elder sister Baba and her husband
Leo Brennan, who bought a pub, Ionad Jack in the village of Meenaleck, which they helped to renovate and reopen as Tabhairne Leo (
Leo's Tavern). The pub became the home of informal music sessions with a group of family members, hosting live music every night, and the Duggan brothers became mainstays of the sessions. Their early repertoire consisted of American country numbers and arrangements of contemporary songs by artists such as Joni Mitchell and The Beatles, until their mother suggested that they should sing in Gaelic. The brothers used a
tape recorder to collect old Irish songs from elderly people in their village and on
Tory Island, ten miles off the coast of Donegal, the place of origin of the Duggan family, "before they were lost forever". ==Musical career==