Tommy Peoples is amongst the most important and influential musicians of his time. This project is a snapshot of his musical life. Born in St Johnston in 1948, he spent parts of his life in Dublin, Co. Clare and Boston, returning to his childhood home in 2004. Tommy’s unique fiddle style and significant compositional output mark him as one of the most important figures in the history of Irish Traditional Music. He died in August 2018.

The research, published here as a collection on ITMA’s website, presents information, context and analysis of Tommy’s music. This collection will be of use to musicians, learners and those with a general interest in Tommy, or Irish traditional music more generally. Commissioned by the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and funded by An Chomhairle Ealaíon, ‘Tommy Peoples – A Portrait of an Artist’ has been compiled by Siobhán Peoples, Ciarán Ó Maonaigh and Conor Caldwell. All three lead researchers are well-known fiddle players and have worked extensively in research and performance of Irish traditional music throughout their careers.

The project contains extensive interview material from six renowned fiddle players who encountered Tommy in various ways through the years. These interviews, as well as further written discussion and transcriptions, provide substantial insight and analysis into Tommy Peoples’ personality, style and compositions. What emerges is that Peoples the man was inseparable from Peoples the musician.

Furthermore, the project makes a selected number of previously unreleased recordings available to the public. Tommy was recorded as extensively as any Irish traditional musician in history, with hundreds of hours of archival recordings in existence.

The first of these was made by Ciarán Mac Mathúna when Tommy was just thirteen years of age and his last recorded public performance was at the 2013 Gradam Ceoil. The material on this website comes only from unpublished recordings in the holdings of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, although reference is made to many of his commercial releases.

Published for this first time here are recordings made by Tommy for Breandán Breathnach in 1968, capturing Tommy’s emerging talent in his teenage years. Also revealed are spoken letters sent by Tommy to his friend Cathal McConnell in the 1970s and solo performances from later decades.

These selections are shared in the hope that they will highlight the innovation and technical mastery that underlined Tommy’s style as a fiddle player.  We hope that the examples selected will serve as signposts to the interested reader/listener to investigate the ITMA collections further.

In building this project we have extensively referenced Tommy’s self-published book Ó Am Go hAm, which gives a revelatory insight into his approach to fiddle teaching, composing and the philosophy that defined him. The book is currently out of print but can be read in the ITMA library.

In 2023, Pádraic Mac Mathúna began work cataloguing hundreds of hours of recordings from a variety of old collections in the Archive. Each month, he’ll pick out a special selection of tunes he’s discovered from these recordings.

Music and song collected by Séamus Ennis in the 1940s and recreated by contemporary singers and musicians associated with the same locality.  Presented by Ríonach uí Ógáin, with thanks to the National Folklore Collection  and the Arts Council

Séamus Ennis is remembered for the most part as a piper par excellence. However he was also a collector, broadcaster, singer and raconteur. His appointment with the Irish Folklore Commission spanned the years 1942 to 1947 and the results of his fieldwork contain a wide variety of material, with an emphasis on traditional music and song. His work brought him to the west of Ireland and most of the material is in Irish. His collecting tools consisted of pen and paper although he made a small number of sound recordings according as sound recording equipment, primarily the Ediphone, was made available for some field trips. As a result, the bulk of the songs, tunes and airs from Ennis exist in manuscript form alone. The Ennis music transcriptions amount to some 600 songs and tunes, with songs accounting for around three quarters.  Ennis built relationships with singers and musicians inside and outside their homes, as people willingly gave their music and song to him. The dance music was transcribed from lilting and whistling for the most part with a small amount of instrumental music from accordion, fiddle and uilleann pipes. Following his initial documentation of the staff notation and words of tunes and songs, Séamus Ennis then transcribed the music from his field notes to the manuscripts now found in the the National Folklore Collection,UCD. 

This project, funded by the Arts Council, highlights the importance of understanding earlier fieldwork followed by an archival process. Crucially, it gives an insight into archival material which is the result of ethnographic fieldwork. Older transcriptions have been given new life and interpretation as contemporary performers engage with the work of Séamus Ennis as fieldworker and transcriber. The manuscript material provides a provenance and original performer. 

Singers and musicians have been invited to investigate and interpret some of the songs and music in the Ennis Collection. After the performers had chosen their particular transcriptions, they then engaged with tunes and songs collected at a given time and in a given place. Singers and musicians were then recorded. The transcriptions capture the exchange involved in fieldwork. The initiative allows for a combination of recognition of the work of Séamus Ennis, of the material itself and of the archive, while being also true to contemporary singers and musicians. It generates a fresh relationship of our current time to the archive. 

The project offered an opportunity for performers to interpret handwritten, archival transcriptions at will. They have given new insights and new life rather than imitation.  The transcriptions have provided a framework while at the same time enabling the artists’ innovation, interpretation and creativity. 

Ríonach uí Ogáin, May 2022

Le Buíochas / With thanks

Na ceoltóirí agus na fonnadóirí, the musicians and singers, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Marty Curran, Adam Girard, Treasa Harkin, Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann, Leabharlann na Breataine, Neansaí Ní Choisdealbha, Peigí Ní Thuathail, Garry Ó Briain, Damien Ó Dónaill, Máire O’Keeffe, Gwyn Ó Murchú, JJ O’Shea, Tom Sherlock, Lisa Shields.  Séamus Ennis photograph courtesy of Anna, Mary agus Nóra Ní Chadhain.

The Inishowen Song Project was an integrated microsite of some 2,000 connected items all related to the English-language song traditions of the Inishowen peninsula, Co Donegal which was published in 2013. It was a collaborative project between the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle and the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Presented here are a selection of the materials which formed part of the original microsite.

The items include audio recordings & video recordings, books and photographs and they constitute a unique presentation of a local strand of Irish traditional music.

The basis of the original microsite was a body of recordings made in Inishowen over some 20 years from the 1980s by Donegal singer and teacher Jimmy McBride and kindly donated by him to the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Material has also come from singer Jim MacFarland of Derry, the Belfast Central Library, the Derry Journal, and Dr John Moulden, among other donors as acknowledged, and above all from the local Inishowen singers and singers visiting Inishowen who are featured in the project. Our thanks to them all. Digitisation, song transcription and metadata cataloguing has been carried out by ITMA staff.

The original project was brought to fruition by the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle with funding provided by the Inishowen Development Partnership, to which ITMA is greatly indebted. ITMA itself is funded by An Chomhairle Ealaíon in Dublin and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in Belfast. The site served people throughout the world who wished to discover and enjoy the song traditions of Inishowen, and especially Inishowen people themselves and their local teachers and students.

The microsite was closed for technical reasons in 2021, but plans are afoot for an even better version.  Until this is ready we hope you enjoy some of the elements from the original site.

Stephen Grier (c.1824–1894), a native of north Longford, moved to Newpark, Bohey, Gortletteragh, in south Leitrim in 1852. An uilleann piper and fiddle player, he compiled a collection of over 1,000 melodies, transcribed mainly in the 1880s.

In 2016 Music Network gathered ten of Ireland’s leading harpers in the studio of the Irish Traditional Music Archive to record tunes collected by Edward Bunting (1773–1843) at the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival and published in his 1797 A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland [Volume 1]. These recordings, and the digitised printed volume were to become the source of inspiration for a commission awarded to internationally acclaimed artist Aideen Barry by ITMA and Music Network in 2020. Oblivion / Seachmalltacht / ᖃᐅᔨᒪᔭᐅᔪᓐᓃᖅᑐᑦ, a multimedia installation premiered at Limerick City Gallery of Art in December 2021, and has continued to tour nationally and internationally.

Items in this collection include:

• An introductory essay by Dr Helen Lawlor on Edward Bunting and his enduring legacy
• 66 sound recordings made in 2016 by harpers Laoise Kelly, Eilís Lavelle, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, Anne-Marie O’Farrell, Mary Louise O’Donnell, Teresa O’Donnell, Úna Ní Fhlannagáin, Dianne Marshall, Tríona Marshall, and Claire O’Donnell. They were originally recorded in the ITMA Studio by sound engineer Donncha Moynihan (The Rise Studio).
• Interactive scores, and staff/ABC notation for each tune so that you can learn the melodies at your own pace. The transcriptions were prepared by Jackie Small.
• A digitised edition of the A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland [Volume 1], (London [1797]) here on the ITMA website.

Edward Bunting (1773–1843): an introduction

Dr Helen Lawlor

The harp in Gaelic Ireland was an instrument of great prestige. Harpers were part of the courts of Chieftains, second in status only to the file (poet).

Following the decline of the old Gaelic order, harpers still found favour among the aristocratic Anglo-Irish and were received as esteemed guests in the great Irish houses. However, changing musical tastes and precarious socio-political circumstances contributed to a decline in that once glorious tradition.

By the end of the eighteenth century, harping in Ireland was at a very low ebb and the ancient tradition on the brink of collapse. Edward Bunting (1773–1843) – music collector, publisher, editor, organist – is credited with saving the music of the Irish harp for posterity at a time when it was in danger of permanent loss.

Born in Armagh, Bunting received his early training on organ at the Church of Ireland cathedral, Armagh. By 1784 he was appointed assistant to William Ware, organist at St Anne’s Church Belfast where his musical talent was recognised.

During his time in Belfast he interacted with key individuals in Belfast society, including Dr James MacDonnell, Henry Joy, Wolfe Tone and the McCracken family.

The Belfast Harp Festival of 11–14 July, 1792 was organised by the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge. They called an assembly of the harpers, considered then to be descendants of the ancient bardic tradition. The festival was timed to coincide with the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille in Paris, when many prominent United Irishmen would be in Belfast. Many attended daily, as Wolfe Tone wrote in his diary, ‘all go to the harpers at once’.

Only 10 harpers arrived, evincing the drastic decline in the tradition. Bunting, then 19, was hired to transcribe and preserve the ancient music of these harpers.

The music of the harpers so captivated the young Bunting that he set about further collection of what was considered to be a repertoire of the verge of extinction.

He travelled around various parts of Ireland collecting from ageing harpers such as Denis Hempson and Arthur O’Neill.

In 1796 Bunting published his first collection, A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music. Some airs were used in Thomas Moore’s subsequent publications and set to his poetry, creating widespread popularity in Ireland and abroad for collections of ancient melodies. In 1809 Bunting published his second volume, A general collection of the ancient music of Ireland, complete with newly composed poetry set to melodies, following Moore’s approach. In 1840 Bunting published his substantial third volume with significantly detailed information on the harping tradition and anecdotes of harpers. The ancient music of Ireland is a treasure trove of historical descriptions complete with 151 airs.

Bunting was a talented musician and teacher. He lived between Belfast and Dublin, contributing to the musical life of both cities through his concert organisation, church performances and teaching. He was recognised outside of Ireland too as a talented performer.

His legacy however almost wholly rests on his work with Irish harpers. While often criticised for over editing or arranging the harpers repertoire to suit contemporaneous tastes, Bunting made an irreplaceable contribution to the preservation of Irish music through his collections and publications.

Much of our knowledge today stems from his work, work that has generated and inspired imaginative artistic responses since its publication. He recognised the existence of a rare and beautiful music and utilised his talents to document that tradition for posterity.

Shall we suffer them to perish in our hands at the close of perhaps the last century in which a single new ray of light can be struck out amidst the gloom, with which time envelops the earliest and often the most interesting of its works?”

Edward Bunting, 1797

Written by Dr Helen Lawlor, November 2022

Discover some of the remarkable material in ITMA’s collections. In this exhibition you can listen to early recordings of Irish traditional music, see photographs from ITMA’s collection, and discover some of the stories behind ITMA’s unique collection of wax cylinder recordings.

Every year since 1991 an Irish traditional music festival – Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane – has been held in the small rural town of Tocane Saint Apre in the Dordogne region of south-west France, some 140 kilometres east of Bordeaux, and thousands of people have attended it since its inception.

In late July, Irish musicians, singers and dancers, a different group every year, give concerts, classes and workshops, and participate in sessions and other events with performers and followers of the music from all over France and further afield. The old-world buildings, striking scenery, sunny weather, and local food and wine, combine with the music to make this one of the longest-running of the celebrations of Irish traditional music which take place outside Ireland.

The initial impulse for the festival came from Tocane-based musicians and enthusiasts Philippe Giraud and Claude Fossaert. They had been involved in Irish traditional music since the 1970s, part of the wave of continental followers of the music who had been attracted by the performances of Planxty, the Bothy Band and other touring Irish groups. They set up a voluntary committee and asked Dundalk fiddle player Gerry O’Connor of the group Lá Lugh, a frequent visitor to France, to organise Irish performers for the initial shoe-string 1991 festival in Tocane. The performers for all of the subsequent festivals, from 1992, have been organised from Ireland by Dublin set-dancer and singer Irene Martin.

Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane continues with its original mission of bringing Irish traditional music to France, and it has already celebrated a quarter-century anniversary of successful activity. A CD featuring Irish performers who have taught at Tocane was produced to mark the 10th anniversary of the festival in 2001, and another for the 25th anniversary in 2016. Details of the most recent festival are available here.

Documentation Project
As part of its work of documenting Irish traditional music worldwide, and of learning about the globalisation of the music that has been ongoing for the last half-century, the Irish Traditional Music Archive began an experimental cooperative project with Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane in 2014, with the aim of gathering sound and video recordings, and photographs and paper ephemera, which had been made by participants over the years. We thank all those who have contributed materials to date, and present here in this Discover ITMA page a small sample selection of the items and information received so far.

This project continues, and new material is always welcome. Information on how to contribute is available here in French and here in English.

With thanks for material, information and other help to Philippe Giraud, Claude Fossaert, Marie-Pierre Giraud, Hélène Le Breton, Patrick Lafont, Irene Martin, Mick Crehan, Annette Munnelly, Paul de Grae, Margaret Crean, Mary Kelly, Terry Moylan, Fintan Vallely, Evelyn Conlon, & Gerry O’Connor.

Nicholas Carolan, July 2016

Presenting the published and unpublished work on Irish music of Patrick Weston Joyce (1827–1914), the Co Limerick educationalist, popular historian and writer on Irish placenames, and one of the great collectors of Irish traditional music.

The Collection Includes

• Introductions to PW Joyce and to his work in Irish traditional music
• Facsimiles of his contributions to the published collections of George Petrie, 1855−1905; and to AP Graves’ Irish Folk-Songs, 1897
• Facsimiles of his four published collections, 1873−1909
• Facsimiles of his three unpublished manuscripts, 1858−1914 (courtesy National Library of Ireland)
• Facsimiles of his ballad-sheet collection, 19th century (courtesy Dublin City Library & Archive)
• Facsimiles of three articles written by Joyce, published in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society
• Typescript of thesis on Joyce music manuscripts by Catherine Hegarty, 1966
• Miscellanea, including obituaries and a dedication to Joyce
• Interactive music scores for audio playback and printing of some 1,700 melodies contained in Joyce’s published and unpublished collections (created by ITMA staff, 2014)
• Video re-creations of items from Joyce’s collections by musicians and singers of the present day.

Research & text Nicholas Carolan; Digitisation Áine Ní Bharáin, Maeve Gebruers, Treasa Harkin, National Library of Ireland (NLI); Filming Danny Diamond, Brian Doyle; Film editing Piaras Hoban, Treasa Harkin, Danny Diamond; Interactive music setting Jackie Small; Document supply ITMA, NLI, Dublin City Library & Archive (DCL&A). With thanks also to Colette O’Flaherty, NLI; Máire Kennedy, DCL&A; Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian; Robert & Linda Dwyer Joyce; performers Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Liam O’Connor, Seán Corcoran, Máire O’Keeffe, Pádraig Ó Cearbhaill, Jimmy O’Brien Moran.

ITMA is delighted to make available 696 interactive scores and contemporary transcriptions of tunes originating from Pádaig O’Keeffe manuscripts donated to ITMA by Caoimhín Mac Aoidh. This will bring the total number of O’Keeffe interactive scores on the ITMA website to 975 tunes. Discover all the Pádraig O’Keeffe resources on the ITMA website below.

Pádraig O’Keeffe (1887–1963)

The famous Sliabh Luachra fiddle player and travelling fiddle-master Pádraig O’Keeffe (1887–1963) from Glountane, near Castleisland, Co Kerry, at first followed in his father’s footsteps as the principal teacher in the local national school, but in 1920 abandoned conventional school-teaching for a more bohemian lifestyle.

He had inherited music from his O’Callaghan mother’s side of the family, and over the next four decades he taught hundreds of pupils, fiddle especially but also accordion and other instruments, moving in a wide circuit within striking distance of his home. An eccentric and notably witty character with a gift for musical variation, he left an indelible stamp on the music and folklore of the region, and is an example of how an individual musician may almost create a local music style.

In his teacher-training, O’Keeffe would have learned the rudiments of staff notation and tonic solfa, but for his own teaching purposes he devised more intuitive tablature systems. For the fiddle he employed the four spaces of the music staff to correspond with the strings of the instrument, and with numerals indicating which fingers were to be pressed down. For the accordion he used numerals for the keys to be pressed and in- and out-symbols to indicate the direction of the bellows. Hundreds of the notations he left with pupils have been preserved in private hands, and two volumes of facsimiles have been published (Dan Herlihy, Sliabh Luachra Music Masters vols 1 & 2, Herlihy, Killarney, 2003 & 2007). [from Nicholas Carolan, ‘Fiddle & Accordion Manuscripts of Pádraig O’Keeffe, 1940s–1960s,’ ITMA Website, 2013].

Caoimhín Mac Aoidh Collection

In September 2015 fiddle player and author Caoimhín Mac Aoidh donated a collection of copies of Pádraig O’Keeffe manuscripts to ITMA. The manuscripts were sourced mainly from O’Keeffe’s pupils and in a limited number of cases from others. By the mid-1980s Mac Aoidh had amassed a significant collection which were given freely to him and once photocopied the original manuscripts were returned to their owners. Read Caoimhín’s blog about the collection here.

To mark World Fiddle Day 2021 ITMA made available more than 696 interactive scores and contemporary transcriptions of tunes from the Mac Aoidh Collection. The manuscripts which are included in the first tranche of material from this collection are as follows:

The Pat O’Connell Collection, 1930s–1960s

The Kitty O’Connor (née Horan) Collection (comprising five manuscripts), 1930s:

1. O’Connor Manuscript A, 2. O’Connor Manuscript B, 3. O’Connor Manuscript C, 4. O’Connor Manuscript D, 5. O’Connor Manuscript E

The Jerry McCarthy Manuscripts, 1940s

The Nicky McAuliffe Manuscripts, 1950s

Manuscripts which are included in the second tranche of material (30 June 2021) were as follows:

Mac Aoidh-Miscellaneous Manuscripts, 1940s–1950s

The Mickey Duggan Collection, 1950s

A final manuscript was added 31 July 2021

Mrs. Katie Horan (nee O’Brien) Manuscripts

Please see links to these collections below.

The Paud Collins Collection

In 2013 ITMA made available a set of four facsimile manuscripts and 279 interactive music scores notated from Pádraig O’Keeffe manuscripts donated to ITMA by Paud Collins from Knockacur, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry. The manuscripts belonged to Paud’s brother Jerh a former fiddle pupil of O’Keeffe’s. Their brother Dan was an accordion pupil of O’Keeffe’s. The fiddle manuscripts are in Pádraig O’Keeffe’s own hand, while the accordion manuscripts were copied for her brothers from O’Keeffe’s originals by Paud Collins’s sister Tess Drudy (who did not herself read the tablature).

Pádraig O’Keeffe Manuscripts. Book One. Fiddle (interactive scores)

Pádraig O’Keeffe Manuscripts. Book Two. Fiddle (interactive scores)

Pádraig O’Keeffe Manuscript. Book Three. Accordion (interactive scores)

Pádraig O’Keeffe Manuscripts. Miscellaneous pages. Fiddle (interactive scores)

Andrea Palandri

To mark World Fiddle Day 2021 ITMA invited fiddle player Andrea Palandri to chose his favourite tunes from the Pádraig O’Keeffe manuscripts at the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Learn to play the 21 tunes selected by Andrea here.

The Folk Music Society of Ireland – Cumann Cheol Tíre Éireann – was founded in Dublin in 1971 by a voluntary group of interested individuals who felt that the 1960s revival of Irish traditional music, song, and dance performance had not been accompanied by an appropriate growth in the study of traditional music.

Their aims were to encourage interest in the music and to promote research into it. Prominent in the group from its beginning were Dr Hugh Shields, Breandán Breathnach, Tom Munnelly, Alf Mac Lochlainn, Máire Áine Ní Dhonncha, Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh, Seán Ó Baoill, Proinsias Ó Conluain, Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh, and its Chairman Professor Seóirse Bodley. Several had written from 1963 for Breandán Breathnach’s traditional music magazine Ceol.

For 30 years, from 1971 until 2001, the Society ran an annual public lecture series in Dublin, and this programme was added to periodically by recitals, exhibitions, day- and weekend-seminars, and conferences. An occasional journal Éigse Cheol Tíre – Irish Folk Music Studies was published from 1972, and later publications included monographs on bibliography, discography, popular music of the eighteenth century, Dublin songs, the local accent in traditional music, narrative songs in the Celtic languages, and international ballads. An associated audio-cassette series European Ethnic Oral Traditions was edited by Hugh Shields, who also edited most of the Society’s publications.

As the performance of Irish traditional music had reached unprecedently high levels by the beginning of the new millennium, and as the study of the music was increasingly being catered for by third-level institutions and summer schools throughout the country, it was decided that the aims of the Society had largely been accomplished. Most of its activities were discontinued in 2003, but its publishing arm remains, and those of its publications still in print are available for purchase from the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

The Society’s newsletter Ceol Tíre was begun by its editor Hugh Shields in November 1973 and continued by him and Nicholas Carolan (who was Secretary of the Society 1977–1992) until December 1989. In its summaries of Society meetings and other activities it outlines much of the progress made in the study of Irish traditional music in those years, and it also includes songs, tunes and useful source-material. The complete run of Ceol Tíre is available for viewing or for downloading as searchable PDFs below.

In its aims and philosophy, and in many of its personnel and activities, the Folk Music Society of Ireland was a forerunner of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. The personal collection of Breandán Breathnach was the foundation collection of ITMA, and its holdings have since been greatly augmented by the personal collections of Hugh Shields, Proinsias Ó Conluain and Tom Munnelly.

In its second decade of existence, the voluntary Folk Music Society of Ireland (FMSI) – Cumann Cheol Tíre Éireann – added to its annual programme of public lectures, recitals, seminars, and newsletter and journal publication, with a series of other publications intended to contribute to the documentation and study of Irish traditional music.

The driving force in the production of all the FMSI publications was Dr Hugh Shields (1929–2008), a founder-member of the Society in Dublin in 1971 who acted as its general editor and also produced the associated audio cassette series European Ethnic Oral Traditions. He was also a founding Board member of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

Six of these early publications are reproduced here in facsimile from the ITMA collections as searchable PDFs:

Sean-Amhráin i gCló, 1716–1855 / [ed. Hugh Shields]. Dublin: Cumann Cheol Tíre Éireann / Folk Music Society of Ireland, 1984

Booklet of song facsimiles produced for a day-seminar of the Society: ‘Amhránaíocht agus Amhráin i nGaeilge’ (singing and songs in the Irish language) which was held in 15 Henrietta St, Dublin 1, on 5 May 1984.

A Short Bibliography of Irish Folk Song / Hugh Shields. Dublin: Folk Music Society of Ireland, 1985; 2nd impression 1987

This booklet is of historic importance as listing the major print publications in Irish traditional song available to 1985.

Oliver Goldsmith and Popular Song / Hugh Shields. Dublin: Folk Music Society of Ireland / Cumann Cheol Tíre Éireann, 1985

Booklet reprint of an essay of the same title by the author in the Trinity College Dublin journal Long Room nos 26–27 (spring–autumn 1983).

Popular Music in Eighteenth-Century Dublin / [ed. Hugh Shields]. Dublin: Na Píobairí Uilleann & Folk Music Society of Ireland, 1985

Booklet of essays produced to accompany an exhibition of the same title organised in the Dublin Civic Museum 27 August – 31 October 1985 as an event of European Music Year by the FMSI and Na Píobairí Uilleann (the society of uilleann pipers). FMSI and NPU at that time shared an office and secretariat in 15 Henrietta St, Dublin 1. The contributors of essays were Breandán Breathnach (‘Eighteenth-Century Tunes Today’ ‘The Irish Bagpipe’, ‘Dancing’), Brian Boydell (‘Georgian Lollipops’), Nicholas Carolan (‘Gaelic Song’), and Hugh Shields (‘Ballads, Ballad Singing and Ballad Selling’).

A Short Discography of Irish Folk Music / Nicholas Carolan. Dublin: Folk Music Society of Ireland, 1987

This booklet is of historic importance as classifying and listing the major audio publications in Irish traditional music available in LP and cassette formats to 1987.

Old Dublin Songs / edited by Hugh Shields, Dublin: 1988

With thanks to Lisa Shields, Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh, & Professor Seóirse Bodley.

For further details on the Folk Music Society of Ireland – including a list of its activities and publications – visit the FMSI website.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 August & 1 October 2012

The greatest number of Irish songs ever published, over 1,000 in all, was collected, researched, edited and set to music by An tAthair Pádruig Breathnach / Fr Patrick A. Walsh (1848–1930), a Vincentian Catholic priest and an active cultural nationalist who is almost now a forgotten figure.

Published at politically significant times from 1904 to 1926, Breathnach’s songbooks influenced nationalist cultural thinking during the period, providing material for the de-anglicisation programme of the Gaelic League, disseminating patriotic songs in English during the War of Independence, and making bilingual song provision for schools as part of the nation-building of the new state.

Some 470 of these songs are in Irish and 530 in English. Drawn from oral, manuscript and printed sources, they were published in a sequence of cheap popular songsters and songbooks mainly by the Dublin firm of Browne & Nolan. Every song text was set to a melody in tonic solfa. Sales of these publications ran into the tens of thousands, and they would have a lasting influence on the oral tradition of both languages.

Pádruig Breathnach was born during the Famine in a largely Irish-speaking district near Carrick-on-Suir, Co Waterford. Having been educated locally and in the Catholic seminary of Maynooth, Co. Kildare, he was ordained a priest about 1873; most of his ministry was carried out in the cities of Cork and Dublin. He was interested in music and song from his youth, and, as an early enthusiast for the preservation and revival of the Irish language, he joined several Irish-language organisations before becoming a member of the new Gaelic League in 1893. As a young priest in Cork, he collected songs in Irish from his parishioners and on holidays in west Cork. More than 150 Irish-language songs in his collections, words and music, were collected in Cork and Waterford by himself or by his close associate Áine Ní Raghallaigh (1868–1942) of Macroom, a Gaelic League singing teacher.

In the early 1900s, when he himself was in his fifties, Breathnach was persuaded to begin publishing songs in Irish in penny songsters for schoolchildren. The success of his efforts led him to continue with similar songsters aimed at members of the growing Irish-language revival. The songsters were eventually collected into book form in 1913, and he went on to produce a series of further Irish-language songbooks for over a decade. Many of their songs were new, insofar as Breathnach selected verses by various authors and set them to music collected by himself or chosen by him from the published collections of Irish melody. Breathnach was also aware of the national value of the English-language songs of Ireland and by 1915 he had begun the publication of these songs, again in penny songster form and eventually in a hardback series of songbooks. His publishers advertised these as containing over 1,300 pages of song.

Annie W. Patterson (Eithne Nic Pheadair, 1868–1934), a pioneering musician and composer of the Irish-language revival and then a lecturer in music in University College Cork, collaborated with Breathnach in some of his final publications, arranging them for two or three voices in tonic solfa and republishing melodies in staff notation for voice and piano.

Having enjoyed great success in the early decades of the Gaelic League and of the Irish Free State, Breathnach’s compilations became increasingly outmoded because of their use of the superseded cló Gaelach print for Irish text and of tonic solfa for melody. The last were withdrawn from sale in the 1960s, although their value was still recognised and their songs were often republished in updated form in later works.

To date no library in Ireland or abroad has held all of Fr Breathnach’s song publications, in spite of their importance in the history of Irish traditional music and of their continuing value for singers and song scholars. ITMA has now assembled a complete collection of all of his published songs, although it does not yet have all in their original formats. In keeping with Breathnach’s philosophy of making the songs as accessible as possible, it has republished these freely online, in facsimile and with relevant accompanying information. This project began with the rarest of Breathnach’s publications, both of his penny songster series in Irish of 1904–13, the second series (a large file) in single bound form.

For further detail on Fr Pádruig Breathnach and his song collections, see the article by Nicholas Carolan, ‘Fr Pádruig Breathnach and Irish Traditional Song’, Béaloideas: the journal of the Folklore Society of Ireland, vol. 87 (2019), pp. 82–99.

Research & text: Nicholas Carolan; Content management: Maeve Gebruers; Digitisation: Ellen Doyle, 31 July 2020–31 July 2021

ITMA has been enabled, courtesy of the Breathnach family, to republish Breandán Breathnach’s 1963–86 periodical Ceol: A Journal of Irish Music on its website for public access. Its eight volumes will appear over the next four months, two per month, beginning on 6 November 2022, the anniversary of Breandán’s death.

At intervals from June 1963 to July 1986, the world of Irish traditional music was enlivened by the appearance of a small bilingual periodical entitled Ceol: A Journal of Irish Music, published in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. Containing music notations, song texts, articles, studies, and reviews of books and records – all of Irish traditional music – it declared from its first issue that it was intended to promote the music and its traditional practice and to spread a knowledge and appreciation of it among the general public. It was the first such periodical to appear since the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, founded in 1904, had ceased publication in 1939.

Ceol was the brainchild of Breandán Breathnach (1912–85), a Dubliner with a family heritage in uilleann piping and in 1963 a civil servant by profession. He funded the initial launch of the journal, wrote much of it, and directed its interests and fortunes during its irregular life over the next two decades. Content was also provided over the years by voluntary researchers and writers, many of whom were blooded by their involvement in Ceol. Finance was provided sporadically by sponsors, subscribers and advertisers, and dependably in the 1980s by the Arts Council. Not least of the entertainment provided by Ceol was Breandán’s pugnacious editorials and reviews in which he frequently turned an acerbic tongue on organisations and others who were not meeting his standards for the music. In 1963 he also began publishing his series of the Ceol Rince na hÉireann instrumental music volumes, a series which would make his name nationally known and which is still in print and still selling. Two years later he moved to the Department of Education to work under the auspices of the State in making a national collection of traditional dance music, work he continued for some years pre-retirement in the Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin. In 1968 he became the voluntary chairman of the new organisation of Na Píobairí Uilleann, and the present flourishing state of uilleann piping worldwide owes much to his efforts as an organiser, fundraiser, teacher, lecturer, writer, and editor of its long-running periodical An Píobaire. The Folk Music Society of Ireland, the Willie Clancy Summer School, the School of Music of Trinity College Dublin and the Arts Council are also indebted to him for his contributions. The author of numerous articles and of Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (1971, 1977), Dancing in Ireland (1983) and Ceol agus Rince na hÉireann (1989), Breandán was recognised at the time of his early death as the foremost authority on Irish traditional instrumental music.

The copyright of Ceol remains with the Breathnach family, and the Irish Traditional Music Archive is greatly obliged to Dr Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Niamh Bhreathnach, Fionnuala Bhreathnach, and Éadaoin Bhreathnach for granting it permission to republish the run of Ceol on its website for free public access. It remembers the late Eibhlín Bhreathnach and Mrs Lena Bhreathnach who with them facilitated the donation of Breandán’s personal collection in 1987 as the foundation collection of ITMA, and it is certain that Breandán, always keen to use the latest technology, would approve of this spreading of the gospel.

In keeping with the periodical nature of Ceol, the eight volumes of the journal will be reproduced here in facsimile at intervals in four monthly tranches, each of two volumes. Text is also machine-readable. Readers are invited to enter the compelling world of Irish traditional music as seen by Ceol, its editor and its many contributors in the formative period, beginning sixty years ago, during which much of the now familiar landscape of Irish traditional music took shape.

For more on the life and work in Irish traditional music of Breandán Breathnach, see this 2005 article, courtesy of The Journal of Music editor Toner Quinn.

ITMA is grateful to the Heritage Council for its generous 2022 project grant which enabled it to buy the advanced scanning equipment with which Ceol has been digitised as its initial project.

Nicholas Carolan, research and text; Maeve Gebruers, digitisation and layout; Gwendoline Lemaitre, digitisation, 6 November 2022–28 February 2023

‘Shamrock, Rose and Thistle’ is an appropriate metaphor for the mixed Irish, English and Scottish strands that make up the English-language song tradition of the north of Ireland, and it is also the title of an important collection-study made of this tradition by Hugh Shields: the book Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry, which was first published in Belfast in 1981 and is long out of print.

It contains lyrics and meticulously detailed musical transcriptions for seventy-four English-language songs, several in multiple versions, collected in the field from 1961 to 1975 in the coastal area of Magilligan in north Co Derry, and presented with extensive musical, linguistic, social and bibliographic documentation. The physical region is described, its history outlined, and an account given of its singers – chief among them being Eddie Butcher – and of their singing practices and songs.

Courtesy of the Shields family, this classic volume is now made available once again on this site of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, greatly expanded by multimedia enhancements made possible by online technology.

To the facsimile of the original book have been added

Hugh Shields’s audio field-recordings of the individual singers on whom his study was based, along with

Biographies of the singers with photographs,

Searchable transcriptions of the song-texts,

High-quality pdfs of the entire book in three sections and of the individual songs,

A catalogue record for each song (including a Roud number linking it with versions in other English-language song traditions), and Contextual notes

A large single pdf of the entire book (93MB), which opens in a new window, is also available.

Hugh Shields (1929–2008)

Hugh Shields (1929–2008) was Senior Lecturer in French in Trinity College Dublin, and a Fellow of the College. After an urban upbringing in Belfast, he encountered traditional folksong as part of living community culture in 1953, when he spent a year teaching in Coleraine in north Derry, and formed a lasting friendship with Eddie Butcher, whose singing is at the centre of his study. This experience, combined with his extensive field collecting, led him to research on the traditional song of Ireland, Britain and Europe, and widened his professional interest in medieval culture and popular art. He published many articles and sound recordings on the subject, and his study Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-all-yes and Other Songs (1993) is a standard work. His wife Lisa, who accompanied Hugh on many of his song-collecting trips, is also a graduate in modern languages from TCD. She is the former librarian of the Irish Meteorological Service in Dublin. In cooperation with ITMA staff, she has contributed to the design, audio-file selection, data entry and presentation of this present publication.

Other contributions to ITMA by Hugh and Lisa Shields include the donation of over 200 original field-recording tapes made in Co Derry and other areas of Ireland and in France, and the donation of a wide variety of manuscripts, off-prints, books and serials. Among these latter are Folk Music Society of Ireland publications written or edited by Hugh Shields and described here. In addition, Hugh Shields edited for ITMA the tune collections Tunes of the Munster Pipers vols 1 & 2 (vol. 2 with Lisa Shields) and, with Lisa Shields, the song collection All the Days of His Life: Eddie Butcher in His Own Words. Songs, Stories and Memories of Magilligan, Co Derry (book and three CDs).

With thanks to Lisa Shields and the Shields family. We are also grateful to Evelyn Mullen, Eddie Butcher’s daughter, who provided us with photographs of most of the singers.

Nicholas Carolan, Maeve Gebruers, Áine Ní Bharáin & Treasa Harkin, 1 April 2014