Miss Honoria Galwey, ed., Old Irish Croonauns and Other Tunes

Music scores of traditional melodies collected by Honoria Galwey in Donegal and Derry. She published most of these in her collection Old Irish Croonauns and Other Tunes of 1910 which is also available on the ITMA site in facsimile.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 19 December 2014

My name is Sophie Cahalane and I am a student of Maynooth University, currently completing a Masters in Musicology. My research seeks to find the earliest trace of the piano accordion in Irish traditional music and during my time at ITMA I discovered that this instrument had a much livelier presence in traditional music than first believed.

The piano accordion first reached Irish shores around the 1910s, taking another ten years or so to be adopted into the Irish traditional scene. The volume of images, tutor books and sheet music that I came across during my time at ITMA suggest that it was a popular instrument and was in demand when it first emerged. The piano accordion was new and exotic and there seemed to be an eagerness to learn it. Its versatility in terms of being able to produce a variety of sounds, across many genres, gives it an edge over other instruments. The piano accordion has a very powerful presence, enabling it to sound like a full band, having piano keys on the right hand and its ability to accompany itself with a bass section on the left.

One of the first areas I researched was ITMA’s huge range of photographs. This led me to the picture above of the Pat O’Leary Ceilidhe Band taken in January 1938. This was roughly around the beginning of the instruments’ rise in popularity among céilí bands in Ireland. It became hugely popular among céilí bands, due to its adaptable nature, having the ability to fill a room with its sound. There is plenty of evidence of its presence in various popular céilí bands such as the Malachy Sweeney Céilí Band from 1954, The Richard Fitzgerald Céilí band from Bundoran and the Malachy Doris Céilí band from Tyrone who all featured a piano accordion in their line-up. Other pictures include those of the Liverpool Céilí Band and Bridie Sutherland from 1936.

I stumbled across a wealth of sheet music and tutor books published in the 1930s for the piano accordion which is another indication of its popularity during this time in Ireland. The images above are from a book dating back to 1936 called “Irish Jigs and Reels for the Piano Accordion“, arranged by Frank Gaviani, a prolific piano accordionist at the time. Housing nearly one hundred melodies, Gaviani’s book has a wide range of tunes varying from jigs and reels, to slow airs, containing pieces such as the “Stack of Barley” and the “Rocky road to Dublin’ jig. Preserved in hardback form, the book contains advertisements of Gaviani’s other works such as, “Irish Songs for the Piano Accordion”.

As well as digitizing the material required for my blog, I fully digitized another piano accordion music book from 1934. “Gems of Irish Songs with Words, Tonic Sol-Fa and Ukulele with Parts for Piano Accordion”, published by Bank’s Music House, Leeds. This book contains a variety of slow airs and waltzes, all originating from Ireland. Songs include, “Londonderry Air”, “Rose of Tralee” and “Shamrock Leaves”. The Gem Series also includes other books such as “Gem of Irish Songs with Words” from 1934 that contains parts for the piano accordion.

Other sheet music includes those belonging to Jimmy Shand and his band from Scotland who were a huge source of inspiration for many Irish piano accordionists. “Irish Jigs, Songs and Dances” by Geo. H. Farnell from 1937 contains many Irish melodies such as “The Connaught Man”, “Irish Merry-Making” and “Cockles and Mussels”.

In terms of tutor books, Thurban’s “Piano-Accordion Tutor” dating back to 1935 provides a complete guide to learning the instrument. It teaches the reader through musical notation, key signatures and documents the purpose of the various parts of the instrument. Adam Elison produced a similar book called, “How to Play the Piano Accordion” from 1934. “Feldman’s Piano-Accordion Tutor : How to Master the Piano-Accordion in Six Easy Lessons” from 1935 contains similar information, condensing the basics of the instrument into six sections.

The books that I have mentioned are only a handful of the amount I came across. The production of such a volume of sheet music and tutor books for the piano accordion during the 1930s suggest that there was a demand to learn and play the instrument, particularly in the genre of Irish traditional music.

Although it was hard to find a recording of the piano accordion to date back as far as some of the texts and images I had found, there was a wealth of recordings from the early 1950s which I was very happy to find. ITMA hold many recordings of the instrument from players such as Dermot O’Brien and Albert Healy to name just a few but one in particular stood out to me. An RTÉ recording of the Ceolta Tíre programme, recorded in Co. Kerry in 1955. Played by John Clifford from Sliabh Luachra, this piece of audio is a set of reels called “The Dawn” and “Peter Street”. I choose this track as I play these two tunes and they are personal favourites of mine.

This was only one of the many Ceolta Tíre programme recordings I came across, the rest featuring other piano accordionists such as Sean Woods and Richard Fitzgerald.

I am very pleased with the results of my research at ITMA. Firstly, discovering the earliest trace of the piano accordion in Irish Traditional music dates back to 1934. Secondly, I identified quite an exciting part of its history, uncovering an instrument that at the outset, had a lively existence in traditional music. It was fascinating to discover that demand for the piano accordion was high when it was initially introduced to Irish traditional music.  The demand to learn the instrument is reflected by the volume of tutor books available in the 1930s, as well its role in the céilí bands scene of Ireland.

I wish to thank RTÉ for allowing me to use the Ceolta Tíre clip and the Irish Examiner for permission to use the image of the Pat O’Leary Ceilidhe Band. 

This blog was created in association the Department of Music at Maynooth University.   Students undertook a five week placement as part of their course and gained experience in digitsation, cataloguing and web publishing.

In celebration of the long-overdue revival, ITMA has digitised and made available online its copy of the 1910 publication, and delved into its resources to uncover the historical background of the piece. Additional research materials, including the original manuscripts, contemporary news articles, and miscellaneous ephemera were found in the National Library of Ireland’s collection.

Listen to soprano Orla Boylan, singing the role of Eithne in rehearsal (2017)

The Bird of Sweet Music

By the time O’Dwyer composed Eithne in July 1909, a long tradition of incorporating ancient Celtic legends and mythology in opera had been established by foreign and native Irish composers. As one would expect, Eithne, was based on a pre-Christian Irish folk-story “Éan an Cheoil Bhinn” which translates to “The Bird of Sweet Music.”  In the story,

a man follows a sweet singing bird into a cave under the ground, and finds a country where he wanders for a year and a day, and a woman who befriends him while there, and enables him to bring back the bird, which turns out to be a human being. At the end of the tale the narrator mentions quite casually that it was his mother whom he met down there. This touch shows that the land where he wandered was the Celtic Hades, the country of the dead beneath the ground. ¹

O’Dwyer’s adaptation of the legend provides a much more elaborate version of events. The hero, Ceart, is the eldest son of the High King of Ireland who narrowly escapes banishment after a false accusation that he killed the King’s favourite hound. Ceart’s redemption arc to not only further prove his innocence but also his suitability as heir to the throne takes place in the second act.

While on a hunt, the High King is captivated by a mysterious singing bird and the apparition of a sorrowful but beautiful maiden, which vanish into a nearby cave. Ceart bravely volunteers to enter the cave and discover the secret of the bird and the maiden.

In the cave, Ceart must defeat a giant guardian spirit to enter Tir-na-n-Og (The Land of Youth, a supernatural realm in Irish mythology), where he must defeat the king of Tir-na-n-Og to undo the curse placed upon the bird and Eithne. Lyrics and a full synopsis of the plot can be found in the Opera Theatre Company’s programme of the revival performance.

Opera in Ireland (1700 – 1900)

Although proponents of the turn of the century Gaelic Revival lamented at the absence of a national opera tradition in Ireland, foreign operas enjoyed minor but steady popularity in Ireland from as early as 1705. Some English operas such as John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) incorporated Irish airs and traditional songs, and popularised a tradition of comedic ballad opera (or light opera) in Dublin. Despite the arrival of other foreign opera traditions, English and Irish ballad operas proved to be the enduring form of opera in Ireland. In the classical era (1775 – 1830), Irish composers, writers, and artists tended to leave Ireland for more steady work in London.

One such writer, John O’Keeffe, was particularly influential in providing libretti on Irish subjects and traditional tunes for Irish characters to English composers. As noted by Axel Klein,

knowingly or not he contributed to the stage-Irish or image of Irish people as poor servants, drunkards, or petty criminals that aroused mockery and laughter in London theaters.²

However, Irish stages did see an increase in English-language works more complimentary to Ireland, drawing from mythological themes throughout the nineteenth century although by this time Romantic Italian operas were preferred. As the style of music in vogue, Europeans looked to foreign operas to familiarise themselves with the national life of foreign nations. Yet despite a small, but healthy, appetite for opera in Ireland, a large resource of fascinating folklore and song, and prolific writers, Ireland had failed to establish an operatic tradition that would fill the Irish with pride and delight foreign audiences.

Gaelic Revival

Given the lack of a genuine Irish opera tradition, It is understandable that proponents of the fin de siécle Gaelic Revival called for the establishment of Irish-language operatic works. The Gaelic Revival movement inspired by Irish nationalism largely focused on the revival of the Irish language, history, and folklore. Although literature was naturally the most popular medium for a language-based movement, the role of traditional music in Irish life and as a vehicle for folklore naturally brought music into the movement’s discourse. The desire for the revival to honour the past while simultaneously propelling Ireland into the future meant that incorporating contemporary artistic tastes such as opera had a welcome place in the revival.

Before it even premiered on 2 August 1909, Eithne was already attracting praise from Irish nationalists and proponents of the Gaelic Revival movement. In an unnamed Belfast newspaper, an anonymous author expressed their desire for a national opera in a July 1909 column on Eithne,

The revival …  cannot pass by any of the arts, because the arts are a large part of life, and while they express a national character honorably to the outside world they also shape it within itself. Ireland of old was one of the lands of music … the modern Ireland and the Ireland to come may still be a land of music, national here, too, as in other forms of living. There has always been in this country a wealth of exquisite melody, a “folk-music” that the great outside world has loved when it has known … and the traditional music is even more in honour now than it has been for perhaps a hundred years. But by the side of this loveliness in simplicity we have to learn to think of the grandeur and symphony and chorus, the splendor and power there is in the immense harmony of many instruments and many voices. As no country, small or great, that has a full national life is without its national opera, peculiarly expressive of the country of its conception, but understood also by all other peoples, so in Ireland too, we must have our national opera. A great school, we may hope, will spring up of composers whose inspiration shall be wholly Gaelic, but whose form shall appeal though some fresh and strange touch, to all the nations.³

Considering this clear enthusiasm for Eithne, it comes as no surprise that the opera was generally well received by opera attendees and critics alike. Although some commentators found flaws in O’Dwyer’s Wagner influence, many more forgave this and called for more performances. Unfortunately, the opera was only reprised once from 16 – 21 May 1910 at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. Nevertheless, the positive contemporary reception and the fact that the opera was originally performed in Irish (with the English version produced many years later) make Eithne all the more deserving of its title as the first Irish opera. Some may argue that this title really belongs to Thomas O’Brien Butler’s Muirgheis, written in Irish in 1903, however Muirgheis was first performed in English and was so poorly received that it was likely never performed again.⁴

Robert O’Dwyer, Thomas O’Kelly, and the creation of Eithne

Robert O’Dwyer was born and raised in Bristol, England to Irish parents where he was classically trained in music, beginning his career as a chorister and assistant organist at various churches. At age 27 in 1889, O’Dwyer began conducting amatuer orchestra and worked with various touring opera companies until he settled in Dublin in 1897 to work as an organist and teach music at the Royal University of Ireland. At the time of the 1911 census, O’Dwyer lived with his family at 97 Rathmines Road and later at 9 Upper Leeson Street.

With increasingly nationalistic views upon his move to Dublin, O’Dwyer ultimately became a leading voice to establish a national school of Irish art music composition.⁵  In 1910 he won a Feis Ceoil competition for his orchestral overture, Rosalind, and began conducting and arranging music for the Gaelic League choir in 1901. O’Dwyer’s contemporaries praised as one of the most progressive musicians on the Feis Ceoil Executive Committee.⁶ In addition to these musical pursuits, he also began writing articles about nationalist music for The Leader, a weekly review of current affairs, politics, literature, art, and industry in Dublin. Described as a ‘colourful character,’ O’Dwyer expressed his sentiments towards Irish nationalism “with more vitriol and less polish than was his editors’ wont,” going to great lengths such as adding the patronymic prefix to his name in order to appear more Irish.⁷

Despite a steady career in music and academia (upon the success of Eithne, he was awarded the Professorship of Irish Music at University College Dublin), O’Dwyer’s efforts outside of Eithne paled in its shadow and were largely forgotten. However, a visit to view the original Eithne manuscripts at the National Library of Ireland reveals the extent of how well known O’Dwyer’s work was in both nationalist circles and to choristers. Inside the covers of the manuscripts are pages and pages of articles written by O’Dwyer’s contemporaries praising both Eithne and his other accomplishments. One article, unfortunately from an unnamed newspaper and author, includes an interview with O’Dwyer revealing his passion for the place of Irish music in nationalism,

The Irish peasant, undoubtedly has still the gift to turn a phrase, to vary, or even invent a melody, which natural inspiration, with knowledge (as we educate in all other arts and sciences) might, nay often must, become a work of art … how prodigal, neglectful, wasteful, we are of such a treasure; while we strive for mastery in other arts, in which we barely succeed, we close our door upon this our own, our chief inheritance, and go, with qualm of conscience, to the chimney corner, to listen for a departing echo.⁸

Given his dedication to his beliefs, it comes as no surprise that someone like Robert O’Dwyer would take great care in selecting the person with whom he would collaborate with to provide Eithne‘s libretto. He entrusted the task to Father Thomas O’Kelly (1879 – 1924), a priest from Sligo who also worked as a playwright, librettist, and held teaching positions. O’Kelly was likely brought to the attention of O’Dwyer after he received a first prize at the 1904 Samhaim Competition in 1904 for authoring the first translation of William Butler Yeats’s Cathleen Ni Houlihan.⁹

Eithne was written for the 1909 Oireachtas na Gaeilge, an Irish language festival organised by the Gaelic League, upon the request of the festival organisers the previous year. Although O’Dwyer agreed on the condition that he would set the music if a story was provided to him, nothing had been done by December 1908 when he decided to take matters into his own hands. O’Dwyer read countless stories in English and Irish until he decided on “Éan an Cheoil Bhinn.” O’Kelly and O’Dwyer then collaborated through letters to create the libretto and set it to music, completing the work on 31 July 1909, just two days before it’s premiere. The pair continued their correspondence to edit Eithne for its second and final performance of the century that took place in May 1910 at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

Eithne Today

Eithne was revived by the Opera Theatre Company on 14 October 2017 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. A significant addition to the cast was Dr. Gavin Ring, baritone, as the High King of Ireland. Dr. Ring is a prominent scholar on the opera whose doctoral thesis examined the political and cultural reasons for Eithne’s neglect and argued for the necessary performance considerations for a revival adaptation. A full list of the cast as well as additional background information on the piece can be found in the Opera Theatre Company’s programme linked above. The performance was recorded by RTÉ Lyric Fm and can be viewed below

Written & researched

Emily Fitzsimmons

ITMA STINT Intern

23 November 2017

Notes

Ceoldrama is the rough Irish translation used for opera, a combination of the words for music and drama.

WITH THANKS TO

Ciaran O’Dwyer, National Library of Ireland, Opera Theatre Company

Citations

1. Hyde, Douglas, Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories, (London, 1890), preface xxxviii-xxxix

2.  Klein, Axel, ‘Opera and music theatre’, in H. White & B. Boydell (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2 Vols, Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), ii, 786-78

3.  Anon. ‘New Opera in Irish – “Eithne” at the Rotunda During Oireachtas Week,’ unknown newspaper, July 1909. Dn MS L 294 (1)

4. Eagan, Casey, “Composer of first Irish opera was among Lusitania victims,” Irish Central, 4 May 2015. Accessed 18 November 2017. https://www.irishcentral.com/r….

5. Ring, Gavin, Performance Considerations for Robert O’Dwyer’s Eithne (1909): A Contextual Study and Edited Vocal Score (Doctoral thesis, Dublin City University, 2016), 38.

6. Ibid, 38.

7. Ibid, 38.

8. Anon. ‘The Music of Ireland. XLIV – A Professor of Irish Music,’ unknown newspaper, N.D., Dn MS L 294 (1) 

9. Ryan, Joseph J., ‘Opera in Ireland before 1925’, in G. Cox & A. Klein (eds), Irish Musical Studies 7: Irish Music in the Twentieth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), 46

Works Consulted

Larkin, David, ‘O’Kelly, Thomas [Revd] [Ó Ceallaigh,an tAth. Tomás; pseudonym Íbh Máine]’, in H. White & B. Boydell (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2 Vols, Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), ii, 773-774

Klein, Axel, Celticism in Irish Opera

Klein, Axel, ‘O’Dwyer, Robert’, in H. White & B. Boydell (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2 Vols, Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), ii, 760

Klein, Axel, ‘Opera and music theatre’, in H. White & B. Boydell (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2 Vols, Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), ii, 785-790

O’Kelly, Thomas, Letter from Thomas O’Kelly to Robert O’Dwyer (unpublished 1910). Dn MS L 294 (1)

Ring, Gavin, Robert O’Dwyer, The ‘Colourful’ Fellow

PW Joyce manuscripts, National Library of Ireland, MS 2982

Joyce was still working on what would have been his final collection at the time of his death in 1914, and the two working manuscripts from which it was to be drawn were supposedly found on the table beside his bed. This is part I of this final collection.

Facsimile edition of MS 2982 is also available below.  For more information on this manuscript and other PW Joyce manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland see Patrick Weston Joyce Resources at ITMA.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 17 October 2014

Poblacht na hÉireann: 110 Original Irish Dance Tunes and Other Pieces for Violin, Flute, etc. Composed by Padraic Ganly, [Buenos Aires: Ganly, 1918], 107 pp.

One of the most unusual collections of Irish music in the Irish Traditional Music Archive must be Padraic Ganly’s collection of jigs, reels, hornpipes, airs, etc., composed by himself in traditional idiom, which he had printed on 1 July 1918 by Francisco de Paula at 1053 Av. de Mayo, Buenos Aires, and which he presumably published in that Argentinian city immediately afterwards.

It is not yet known who Ganly was and how he came to be publishing his compositions so far from Ireland. But on the internal evidence of the titles he gave to his 110 tunes, he was Irish-born and of rural origins. Townland names and other placenames abound in the collection. They are overwhelmingly from Co Westmeath, with a few from the surrounding counties, and the majority refer to an area east of Lough Ree and north of Athlone. The townland of Ballynacliffy is especially singled out. The family names of friends mentioned – Adamson, Ginnell, Doolan, etc. – are in general accord with such a place of origin. It is likely that Ganly belonged to the Irish community in Argentina that was associated with a long tradition of emigration to that country from the Irish midlands. The only apparently non-Irish name in the tune titles, ‘Che Buono’s Rambles’, is probably a reference to William Bulfin, the Irish-Argentinian author of ‘Rambles in Eirinn’, who sometimes used ‘Che Buono’ as a nom-de-plume in newspaper articles published in Dublin and Buenos Aires.

Ganly was clearly an Irish-Irelander of his time: he calls the collection ‘a modest contribution to the Gaelic revival’, and dedicates it to ‘eiséirge na Gaedhilge agus go hÉirinn [na] nGaedhael’. He was also a politically conscious Irish nationalist of the 1910s who was keeping up with the latest news from home: early tunes are entitled ‘The Old Fenian’s Favourite’, ‘The Men of ‘67’ and ‘The Land for the People’, but he goes on to include ‘Our Men of Easter Week’ and ‘Ashbourne’s Fighting Gaels’, and to name tunes for ‘Countess Markievicz’ and ‘De Valera’.

The title-page of the collection indicates that the compositions are primarily intended for violin and flute, and Ganly’s titles – ‘The Strings of Nancy’s Violin’, ‘The Blind Fiddler’, ‘A Flute and Tambourine’, etc. – seem to confirm this concentration. But other musical performance is also referred to: lilting, whistling, and especially bagpiping. By this he seems to mean mouth-blown bagpiping, and some few of these tunes could have been meant for playing at public political events, as could ‘The Sinn Fein Volunteers’, a B flat march possibly intended for brass instruments. Padraic Ganly may have been a teacher of music. The notations exhibit a high degree of musical literacy and, although they are mostly set in one or two sharps or flats, which would have suited an amateur market, they are in fact technically demanding. The collection itself seems to become progressively more difficult in performance terms, and thus to have a tutorial dimension. There are also indications that at least two editions of the collection were produced: there is an errata list in the 1 July 1918 printing but these errors have been corrected in a later printing.

ITMA would welcome any further information on Padraic Ganly and his collection and, since ITMA’s copies are imperfect, information on any other copies of the published collection in existence.

With thanks for communications to Gearoid O’Brien of the Westmeath County Library Service, and to Paul O’Shea.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harking & Jackie Small, 17 July 2014

Songs from Ballyvourney, County Cork, with Irish texts and translations. Parts I – III / collected by A. Martin Freeman and copiously annotated by the collector, L. E. Broadwood, Frank Kidson, A. G. Gilchrist and Robin Flower

The 147 song airs, variant airs and melodic fragments presented here come from an important collection of 84 songs in Irish songs collected by the English scholar A. Martin Freeman in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) area of Ballyvourney, Co Cork, in 1913 and 1914. The melodies were carefully noted by him from singers in their homes and at social gatherings, using a tuning fork and staff notation.

The Freeman Ballyvourney collection was published by the Folk-Song Society of London from 1920 to 1921. Facsimiles of the published collection and more information about it are also available.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 14 May 2015.

Amhráin Mhuighe Seóla is a classic collection of traditional songs in the Irish language, one of the relatively few to contain notated melodies as well as words.

These songs were collected in Co Galway and Co Mayo by Mrs Eileen Costello (Eibhlín Bean Mhic Choisdealbha) of Tuam in the early 20th century, and were published by the Irish Folk Song Society in London in 1919 as a number of its journal, and again in Dublin in 1923 by The Talbot Press, commercial publishers. On a variety of themes, they are mainly love songs. Maigh Seola is an ancient territory between Loughrea and Headford in Co Galway.

Mrs Costello was born Edith Drury in 1870 in St Pancras workhouse in London, where her Limerick father worked as an attendant. Her mother was Welsh. She became a teacher, and was in the 1890s prominent in a number of the then many Irish cultural organisations in London. A highly active member of the Gaelic League from its London foundation in 1896, she learned Irish there. Her song collecting in the Irish language began in London (she first collected ‘Neillí Bhán’ on a train coming from Woolwich), but her collecting work really began in Ireland, in Tuam, where she came to live having in 1903 married a Dr Thomas Bodkin from the town. He was a medical doctor, historian, and fellow Gaelic Leaguer. Among her chief singers from 1904 was a Maggie Hession of Belclare, members of whose family are still involved in traditional music. Mrs Costello was active in the War of Independence and became a senator in the Irish Free State. She died in 1962. Although she supplied extensive source-notes to the songs and information on their backgrounds (with English translations mainly by others), her motivation was not academic. She intended her volume primarily ‘for popular use in the schools and Gaelic League classes of Connacht’.

Amhráin Mhuighe Seóla, which had become a rare antiquarian volume, has been republished several times in paperback facsimile since 1990 by Cló Iar-Chonnachta. A more extensive biography of its compiler as ‘Costello, Eileen’ will be found at www.ainm.ie.

The 84 melodies of the collection are now available here for playback and reading, and in PDF format for convenient printing.

Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 29 July 2013

The earliest visual images of Irish music published by Francis O’Neill in Chicago, in 1903 and from 1907, were frontispiece photographs featuring contributors to his music collections: Irish musicians permanently or temporarily living in Chicago and musicians living in Ireland whom he met on a visit home to Ireland in 1906. In his first study of Irish music, Irish Folk Music:A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago 1910), the same mixture of photographs is seen along with some Irish line drawings and other illustrations from older sources (see below).

In his second study of Irish music, Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago 1913), the textual treatment of the music and musicians is now greatly expanded in range and detail, and likewise the number of visual illustrations reproduced has been increased. They again come from the same kind of sources as the earlier books, and in addition some images are reproduced from Continental and British sources, a reflection of O’Neill’s placing of Irish music in a European context. New images used in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (excluding music notations) are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, along with a few visual illustrations from his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (Chicago 1922; 2nd ed. 1924).

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2011

The earliest visual images of Irish music published by Francis O’Neill in Chicago, in 1903 and from 1907, were frontispiece photographs featuring contributors to his music collections: Irish musicians permanently or temporarily living in Chicago and musicians living in Ireland whom he met on a visit home to Ireland in 1906. In his first study of Irish music, Irish Folk Music:A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago 1910), the same mixture of photographs is seen along with some Irish line drawings and other illustrations from older sources (see below).

In his second study of Irish music, Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago 1913), the textual treatment of the music and musicians is now greatly expanded in range and detail, and likewise the number of visual illustrations reproduced has been increased. They again come from the same kind of sources as the earlier books, and in addition some images are reproduced from Continental and British sources, a reflection of O’Neill’s placing of Irish music in a European context. New images used in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (excluding music notations) are reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, along with a few visual illustrations from his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (Chicago 1922; 2nd ed. 1924).

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2011

Since 2006 the Irish Traditional Music Archive has been in a productive partnership with The Journal of Music in Ireland (JMI) in publishing in each issue of the journal a black-and-white archival image from its collections on some aspect of Irish traditional music (as well as extensive listings of recent publications). Each image has accompanying text by Nicholas Carolan.

In 2007 the JMI became an online journal as well as continuing to publish in hardcopy, and the Archive’s images are now available on the JMI site. In 2008 the JMI became the Journal of Music with which the project continues.

With thanks to editor Toner Quinn and JM staff. With thanks also for the donation of photographs to ITMA and for other facilitation to the Breathnach Family, Luke Cheevers, Ken Garland, the Irish Examiner, Antain Mac Lochlainn, Liam McNulty, Pat McNulty, the National Library of Ireland, O’Donoghue’s public house, Merrion Row, Dublin, the Gerard O’Grady Family, J.B. Vallely, & the directors of the Willie Clancy Summer School. ITMA always welcomes such donations or the opportunity to copy such materials.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 August 2008

It would seem that when bellows bagpipes were first brought to Ireland in the late 1600s they were introduced at a fairly high social level. Certainly they were often played in their early centuries here by prosperous amateurs, ‘gentlemen pipers’. Professional Irish uilleann pipers were employed by the gentry and were well rewarded by other wealthy patrons, in England even by the monarchs George III and George IV.

But as the instrument grew in popularity, cheap sets were played by low-status and often disabled musicians, performing for poor audiences on the street, and in cottages and taverns, and at fairs. In the 19th century, with changes in musical fashion, the uilleann pipes became generally associated with these indigent street pipers, especially after the Great Famine of the mid-century. Poverty became the hallmark of pipers, and the collective term ‘a poverty of pipers’ was used to describe them.

The images reproduced below are of uilleann pipers from this period of decline in the late 19th and early 20th century. With the growth of the Gaelic League and the establishment of pipers’ clubs in Cork and Dublin in the years around 1900, the decline of uilleann piping and pipers was temporarily arrested. The final image below, a photograph of pipers taken at the Dublin Feis Ceoil of 1901, as well as including amateur pipers of farming stock and piping-club enthusiasts, includes the blind professional Galway city piper Martin Reilly who was forced to have recourse to the poorhouse there at periods in his life.

With thanks to donors of photographs: Breathnach family, Nóirín Leech (Pavee Point), Ted Hickey, & Liam McNulty.

Nicholas Carolan & Ian Lynch, 1 October 2012

Essentially, everyone who learns an Irish traditional tune is a collector of the music, and most interested people will have a memorised collection, even if they don’t sing or play an instrument. But what is normally meant by the term are those dedicated individuals who amass over time large numbers of songs and melodies and preserve them on a variety of paper media or on sound or video recordings. They may partly be motivated by personal or commercial considerations, but most collectors are altruistic, driven by a wish to preserve and share something that they themselves enjoy and value. Some may in time publish items from their collections.

The collectors featured in this gallery from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive range from those of the 18th and 19th centuries who of necessity collected with pen and paper and had the rare skill of being able to jot down melodies at first hearings, to those modern collectors with the no less valuable skill of operating audio and video technology to faithfully convey the reality of live performance. A debt is owed to all of them for enabling people now and in the future to experience the past of the music, and for providing materials for its ongoing re-creation.

Also here while it is still active is a link to a recent RTÉ ‘Nationwide’ programme (this programme is no longer available on the RTÉ Player) which featured the work of the collectors Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie on the occasion of their recordings being made available through the Clare County Library here. An ITMA feature on their Irish collections can be found below.

With thanks to Colette Moloney, Ríonach uí Ógáin, Peter Browne, & Lisa Shields.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2015

This audio playlist has been curated by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff to provide a soundscape to the Decade of Centenaries. The selection reflects material of contemporary political, cultural and popular interest and is drawn from recordings held in the ITMA collections. The songs, music and speech come from wax cylinder and 78 rpm disc recordings, ranging in date from 1905−c.1940, which have been digitised by ITMA, and in the case of the wax cylinders by Henri Chamoux. They were originally recorded in Ireland, London and New York by early recording pioneers, the majority issued by commercial recording companies.

The recordings provide a backdrop to a changing Ireland: the Gaelic League and the Irish-language revival, the First World War, the 1916 Rising, and Irish and international popular music of the day, including the first wave of popular Irish-American vaudeville instrumentalists.

We drew inspiration from printed resources (see Erin remember 1916 below) as well as the Irish Military Archives’ Bureau of Military History Collection, 1913−1921. The witness statements are a rich source of information on songs, fundraising concerts, marching bands and individual musicians and singers of the period. Recordings made in Germany in 1917 of Irish prisoners of war are also an extremely valuable contemporary resource. They have been digitised by the Sound Archive of Humboldt University Berlin.

You will find more information about each recording in the playlist by selecting the arrow key to the right of each title. This will bring you to the individual page for this audio piece. Here you will find composer names, recording labels, etc. which we have been able to source. Where possible we have linked to printed versions of the sound recordings which you can also view online.

This playlist is a sampler of the many sound recordings held in ITMA which reference events during the Decade of Centenaries. ITMA will continue to catalogue and highlight historical recordings while also documenting responses to the events of 1916 in 1966 and 2016.

Grace Toland, Danny Diamond, Brian Doyle & Alan Woods, 1 March 2016

The banjo has been a popular instrument in American culture, particularly in jazz and minstrel music, since the early 20th century. It is now generally accepted that the banjo originated in Africa and was introduced to the United States as a consequence of the slave trade. In its original form, it would have been constructed from timber gourds and hide skin with hemp or gut strings. In the United States the instrument underwent numerous modifications, such as the addition of frets, tension hoops, synthetic skins and steel strings. Gradually the banjo was integrated into mainstream popular American music.

However the popularity it was to gain in Irish traditional music most probably began with the invention of the four-string or tenor banjo in the opening years of the 20th century. This differed in a number of ways from earlier models, but most significantly the tenor banjo had four strings instead of five, had a shorter neck and was played with a plectrum. It was tuned at a higher pitch than its modern equivalent, but in fifths, similar to the mandolin, and thus complemented the fiddle. It also had the advantage of being loud, making it suitable to play in the noisy, poorly amplified venues of the time. Another factor in its popularity was the ready availability of high quality instruments, at affordable prices, by makers such as William Lange of Paramount fame, with a factory on 225−227 East Twenty Fourth Street, New York.

This selection of early 20th-century recordings reflect the sounds of the pioneers of this ‘new’ instrument in the tradition. Without there being teachers to imitate, a range of styles and approaches developed:  James Ryan, from Paddy Killoran’s Pride of Erin Orchestra, tended to use the banjo largely as a backing instrument; Michael Gaffney adopted a plain melodic style, while the virtuoso playing of Mike Flanagan was a mixture of melody and chords held together by a wonderful underlying sense of rhythm.

The earliest-known commercial recording of Irish traditional music played on the banjo dates back to 18 December 1916, when James Wheeler recorded with accordion player Edward Herborn for the Columbia label.

We hope you enjoy this eclectic mix of early banjo-playing styles from ITMA’s collection of 78 rpm discs.

Brian Doyle, 1 February 2016

John Nicholson of Belfast, last of the substantial ballad-sheet printers of the city, flourished from the late 1880s to the late 1910s. During these decades, he occupied the Cheapside Song House, premises at 24 or 26 Church Lane in the city, from which he also sold songbooks, some of them of his own printing.

Nicholson’s product was sold across Ulster, and especially in counties Down and Antrim. His core market was loyalist and orange but, as will be seen from the sheets reproduced below, he also to a degree catered for nationalist and green sentiment and published songs of general interest.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive has recently been able to purchase an unusual sheet of four uncut nationalist-sentiment Nicholson ballads, and this is presented here as the second of two uncut Nicholson ballad sheets in the ITMA collections. The first, also a purchase, is a sixteen-ballad sheet of loyalist sentiment. The songs on both uncut and undated sheets are also copied as individual items. The final four Nicholson ballad sheets here were donated to ITMA by the late Leslie Shepard. All items are also presented in PDF format for ease of enlargement and printing.

With thanks to Leslie Shepard, Jill Shepard Glenstrup, & Dr John Moulden, who has donated to ITMA a copy of his 2006 Ph.D. thesis The Printed Ballad in Ireland: A Guide to the Popular Printing of Songs in Ireland, 1760–1920.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 August 2013

Most published Irish political songs, whatever their shade of opinion, are to be found on ballad sheets, chapbooks and songsters, mainly dating from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Aimed at the general non-music-reading public, they carry only the words of the songs, not their music.

The music of political songs, however, is to be found, in sheet-music form, again dating from these centuries but aimed at the musically literate. These songs also represent different political opinions, from the loyalist Volunteer movement of the late 18th century to the separatist nationalist movements of the early 20th.

With a new rise of nationalist feeling from the beginning of the 20th century, and especially after the 1916 rebellion and the 1922 foundation of the Irish Free State, a number of small sheet-music firms in Dublin specialised in the publication of Irish national songs. These were arranged for voice and piano, and were often literary in tone; their subject matter varied from the past glories of Irish history to contemporary political issues.

The selection of 20th-century Dublin-published sheet music of national songs presented here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive was published by the Art Depot, the Gaelic Press, the Kearney Brothers, Quinn & Co, and Whelan & Son. It is arranged as far as possible in chronological order by subject.

With thanks for the donation of sheet music to Paul Deegan, Bríd Hetherington, Seamus Kearns, Mrs Caroline Mullan, the Library of the National University of Ireland Galway, Nellie Walsh, & Waltons Ltd of Dublin. ITMA would always welcome the donation of other materials of this kind which are not yet in its collections (check our catalogues here), or of their loan for copying.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 December 2010

Musically talented, she was classically trained on piano and voice in Frankfurt, London and Milan. Having settled in London after her marriage, she became one of the founder-members there of the Irish Folk Song Society in 1904 and editor (with Herbert Hughes) of its journal. She engaged in collecting folksongs in Waterford, Down, Donegal and Tyrone, and in other parts of Ireland, and apart from her many publications in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, she separately published (in collaboration with her sisters Alice Milligan and Mary Edith Wheeler) arrangements of traditional tunes to original words. Her major work was her 1911 study Annals of the Irish Harpers. Her greatest contribution to Irish music however was her discovery of the forgotten music and song manuscripts of the traditional-music collector Edward Bunting and her donation of them to the Library of Queen’s University Belfast.

The selection of Irish Traditional Music Archive materials related to Charlotte Milligan Fox reproduced here focuses on her separately published arrangements in book and sheet-music forms, and includes pages from an illuminated address presented to her by her colleagues in the Irish Folk Song Society. In addition, the Archive published in 2000 an extensive guide to the Bunting papers in Queen’s Library: The Irish Music Manuscripts of Edward Bunting (1773–1843): An Introduction and Catalogue by Colette Moloney.

Fox, Charlotte Milligan, Annals of the Irish harpers, London: Smith Elder & Co, 1911

Fox, Charlotte Milligan, Annals of the Irish harpers, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1912

ITMA would welcome the donation of other materials of this kind which are not yet in its collections (check our catalogues here), or of their loan for copying.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 August 2011

Miss Honoria Tomkins Galwey (31 May 1830 – 7 January 1925), an almost forgotten North of Ireland collector of Irish traditional music, edited the varied collection presented here: Old Irish Croonauns and Other Tunes, published in London and New York by Boosey & Co in 1910 and containing 72 dance tunes and song melodies (with some song texts). Many items are Irish and all were ‘written down exactly as I heard them’. Source-notes are included, and the collection was deservedly well regarded in its own time.

Born to Ven. Charles Galwey, a musical Cork-born Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Derry, and Honoria Knox of Prehen, Co Derry, Miss Galwey lived also from childhood in Inishowen, Co Donegal, where her father was rector of Moville, and much of the music she ‘re-collected and collected’ came from the oral tradition of both counties. Although she collected from a range of lilters, whistlers, singers, fiddle, concertina and jews-harp players, and from manuscript, an important source was uilleann piper Tom Gordon of Moville, Co Donegal. A singer and a seemingly self-taught pianist who had played with traditional musicians, she was still playing within a few weeks of her death in Derry. Through her musical interests, she was linked to a turn-of-the-century network of Irish cultural activity in Britain and Ireland: that of the poets Alfred Perceval Graves and Moira O’Neill, the arrangers Charles Wood, R. Arthur Oulton and Arthur Somervell, the composer Charles Villiers Stanford, the singer Plunkett Greene, and the folklorist and founder of the Gaelic League Douglas Hyde – several of these also the children of Church of Ireland clergymen. She made her collections available to the Irish Folk Song Society, founded in London by Graves and others in 1904.

Honoria Galway first appeared in print late in life, as the contributor of seven melodies (also presented here) and some traditional verses to the 1897 Boosey volume Irish Folk-Songs, a collection of mostly original song-lyrics written by A.P. Graves and set to traditional melodies by Charles Wood. Subsequently three of her collaborations were published as sheet music before Old Irish Croonauns first appeared in 1910, to be followed by a later Boosey Co reprint and an American facsimile reprint in 1975, and a later item of sheet music. She was a source of the song ‘Over Here’ (‘Oh, the praties they are small’), which was rewritten by Graves to relate to the Great Famine, and the song ‘Molly Brannigan’ also owes its popularity to her. Following her father, she always held that the famous ‘Londonderry Air’ belonged as much to Donegal as to Derry.

Also reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are a 19 September 1908 postcard from A.P. Graves (1846–1931) to Miss Galwey and a 22 September 1908 letter from her to Rev. Leslie Creery Stevenson (1878–1961), a hymnwriter and a Church of Ireland curate at the time on Rathlin Island, Co Antrim.

ITMA would welcome donations of or the opportunity to copy four known sheet-music items related to airs collected by Honoria Galway: ‘The Blackbird’ (words by Moira O’Neill, music arranged by Arthur Somervell), ‘Molly Brannigan’ (old words, music arranged by Sir C. Villiers Stanford), ‘Slumber Song’ (words by Moira O’Neill, music arranged by R. Arthur Oulton), Two Irish Airs (music arranged by Mary Tomlinson): 1 ‘The Rock on the Shore’ (words by B.F. Stuart), 2 ‘Little Blue Pigeon’ (words by E. Field). All are believed to have been published by Boosey & Co in London.

Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 December 2014

Sound recording was introduced to Ireland in the late 19th century when cylinder recording machines were used for the professional and amateur recording of Irish traditional music. But sound technology was not to play a significant role in documenting Ireland’s musical memory until three to four decades later. To learn more about what songs were known or sung during the Decade of Centenaries in Ireland (1912–1922), we have turned to the printed collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

The collection of 37 items below builds on an earlier digital collection of printed material Nationalist Songs on Sheet Music, early 1900s. Other items have now been added to reflect the range of political, cultural and social change at play during this eventful period in Irish history: the Home Rule Movement, the Gaelic League, the Dublin Lock Out, World War I, the 1916 Rising and what lay beyond.

The Home Rule Song Book featured in the collection looked to the writings of earlier nationalist poets and song writers as sources of inspiration for its political aspirations, a feature also evident in the cultural activities of the Gaelic League, formed in 1893. An intense revival of interest in Irish language, song, music and dance opened opportunities for members to learn and perform. Songs arranged with piano accompaniment and to suit the taste of the musically literate found an audience among such Gaelic Leaguers. These included the works of Thomas Davis (1814–1845) such as ‘A Nation Once Again’ and ‘The West’s Asleep’, the latter captured here from a recording of singer Donncadh O’Finn at the 1907 Oireachtas in Dublin.

Other more immediate concerns faced the thousands of Dubliners whose harsh living and working conditions were brought to light and challenged during the Dublin Lockout (1913–1914). From this period we have included works of the Irish Citizen Army members James Connolly and Countess Markievicz.

Across Europe international politics were to draw an estimated 200,000 Irishmen to fight in World War I. While ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, presented below, captured the popular imagination, the recent discovery, by Irish Times journalists Derek Scally and Ronan McGreevy, of sound recordings of Irish prisoners of war recorded in Germany in 1917, and now held in the Lautarchiv Humboldt University Berlin, evoke this period as nothing else can.

We end this printed collection with a wide variety of Dublin-published nationalist sheet music, reflecting the events of Easter Week 1916, the subsequent execution of the leaders, and the 1922 foundation of the Irish Free State.

The ITMA collections in 73 Merrion Square contain more song collections relating to this period. We look forward to sharing information on new discoveries during 2016.

With thanks for the donation of sheet music, books & ballad sheets to Paul Deegan, Bríd Hetherington, Seamus Kearns, Mrs Caroline Mullan, the Library of the National University of Ireland Galway, Máirtín Ó Flathartaigh, Nora & Colm Ó Laoghaire, Nellie Walsh, & Waltons Ltd of Dublin.

Grace Toland & Maeve Gebruers, 1 February 2016

In 1914, the second edition of A Handbook of Irish Dances: with an Essay on their Origin and History, available here, was published in Dublin by M.H. Gill and Son. As with the first edition published in 1902, the dance manual gives instruction for 26 figure dances, taken mostly from the teaching of the London-based Kerry dance master Patrick Reidy, and Tadhg Sheáin Ó Súilleabháin from Glenbeigh, Co Kerry. The descriptions of these dances and their publication were the work of two prominent members of the Gaelic League of London: James George O’Keeffe (1865–1937) and Arthur Patrick O’Brien (1872–1949).

Art was born in London to a prosperous and established family, his father John Francis O’Brien being a native of Cork. He studied civil and electrical engineering and after working abroad returned to London in c. 1899. Late-Victorian London was the home of a variety of Irish cultural revivalist organisations such as the Southwark Irish Literary Club (founded 1883), the Irish Literary Society (1892), the Irish Texts Society (1896) and the Gaelic League of London (1896). Art O’Brien joined the Gaelic League of London in 1899, and gaelicised his name to Art Ó Briain… ‘thenceforth becoming a regular attendant at the classes and other gatherings’. At such gatherings, Art would have met one of the London League’s exhibition dancers Seamus O’Keeffe (James George O’Keeffe). A native of Kanturk, Co Cork, Seamus was steeped in the language, literature and dance of his native area. He was educated in Blackrock College, Dublin, and moved to London in 1885 to work as a civil servant in the War Office. As a member of the Irish Literary Society and the Gaelic League of London, he taught Irish-language classes. With the League, he and Kathleen O’Brien of Limerick taught step dancing classes in Madame Geree’s Ballet Dance Parlours in Leicester Square, and with Liam O’Looney of Cork performed exhibition dances. London-based dance master Patrick Reidy introduced a repertory of group dances or ‘ceili’ dances such as ‘The Siege of Ennis’ and ‘The Walls of Limerick’ which were easier to learn. O’Keeffe and O’Brien visited Kerry following the Ballyvourney Feis in 1899 to add to their social dances and meet an increased demand for such dances. The role of the Gaelic League of London in introducing the concept of Irish ceili dancing is documented in the article ‘The Beginnings of Ceili Dancing: London in the 1890s’ available here. The popularity of such social dancing within the Gaelic League movement may well have provided the impetus to share and publish a description of the dances in 1902.

Art O’Brien was to play a substantial role in nationalist politics following the outbreak of the First World War as a member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in London, and in founding the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain (1920–21). His political career was however marred by financial controversy and he removed himself from political life until 1933, but remained President of the Gaelic League of London until 1935. Under Sean T. O’Kelly he was appointed Irish Minister to France and Belgium 1935–1938. He died in Dublin in 1949.

James George O’Keeffe was a respected and prolific editor of Irish-language texts as a member of the Irish Texts Society and Scoil Ard-Léinn na Gaeilge, publishing for example Táin Bó Cuailgne from the Yellow Book of Lecan with John Strachan and Buile Suibhne. In 1914 he was appointed a financial advisor for the British War Office in the United States and was awarded an OBE. in 1918. He died in Richmond, Surrey in 1937.

The second edition of the Handbook which we have digitised and made available on the ITMA site does differ from the 1902 edition but not in terms of the basic dance instructions. Of note also in the 1914 publishing is the use of Ireland’s first national trade mark ‘Déanta in Eireann’, reflective of the cultural and political nationalism of the period. The symbol was introduced in 1906.

ITMA thanks the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin Ireland for permission to upload the article by Art Ó Briain, ‘Gaedhil thar Sáile: Some Notes on the Gaelic League of London’ in The Capuchin Annual (1944), pp. 116–126, and also thanks Dr Brian Kirby, Provincial Archivist of the Irish Capuchins, for his help.

Grace Toland & Maeve Gebruers, 1 April 2016

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.

Patrick Weston Joyce was a highly industrious writer throughout his life, and his many seminal books have been frequently mined by writers of newspaper and magazine articles. But Joyce’s own writing efforts went into books rather than articles, and very few articles written by him are known.

Three such are presented here in facsimile, the first a 1904 contribution of airs, rather than an article proper, which he made to the first number of the journal of the Irish Folk Song Society. This society had recently been founded in London by Alfred Perceval Graves, Charlotte Milligan Fox, Herbert Hughes, and others. Joyce was one of its sixteen vice-presidents until his death. He was aged 77 in 1904 and was rightly regarded as the doyen of Irish traditional music collectors by the founders. The second Joyce piece, from the same publication later in 1904, discusses the possible ancient provenance of Irish folk songs by comparing Danish airs to Irish airs of the same name. The third, from the same publication in 1912, is a memoir rather than an article proper.

1. P.W. Joyce, ‘Airs’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol. 1, no 1 (April 1904), pp. 5−6

2. P.W. Joyce, ‘Irish and Danish folk music’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol. 1, nos 2−3 (Jul.−Oct. 1904), pp. 37−40

3. P.W. Joyce, ‘Some Reminiscences of a Collector of Irish Folk Music (a Communication to Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves by Dr. P.W. Joyce)’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol. 11 (Jan.−June 1912), pp. 9−14

PW Joyce’s final and most extensive music publication appeared in 1909: Old Irish Folk Music and Songs: A Collection of 842 Irish Airs and Songs Hitherto Unpublished (Dublin: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland; London: Longmans, Green & Co, etc.).

It is presented in four sections: 1 The Joyce Collection (melodies collected and recollected by himself, or sent to him in manuscript from all parts of Ireland); 2 Continuation of the Joyce Collection (Irish folk songs in the English language, with the words set to the proper old Irish airs, the syllables under the notes; most from his childhood recollection, and from his personal collection of ballad sheets); 3 The Forde Collection (selection of melodies collected by William Forde of Cork, 1830s–1850s, edited by Joyce); 4 The Pigot Collection (selection of melodies collected by John Edward Pigot of Dublin, 1840s–1860s, edited by Joyce). The two latter collections had been given to Joyce by relatives of Pigot; in 1910 he donated them to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy where they remain.