Irish Music

Songs (Print & Online)

Library Research Guide

Online Song Resources

A selection of freely-available sites for Irish songs and song lyrics:

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Drop-down menu allows limiting searches by format, e.g., "audio recordings," "notated music."
Tomás Ó Máille Wax Cylinder Project at the University of Galway
Ó Máille’s collection of 398 wax cylinders (circa 1928-1938) contains vocal material in Irish including speech, storytelling, and song, reflecting his lifelong interests in linguistics, folklore, and music collecting.
Irish Sheet Music Archives (Ward Irish Music Archives)
The Irish Sheet Music Archives website is the home of the online sheet music collections found in the Ward Irish Music Archives located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Donagh MacDonagh Song Collection
Irish song lyrics collected by Donagh MacDonagh.
Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and America
Lesley Nelson-Burns' "Contemplator" Folk Music Site. Includes lyrics, midi, and background information, including Francis J. Child Ballads and sea shanties.
Folk Song Index
An Oberlin College Libraries and Sing Out! Collaboration. An index to folks songs of the world, with an emphasis on English-language songs.
Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries
the Bodleian's digital collections of ballads, with links to the English Broadside Ballad Archive’s digital presentations of pre-1800 ballads from other libraries, and to the folk song scholarship of the Roud Broadside Index, hosted by the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Roud Folk Song Index and Broadside Index
The Roud Folk Song Index seeks to provide details of English-language traditional songs that have been recorded in any medium - books, journals, newspapers, manuscript collections in public and private hands, published or unpublished sound recordings, videos, websites, and so on. -- The bulk of the entries in the Broadside Index are references to songs published on printed street literature trade (late 16th to late 19th centuries) in the form of broadsides, chapbooks, and cheap songsters. Coverage has been extended to include a much wider range of popular and vernacular songs including, in particular, 18th century songbooks and 19th century music hall publications. Originally envisaged as covering Britain and Ireland, material from across the English-speaking world is now included. The cut-off date is about 1920.
Colm Ó Lochlainn Collection: Ballads (University College, Dublin)
Collection of broadsheet and single ballads which were the major source for Ó Lochlainn's two volumes of Irish street ballads.
Irish Broadside Ballad Collection at Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library
A collection of 559 broadsides, most measuring 28 x 11 1/2 cm. Broadsides were printed and sold in streets and at fairs and markets from the early days of printing, often by ballad singers. These broadsides were mostly printed in Dublin, probably between 1860 and 1876, by the printer P. Brereton.
The Full English Digital Archive
The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) has launched a digital archive of traditional English folk music and dances tunes. The digital archive is available via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) web site, along with the Roud Indexes.
Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music
Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, in the Special Collections of Sheridan Libraries, John Hopkins University.
Mudcat Cafe
The Mudcat Cafe -- resources for finding song lyrics. Search the Digital Traditions database (DT), discussion forum, or both.
Sheet Music Consortium (UCLA)
Sheet Music Consortium contributors: UCLA, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University.
Sheet Music from Indiana
A search and discovery system for accessing sheet music from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society.
Traditional Ballad Index
Traditional Ballad Index

Song Collections (Print Compilations)

A select list of well-known Irish song collections:

Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. The Irish Songbook. New York: Oak Publications, 1979. (Burns Library: Irish Music Archives M074/2000-1/BK040)

Clandillon, Seamus. Londub an Cairn: Being Songs of the Irish Gaels in Staff and Sol-fa with English Metrical Translations. London: Oxford University Press, 1927. (O'Neill Library: M1744.H2 ; Burns Library: M1744.H2 1927 IRISH)

Cole, William. Folk Songs of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Secaucus, N.J.: Warner Bros., [1993?]. (O'Neill Library: M1738.C69 F6 1993; Burns Library Irish Music Archives: M074/2000-1/BK042)

Cronin, Elizabeth. The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Irish Traditional Singer: the Complete Song Collection. Compiled and edited by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. (O'Neill Library: M1744 .C88 2000). Accompanied by CD.

Henry, Sam. Sam Henry's Songs of the People. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. (O'Neill Library: M1745.3.S35 1990; Burns Library Irish Music Center: M1745.3.S35 1990 GENERAL)

Kennedy, Peter. Folksongs of Britain and Ireland. London: Oak, 1984. (O'Neill Library: M1738.K4 F6 1984; Burns Library Irish Music Archives: M074/2000-1 BK094)

Loesbeg, John. Folksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland. Cork: Ossian, 1980- . (O'Neill Library: M1744 .F7 1980) (In four volumes.)

Mangan, James Clarence. Poets and Poetry of Munster. Dublin: J. Duffy, 1884. (O'Neill Library: PB1395.M7 M32; Burns Library: PB1395.M7 M3 1909 IRISH )

Milner, Dan. The Bonnie Bunch of Roses. New York: Oak, 1983. (O'Neill Library: M1738 .B66 1983)

O Baoill, Manus. Ceolta Gael. Cork: Mercier, 1975. (O'Neill Library: M1744 .C363x 1975)

O Baoill, Manus. Ceolta Gael 2. Cork: Mercier, 1986. (O'Neill Library: M1744 .C364 1985)

O'Rourke, Brian. Blas Meala: A Sip from the Honey-Pot: A Selection of Gaelic Folksongs with Prose Translations and Verse Equivalents. Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1985. (O'Neill Library: PB1424 .O57 1985)

O'Rourke, Brian. Pale Rainbow: An Dubh ina Bhán: A Selection of Gaelic Folksongs with Prose Translations and Verse Equivalents. Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989. (O'Neill Library: PB1424 .O57; Burns Library Irish Music Archives: PB1424 .O58 1990 GENERAL)

O'Sullivan, Donal. Songs of the Irish: An Anthology of Irish Folk Music and Poetry with English Verse Translations. Dublin: Mercier, 1981. (O'Neill Library: M1744.O83 S6x 1981)

O Tuama, Sean Og. An Coisir Ceoil. Ath Cliath: An Claisceadal Cois Life, [1952-ca. 1962]. (Burns Library Irish Music Archives: M1744 .O788 FOLIOS - volumes 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10.)

Shields, Hugh. Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1981. (O'Neill Library: M1745.3 .S45 1981; Burns Library Irish Music Archives: M074/2000-1/BK159)

Wright, Robert L. Irish Emigrant Ballads and Songs. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975. (Burns Library Irish Music Center Reference: M1744 .I655 REF)

Print Indexes

Brunnings, Florence E. Folk Song Index: A Comprehensive Guide to the Florence E. Brunnings Collection. New York: Garland, 1981. (Burns Library: Irish Music Center Reference ML128.F75 B83 1981 REF)

Havlice, Patricia Pate. Popular Song Index. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1975-2005. (O'Neill Library Reference: ML128.S3 H4)

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Irish Music

Songs (Print & Online)

Online Song Resources

Song Collections (Print Compilations)

Print Indexes