After the death of Mrs Milligan Fox in 1916 and a subsequent period of inactivity, the Irish Folk Song Society underwent a radical change. While it retained London members and other London connections, its centre of activity and some of its printing moved to Dublin, its occasional concerts and lectures ended in the early 1920s, and its focus shifted from English-language to Irish-language song. Material was now treated in a scholarly rather than a dilettantish fashion. Its active members were enthusiasts who had been educated in Gaelic League circles in England, some of whom had moved to live in Ireland, and their only activity was the production of the journal. In this, their models were the numerous Gaelic League publications of the early century and the strongly continuing journal of the Folk Song Society of 1898, rather than the early volumes of the IFSS. The Earl of Shaftesbury continued as president of the Society until it came to an end, but notables of the new Irish Free State began to be added to its committee from the mid-1920s.

A period of transition began in 1917 when the Society was offered a collection of some 80 Irish-language songs made in the counties Galway and Mayo by Eibhlín Bean Mhic Choisdealbha (Mrs Edith Costello, née Drury, 1870–1962). A former school principal in England and a political activist in Ireland, she had been born in London of partly Irish parentage and had been prominent in the London Gaelic League from its foundation in 1896 as an organiser, a teacher of singing and dance, and a song collector. In 1903 she moved to Tuam, Co. Galway, to teach there, and from 1908 to 1913 she collected Irish-language songs while accompanying her husband, a medical doctor, on his rounds. The IFSS did not have the funds to publish her collection but in 1919 it made an arrangement with a Dublin publisher, The Candle Press, to issue it separately as the collection Amhráin Mhuighe Seóla and also, with additions, as volume XVI of the IFSS journal. The Society made it a condition that the songs should be accompanied by an English translation, and English remained the editorial language of the journal.

A significant new name appeared among the members of the IFSS publication committee in Mrs Costello’s volume XVI of 1919: that of D.J. O’Sullivan RNVR (Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve). Donal O’Sullivan (1893–1973, left below) was born in Liverpool of Kerry parents and had come into contact with Irish traditional music when on holidays with his grandparents in Kerry. A British civil servant and a participant in London Gaelic League activities, he served on a minesweeper during the First World War, subsequently moving to Dublin as a civil servant during the War of Independence and eventually becoming Clerk of the Senate of the Irish Free State. It is not known if he was a singer or musician, but he was clearly musically literate. He had been collecting traditional songs (music and words) on paper in Kerry from the 1910s and had a wide acquaintance with early publications of Irish music. He took up the editorship of the journal at the invitation of the Society in 1919 and remained in the position until publication ceased in 1939.

From volume XVII of 1920 until 1939 the publication committee of the Society consisted of O’Sullivan, A. Martin Freeman (centre below) and Miss Eleanor Hull (right below), and O’Sullivan was the dominant figure. Freeman (1878–1959), a private scholar, historian, musician and singer, was a Londoner married to an Irishwoman from Donegal, Aida Peoples (1873–1942), a painter and musician who acted as treasurer of the IFSS 1920–39. He had made an important collection of Irish-language song in Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, in 1913–14, and was a crucial support to O’Sullivan in his years as editor. Hull (1860–1935), born in Manchester but reared in Dublin before spending most of her life in London, was a Celtic scholar and writer and a member of the Gaelic League. She was one of several scholars recruited by O’Sullivan to assist with linguistic and cultural questions arising in the journal.

O’Sullivan produced five annual volumes of the journal from 1920 to 1924, XVII to XXI. They contained some 100 airs and songs, the majority with Irish texts. Most were noted from oral tradition and all were contextualised by extensive notes and references to variants. A gap of two years then ensued before the next volume appeared, one which marked a new departure for the Society and its journal.

This was to be an edition of the three famous harp volumes of Edward Bunting (1773–1843), based on Bunting’s original music manuscripts, as made available in Belfast by Mrs Milligan Fox, and with the addition of Irish-language song texts. Most of these had been collected by Patrick Lynch (1750s–1838) of Co. Down on commission from Bunting, but had never been published. O’Sullivan, working in his spare time in Belfast and Dublin and assisted to an unknown extent by Freeman, worked serially through Bunting’s first volume of 1797 (long thought to have been published in 1796) in volumes XXII to XXV of the journal, issued 1927–30. He completed his edition of Bunting’s second volume of 1809 in volumes XXVI to XXIX, 1932–1939. The two editions dealt with 130 melodies and songs in detail. At that stage the Society seems to have consisted only of O’Sullivan and his few associates and supporters, and with the onset of the Second World War it came to an end. Rising printing costs made an edition of Bunting’s large third volume of 1840 unfeasible and O’Sullivan abandoned the project.

After his retirement as a civil servant following the abolition of the Senate in 1936, O’Sullivan continued to work on Irish music as well as political affairs, holding music research positions in University College Dublin from 1951 and Trinity College Dublin from 1965. From 1947 he was active as vice-president of the International Folk Music Council. His publications included a variety of articles on Irish music and song, the booklet Irish Folk Music and Song (1952), his masterwork Carolan: The Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper (1958) and Songs of the Irish (1960). In 1967 he cooperated with the republication of the complete run of the IFSS journals by William Dawson & Sons of London, adding extensive indexes. By this time he had resumed work on Bunting’s final volume of 1840 on the lines of his earlier editions, but this was unfinished at the time of his death in 1973. It was completed by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin in Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland (1983). O’Sullivan’s papers (including Freeman papers) are held in the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin.

The first, very different, phase of the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society consists of its first volumes I–XV, 1904–1915. This is available here.

The copies of the IFSS journal presented here in facsimile are from ITMA’s Gráinne Yeats Collection, donated by her family.

Text: Nicholas Carolan; digitisation: Linda Badgley & Maeve Gebruers, 30 April 2024