Hugh Shields (1929–2008) was a lecturer in French and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. There his research was mainly in medieval and oral literature. He published a study of folk singing in North Derry (Shamrock, Rose and Thistle) and a collection of old Dublin songs, wrote numerous articles on songs, singing and the ballad press and edited a variety of publications as well as ethnographic tapes and discs of traditional singing in Ireland and in France: the fruit of many years collecting in the field.

His study Narrative Singing in Ireland was first published in 1993 in hardback and paperback by the Irish Academic Press. IAP reprinted the paperback version in 2010 with a new introduction by Lillis Ó Laoire. This has long been out of print and the copyright of the 1993 book now belongs to the Estate of Hugh Shields.

As Nicholas Carolan wrote in his article on Hugh for the journal Béaloideas:

“Hugh’s long experience of living traditional song, his library researches, and his original thinking about traditional song, resulted in 1993 in his magnum opus on its study, the landmark Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs. In a classic document of Irish culture, he ranges in Irish-language and English-language narrative song from the medieval to the modern, while not neglecting lyric song. Song is seen as something which exists fully only in performance, which involves an audience as well as a singer, and which has a variety of community as well as personal meanings. Singers and song-makers are studied with the music and media of song. The subsequent shrinkage of traditional culture and the disappearance of traditions which he himself witnessed and documented add to the continuing value of this essential reading.”

Carolan, Nicholas, ‘Hugh Shields and Irish traditional music’, Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 85 (2017) 223–241

Hugh’s family is now pleased to make available to ITMA users a searchable and down­loadable digital version of the original 1993 book.

You can download a copy of the book here.