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Further to ITMA’s 2024 publication of The Pigot Collection: Irish Traditional Music from the John Edward Pigot Manuscripts, here is presented the related 1850 second edition of John O’Daly’s seminal publication The Poets and Poetry of Munster: A Selection of Irish Songs by the Poets of the Last Century. This was effectively the earliest publication of the words of Irish-language traditional songs with their traditional melodies; it has had a continuing influence on the publishing of Irish-language songs for almost two hundred years. O’Daly brought out his first edition in October 1849; the second edition was enlarged.
The connection between the two volumes is that Pigot (silently) edited the melodies for the first two editions of O’Daly’s publication in 1849 and 1850 and that O’Daly in the 1840s and the year 1850 provided Pigot with over 150 traditional melodies which Pigot transcribed and thus preserved in his manuscripts. This presentation of the O’Daly volume provides the words and background for many melodies of the Pigot edition.
As is detailed in the ITMA Pigot publication, John O’Daly (c. 1800–78) was an Irish-language scribe, editor, publisher and bookseller, who grew up in rural Irish-speaking Co. Waterford, immersed in its traditional music culture. He moved as a bookseller from Kilkenny to Dublin in 1845 and recruited Pigot as his music editor for the first two editions of The Poets and Poetry of Munster (the third ‘edition’ of which duplicated the second). Pigot (1822–71), Co. Cork-born, was a barrister-at-law, an accomplished amateur musician and a highly engaged political and cultural activist, who spent most of his life in Dublin. With the aid of his wife Annie Prendergast, he compiled the largest manuscript collection of Irish traditional music made until his time; held now in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, it comprises over 3,100 melodies.
With thanks to the Royal Society of Antiquaries and the National Library of Ireland.
Text: Nicholas Carolan; digitisation: Gwendoline Lemaitre & Maeve Gebruers, 28 February 2025
