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It seems to have been quite a lively society and there are references to dancing and singing and music: we have examples of some of the musical heritage right from the 17th century - you have the great airs such as Tabhair dom do Lámh, attributed to the Derry piper Ruairí Dall Ó Catháin, or of course the famous ‘Derry Air’ / ‘Danny Boy’ (whatever you like to call it) which probably dates at least from the 17th century, so we have some hints of what musical richness there was there, played on the pipes and on the harp and so on.

We have songs, we have certainly songs from the 17th century: there’s a debate about how far back the song tradition goes. There is a view for example that the song tradition was the poetry of the ordinary people and therefore didn’t find its way into the manuscripts; and it was only when the classical poetry began to decline and, due to lack of patrons and so on, in the 17th century, that then the song tradition which had been there all along came back to the surface and began to be included in the manuscripts. And I would be inclined to think there may be a lot of truth in that view.

And again there are various poets and authors whom we can link various songs to in the 17th and 18th centuries but there is a huge body of material whose authors are unknown - the work of ‘Anon’ as it were; and songs like Róisín Dubh, for example, which have survived down through the centuries in the oral tradition. And when Edward Bunting went collecting material at the end of the 18th century here in Belfast (and his collection is preserved here in Queen’s University Library) he discovered literally hundreds if not thousands of tunes and songs from all over Ireland, particularly from the north and the west. And I am quite certain that what we have is only a fraction of what actually existed.
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