Student dancers at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, May 2008: photograph from a current exhibition at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, by Maurice Gunning, photographer-in-residence at the Academy

A nineteenth-century Irish flute player c. 1888 in ‘The Schoolmaster’s Moment of Leisure’, a watercolour and gouache by the American artist Howard Helmick (1845–1907) in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland

Family music: Tommy and Siobhán Peoples at the Willie Clancy Summer School Fiddle Recital, Miltown Malbay, Co.

Front cover (recto and verso) of the first issue of The Irish Musical Monthly, an early twentieth-century Dublin periodicalThe Irish Musical Monthly.

An Irish harper on the continent: portrait of Cork merchant William Archdeacon with his family (c.

Traditional singer Maggie Murphy (second from left) at Slieve Gullion Festival of Traditional Singing, Mullaghbawn, Co Armagh, October 1993: from colour photo by Ken Garland, London.

The Irish harp as national symbol at Daniel O’Connell’s Monster Repeal Meeting on Tara Hill, Co.

Ronnie Drew (right), Luke Kelly (seated), Ciarán Burke, & Barney McKenna on the cover of the first of some fifty original long-playing records (and hundreds of reissues) by the Dubliners group, Transatlantic TRA 116, issued 1964.

Meeting of Uilleann Pipers, Neptune Hotel, Bettystown, Co Meath, 7 april 1968.

Harry Bradshaw, recipient of the ‘Gradam na gCeoltóirí’ award of the TG4 Television Gradaim Ceoil 2008, in an RTÉ radio studio 1992. Photo by RTÉ photographer John Rowe.Harry Bradshaw, radio producer, record producer...

Black Raven Pipe and Drum Band, Lusk, Co Dublin, at Killarney Oireachtas, July 1914.

Galway traditional singer Seosamh Ó hÉanaí (centre) with, possibly, a relative (first right); Tom Clancy of the Clancy Brothers singing group (?) (first left); and, possibly, a neighbour of Ó hÉanaí’s. Photograph...

Seamus Ennis, uilleann pipes (second from right), with Peadar Mercier, bodhrán; Dan O’Dowd, uilleann pipes; and (?) Proinnsias Ní Dhorchaí, flute; by river Liffey, c. late 1970s, photographer unknownSeamus Ennis (1919–1982),...

Publicity photo of Armagh professional singer, instrumentalist and songwriter Tommy Makem with American five-string banjo, c.

Traditional-song collector Tom Munnelly (second, left) with Clare traditional singers Tom Lenihan, Miltown Malbay; Kate Droney, Ballyvaughan; Martin Reidy, Connolly; and Michael ‘Straighty’ Flanagan, Inagh, at the Willie Clancy Summer Schoo

The Irish Music Club of Chicago fl. c. 1901–09, a semi-formal association of Irish traditional musicians which included many source-players for The Dance Music of Ireland.

Dublin singer Siobhán Ní Laoire at an event of the Sean-Nós Cois Life Traditional Singing Festival on 2 April 1993 in the Góilín Club at the Ferryman, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, with fellow-singers Clíona...

Sean-nós dancer Máire Áine Ní hIarnáin from Leitir Caladh, Conamara, dancing a reel to the playing of Irish Traditional Music Archive Board members Dermot McLaughlin from Derry and Paddy Glackin from Dublin, at Merrion Square,...

A musically unreliable nineteenth-century mezzotint depicting the Longford poet, novelist and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) on the Continet. The engraving, by W.

THE GROUP SEACHTAR, WHICH WITHIN A YEAR OR TWO AND WITH SOME CHANGE OF PERSONNEL WOULD BECOME INTERNATIONALLY FAMOUS AS THE BOTHY BAND.A 1974 publicity shot by Dublin photographer Robert Dawson taken on Mespil Road, Dublin, in the apartment

ACCORDION PLAYERS BEING RECORDED ON STAGE IN HALLA AN PHOBAIL, MILTOWN MALBAY, CO CLARE, 10 JULY 2003, AT THE THIRTY-FIRST WILLIE CLANCY SUMMER SCHOOL.

Drawing made 14 July 1977 by artist Eamonn O’Doherty of fiddle-player and raconteur John Loughran in his home in Pomeroy, Co. Tyrone – from the Irish Traditional Music Archive travelling exhibition ‘The Northern Fiddler’ recently...

TRADITIONAL SINGER AND SONGMAKER EDDIE BUTCHER (1900-80) FROM MAGILLIGAN, NORTH CO.