Irish Hymnody

Featured Hymns & Tunes:

Be thou my vision
I bind unto myself today

Atomriug indíu niurt trén togairm trinoit
Rop tú mo baile

DEIRDRE
GARTAN
ST. COLUMBA
ST. PATRICK
SLANE

Irish Authors and Composers:

Cecil Francis Alexander
Nicholas Brady
Eleanor Hull
Thomas Kelly
Henry Francis Lyte
Charitie Lees Smith
Charles Villiers Stanford
Nahum Tate

Hymnals for Irish Churches:

Hymns for Public Worship (1856): WorldCat

Church Hymnal [1st ed.]

words only (1864): PDF
with Appropriate Tunes (1864): WorldCat

Church Hymnal [2nd ed.]

Set to Appropriate Tunes (1873): Archive.org [1875]
with Biographical Indexes (1876)
with Appendix and Biographical Indexes (1891): Archive.org [1895]
The Church’s Song: A Companion (1908): WorldCat

The Psalter: A Revised Edition (1880): Archive.org

The Psalter in Metre: A Revised Version (1899)

The Armagh Hymnal (1915)

Church Hymnal [3rd ed.]

words only (1915)
with Tunes (1919)
The Church’s Song, 2nd ed. (1920): WorldCat
with Appendix (1936)

Dánta Dé (1928)

Church Hymnal (1960) [4th ed.]

Leabhar Iomann (1961)

Veritas Hymnal (1973)

Duanra (1975)

Irish Church Praise (1990)

Sing and Pray (1990)

Glory to God (1994)

Church Hymnal [5th ed.]

Words | Melody | Full Music (2000)
Companion to Church Hymnal (2005)

Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook (2004)

The Psalms for Singing (2004)

Thanks and Praise (2015)

Notable Manuscripts:

Bangor Antiphonary (7th century)

Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, MS C 5 inf.: https://ambrosiana.comperio.it/opac/detail/view/ambro:catalog:28761

F.E. Warren, The Antiphonary of Bangor, Facsimile ed. with commentary, Henry Bradshaw Society, vol. 4 (pt. 1) & vol. 10 (pt. 2) (London: Harrison & Sons, 1893–1895).

Michael Curran, The Antiphonary of Bangor and the Early Irish Monastic Liturgy (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1984).

Helen L. Patterson, “The Antiphonary of Bangor and its musical implications,” dissertation (University of Toronto, 2013): https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/70131

“Antiphonary of Bangor,” CODECS, A.G. van Hamel Foundation for Celtic Studies: https://www.vanhamel.nl/codecs/Milan,_Biblioteca_Ambrosiana,_MS_C_5_inf

Liber Hymnorum (11th century)

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1441: Trinity College Digital Collections

Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawl. B. 512: https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_8072

J.H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, The Irish Liber Hymnorum (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1898): Archive.org

Collections of Irish Folk Tunes:

Edward Bunting, A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (1796): Archive.org

Edward Bunting, New Edition of a General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, vol. 1 (ca. 1800): Archive.org

Edward Bunting, A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, vol. 1 (1809): Archive.org

Edward Bunting, Ancient Music of Ireland (1840): Archive.org

George Petrie, The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, vol. 1 (1855): Archive.org

François Hoffman, Hymn Tunes of the Ancient Irish Church from the Petrie Collection (1864): PDF

P.W. Joyce & J.W. Glover, Ancient Irish Music (1873): Archive.org

François Hoffman, Ancient Music of Ireland from the Petrie Collection (1877): Archive.org

[George Petrie,] Ancient Music of Ireland, [vol. 2] [1882]: ITMA

Lachlan MacBean, The Sacred Songs of the Gael: A Collection of Gaelic Hymns (1886): Archive.org

Lachlan MacBean, The Songs and Hymns of the Gael (1900): Archive.org

C.V. Stanford, The Complete Collection of Irish Music as Noted by George Petrie (Pts. I & II, 1902; Pt. III, 1905): Archive.org

P.W. Joyce, Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909): HathiTrust

Donal O’Sullivan & Mı́chaél Ó Súilleabháin, Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland Edited from the Original Manuscripts (1983): WorldCat

Collections of Irish Texts:

Kuno Meyer, Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (1911): Archive.org

Eleanor Hull, Poem Book of the Gael (1912): Archive.org

Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics (1956): WorldCat

Irish Hymnology:

Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society (1904–1932): HathiTrust

Eleanor Hull, “The ancient hymn-charms of Ireland,” Folklore, vol. 21, no. 4 (Dec. 1910), pp. 417–446: HathiTrust

Grace J. Calder, George Petrie and the Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1968).

Nóirín Ní Riain, “The nature and classification of traditional religious songs in Irish,” Irish Musical Studies, Gerard Gillen & Harry White, eds., vol. 2 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), pp. 190–252.

Denise M. Neary, “Music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin churches,” Irish Musical Studies, Patrick F. Devine & Harry White, eds., vol. 4 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996), pp. 103–110.

Patrick V. Brannon, “Medieval Ireland: music in cathedral, church and cloister’, Early Music, vol. 28 (2000), pp. 193–202.

Gerard Gillen, “Irish Catholics and Hymns,” The Furrow, vol. 51 (2000), pp. 548–56.

Ann Buckley, “Music in Ireland to c. 1500,” A New History of Ireland, I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, ed. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Oxford: University Press, 2005), 744–813.

Peter Murray, George Petrie (1790–1866): The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past (Cork & Kinsale, 2004).

F. E. Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, with introduction by Neil Xavier O’Donoghue, 3rd ed. (Gorgias Press, 2010).

Paul Walsh, “George Petrie: His life and work,” Pathfinders to the Past: The Antiquarian Road to Irish Historical Writing, 1640–1960, eds. P. Ní Chatháin et al. (Dublin, 2012), 44–71.

Donald Davison, “Irish Hymnody,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: http://www.hymnology.co.uk/i/irish-hymnody

Irish Traditional Music Archive: https://www.itma.ie/