Irish Traditional Music Archive
Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann
Press Release: 17 July 2008
DEATH OF HUGH SHIELDS (1929-2008)
The Board and staff of the Irish Traditional Music Archive deeply regret the death on Wednesday 16 July 2008, after a long illness, of Dr Hugh Shields, a founding Board member of the Archive from 1987 and an authority on Irish traditional song with an international reputation. As an experienced collector, scholar, writer and publisher, he made a valued contribution to the development of the Archive over many years, a contribution which included the donation of his large collection of field recordings to the Archive for public access and the editing of one of its publications. His kind and humorous generosity with his knowledge and support will be greatly missed by his colleagues.
The Board extends its sympathy to his wife Lisa, his children Kitty, Michael, Denis, and Philip, and his other relatives and friends.
Hugh Shields was born in Belfast, where he attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, but spent most of his life in Dublin, where he studied at Trinity College and became a Senior Lecturer in French there. He was a Fellow Emeritus of the College. A specialist in medieval French and other European languages, he had a particular interest in questions of orality and dialect which were common to his professional studies and to his life-long and highly productive interest in Irish and other traditional song. Students remember his singing of traditional songs as illustrations in his medieval French lectures. From 1982 to 1998 he also lectured on Irish traditional music in the School of Music, TCD, with Breandán Breathnach, Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh and Nicholas Carolan, and in 1985 spent a period lecturing in the Department of Ethnomusicology in the University of California, Los Angeles. He also lectured widely at traditional music festivals and summer schools.
Hugh’s parents gave him his initial interest in singing. As a young graduate teaching in north Co Derry in 1953 and beginning his work of collection, he first met with the road-worker Eddie Butcher, his main source-singer and friend. Eddie was central to his publishing of traditional song in print and on sound recordings for the next five decades. With his wife Lisa Hugh also collected in Donegal, Down and Wicklow, in France, and elsewhere, and he collaborated with the Dublin collector Tom Munnelly. He edited selections from his field recordings – among them Adam in Paradise; Shamrock, Rose & Thistle 1–3; Old British Ballads of Donegal and Derry; and Chants Corréziens: French Folk Songs from Corrèze – for the record companies Topic and Leader Sound, for the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, and for his own cassette label European Ethnic Oral Traditions.
His many seminal published studies of Irish traditional song appear in leading national and international journals including Ceol, Ulster Folklife, Hermathena, Long Room, Folklife, Folklore, and the Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council. His books include Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (1981), Ballad Research (1986), Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs (1993), and Tunes of the Munster Pipers: Irish Traditional Music from the James Goodman Manuscripts (1998), all standard works. Hugh had a particular involvement with the Folk Music Society of Ireland – of which he was a founding member in 1971 – and was the editor of its newsletter Ceol Tíre ( 1973–1989), its journal Éigse Cheol Tíre – Irish Folk Music Studies (1973–2001), and other publications.
For further information contact Irish Traditional Music Archive T +353-1-661 9699 |
October 2007: Come West Along the Road 2 DVD launch
September 2007: Dublin Culture Night
August 2007: Death of Tom Munnelly
June 2007: Honorary Degrees to Members of Irish Traditional Music Archive Board and Staff
November 2006: Official Opening of New Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive
Samhain 2006: Oscailt Oifigiúil Cheannáras Nua Thaisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann
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