Ryan’s Mammoth Collection 801 – 1051

Most of its content was long available in the United States as 1000 Fiddle Tunes, commonly known as simply ‘Cole’s’, named after its publisher. Recently, an annotated edition of Ryan’s original edition, edited by Patrick Sky, was published by Mel Bay publications.

Ryan’s collection contains more than a thousand tunes. It was a forerunner and model for the now much better known collections of Francis O’Neill. Ryan’s book features music in a wider variety of keys and degrees of difficulty than are prevalent in the Irish tradition today. The book is known to have been a source of repertory for many prominent Irish players, including such notable players of complicated hornpipes as the fiddle players James Morrison and Seán Maguire. However, there are many extremely simple tunes in the collection as well, and this makes it a fruitful source of tunes for players of every level of competence.

In the ITMA versions presented here, obvious mistakes and doubtful readings in the original are corrected in order to give an optimal interactive experience to you, the user.

At regular intervals over the coming months, ITMA will provide music from Ryan’s Mammoth Collection in batches of 100