On the evidence of his manuscripts and his third volume of 1840, Edward Bunting did not engage in the field collection of Irish traditional music after his commercially unsuccessful second volume of 1809. The years between, as far as the music was concerned, saw only his involvement in Belfast with the Irish Harp Society, the receipt of melodies from friends and correspondents, occasional recitals, and the arrangement of melodies already collected in preparation for another volume. Bunting was otherwise busy in those years. After decades of playing, teaching and organising classical and church music in Belfast, in 1819, in his mid-forties, he married the music teacher Mary Anne Chapman and moved to live for the rest of his life in Dublin. To support his wife and their family of three children, he had to establish himself anew there in the 1820s as a teacher and church organist, and as a dealer in pianos and printed music. The 1809 General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, published as ‘Vol: 1^st’, was not joined by a ‘Vol: 2^nd’.

But the idea of yet another published Bunting collection of traditional harp and song melodies did not die, and his substantial manuscript collections of the 1790s and early 1800s must have been a constant reminder of an ambition not fulfilled. By the early 1830s he had arranged many more of these early airs in manuscript, for piano, and was contemplating a third collection of some 120 pieces which was to be published in 1833. This however did not materialise. He continued on with further music arrangements, and by 1835 was in correspondence with Lord Belfast to get permission to dedicate a book to Queen Victoria. It had been accepted for publication by the leading Dublin publishers Hodges and Smith; Bunting was to get half the profits. Bunting’s old patron Dr James MacDonnell, leading organiser of the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, was in regular communication with him by letter in the late 1830s, discussing music and encouraging him to finish his lifework. He was not always hopeful: ‘I am so old, and you so indolent’. But by November 1838 Bunting had sent music manuscript for the publication to R. Thomas Skarrat, a London engraver, and had received the first galleys for correction. Work came to a head in 1839 when Bunting and his wife had a hard year of copying and proofing music and Hodges and Smith issued a prospectus.

The volume finally appeared in June 1840, printed in Dublin at the University Press and produced at a cost of over £1,000. A large elaborate publication with an extensive introduction, notes and indexes by Bunting, and visual illustrations, it contained 151 arranged harp and song melodies in the main body of the work and fifteen (including duplicates) in the introduction. Bunting’s treatment of Irish music and the music, techniques, terminology and personalities of the Irish harp was supported by a chapter on the harp and bagpipe in Ireland by the archivist and poet Samuel Ferguson and a memoir of the Brian Boru harp in Trinity College Dublin by George Petrie.

Recognised on publication and since as a highly important work, the volume was well received and Bunting was widely praised: ‘so much so, that if I were a younger man, it might make me vain’. He intended to re-edit his volumes of 1797 and 1809 to the same standard but had not done so when he died in December 1843. It seems that he received little or no financial benefit from the work: in 1856 Mrs Bunting was demanding a statement of account and settlement from Hodges and Smith and threatening prosecution. An application made on her behalf to a royal fund for a civil pension, on the grounds of her husband’s work and expenses, was not successful.

The PDF of the book supplied here was digitised by the Internet Archive in 2014 from a copy in the Boston Public Libary Collection. ITMA has two original copies of Edward Bunting’s third published collection of Irish music in its library, one from Cnuasach an Bhreathnaigh and the second from the Leslie Shepard Collection.

Nicholas Carolan: Text & Maeve Gebruers: Management, 31 May 2024