The song manuscript presented here belonged to singer, collector and educator, Buadhach Tóibín. Born in Dublin in 1914, Tóibín spent his early life learning Irish in the village of Rosmuc, in the Connemara Gaeltacht. After relocating to Galway, he pursued a career as an actor and translator for An Taibhdhearc, Ireland’s national Irish language theatre. During this period, Tóibín performed in a number of plays and translated classic works of stage into Irish, before subsequently leaving the acting profession to train as a teacher.

Starting his first teaching post in Ballingarry, Co. Limerick, he later moved to Carrigaholt, Co. Clare where he became headmaster of the residential Irish college, Coláiste Eoghain Uí Comhraidhe in 1944. During his tenure, he passed on his love of traditional song to his children. This culminated in Tóibín hand-writing the words to over 200 songs in a bound ledger which has been digitised and reproduced below. Many of the songs included in the ledger are accompanied by tonic-solfa notation (a musical notation system in which a series of syllables represents seven notes of a scale) so he could impart the melodies to his children. The manuscript also contains an interesting selection of songs in German, Italian and Spanish.

Following his passing in 1997, his daughter Fiona Tyndall came into possession of the manuscript collection, upon which she decided to record a selection of the preserved songs on her new album Éinín an Cheóil which can be purchased here.

Thanks to Fiona Tyndall for loaning the Buadhach Tóibín Song Manuscript to ITMA for digitisation, and for granting us permission to reproduce the manuscript here.

Fiona Tyndall: information for text & Maeve Gebruers: Digitisation, 10 September 2025