Adam in Paradise : four songs on courtship from the Ulster Tradition / sung by Eddie Butcher

The Irish Traditional Music Archive and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum are pleased to be able to reissue on CD Adam in Paradise, an EP released by the Ulster Folk Museum in 1969 which was the first recording to feature Eddie Butcher, one of the most important traditional singers in Ireland in the twentieth century.

Eddie Butcher was first brought to public attention by Dr Hugh Shields of Belfast and Dublin who carried out extensive field-work and research into the song tradition of the Magilligan area of north Co Derry from 1953 until the late 1970s. His chief source was Eddie Butcher from whom he collected some two hundred traditional songs and song fragments. This research culminated in Hugh Shields's book-study and collection Shamrock Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (Belfast 1981) and in several long-playing recordings.

Eddie Butcher was born in 1900 and grew up at the foot of Benevenagh, a picturesque mountain in north Derry overlooking Lough Foyle. His repertory comprised traditional material he learnt in his homeplace and songs which he and others in his locality had composed. He made numerous radio broadcasts on RTÉ and BBC Radio Ulster from the 1960s, and his songs and his singing influenced many others in the world of traditional singing including the late Frank Harte, Brian Mullen and Len Graham.

It is hoped that these first published recordings of Eddie Butcher's singing with notes by Hugh Shields, reissued to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, will highlight his contribution to the Irish song tradition and introduce a new generation of singers to his mastery of it.

Three of the songs on this EP were uploaded to the ITMA website with the book Shamrock, Rose and Thistle.

Product Type:  CD