NO 73 MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN 2 - Irish Traditional Music Archive

NO 73 MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN 2
The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive
The Irish Traditional Music Archive has its home in a fine 18th-century
terraced building, more than 200 years old, which is situated in a
historic quarter of Georgian Dublin. No 73 Merrion Square is a fourstorey
townhouse of three bays over a basement and area, with a threestorey
return and a mews stable house, and external vaulted cellars. It
is owned by the State through the Office of Public Works (OPW).
The house is built on part of a plot
of land on the southern side of the
Square which was leased from 29
September 1786 by Richard Lord
Fitzwilliam of Merrion to James
Doyle, a Dublin merchant and
property developer of Temple
Bar. 1 On 19 August 1792 Doyle
demised a ‘New Brick Dwelling
House with a Yard behind the
same and Coach House &
Stable… on the South West side
of Merrion Square’ to its first
occupant, the Honourable John
Stratford, Esquire, a member of
the Irish Parliament. The cost of
the premises was £1,270 and a
yearly rent of £190. 2 This house
was numbered as 15 Merrion
Square South until about 1880,
when it was renumbered as 73
Merrion Square. 3
OPW copy of an 18th-century map in the
Pembroke Estate papers showing no 73
Merrion Square and adjoining houses

2
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
Merrion Square, Dublin’s best known Georgian square, is itself built
on part of the Fitzwilliam Estate, lands lying between the old coast
road to Blackrock (now Fenian Street, Grand Canal Street, etc.) and
the old road to Donnybrook (now Leeson Street, etc.), and leased by
the Fitzwilliam family from Dublin Corporation since medieval
times. 4 From the early eighteenth century, fashionable development
was taking place on lands to the south-east of the city. This
development reached a significant stage in 1745 with the building of
Kildare House (now Leinster House) on its eastern margin by the
Earl of Kildare (later the Duke of Leinster). The lawn of Leinster
House, with the National Gallery of Ireland and some houses of the
later eighteenth century, now forms the west side of Merrion Square.
By 1762 the Fitzwilliam Estate had begun the development of the
Square and laid it out in building plots, and by the early 1770s
Merrion Square North and part of Merrion Square East had been
built as an aristocratic residential area. From the 1770s through the
1790s the remainder of Merrion Square East and Merrion Square
South was similarly developed, piecemeal, and by 1800 the Square
was substantially completed. 5
In their initial decades the houses on Merrion Square were great
townhouses for people who had, for the most part, country estates
elsewhere. The houses were built in brick, with stone variously used,
to the highest standards of their time. Typical architectural features
are classical door columns with fanlights and sidelights, well
proportioned large windows, and ironwork balconies or window
guards. On the later south side of the Square, the houses are less
individualised and less grand. The decorative classical plasterwork
of their entrances and main rooms is in low relief, and is reinforced
by ornamental joinery. The southern houses have bowed rear walls.

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 3
The history of the houses on Merrion Square mirrors the elite social
and economic history of Dublin and Ireland during most of their two
hundred and more years. Built by speculative developers and
wealthy tradesmen, they were at first the townhouses of the nobility
and gentry of the Ascendancy (including members of the Irish
Parliament), of the upper clergy of the Established Church, of the
judiciary, and of lawyers prominent in government. Their earliest
owners may have felt them to be rather cramped by comparison with
their country houses and estates, with servants in unwelcome
proximity. The houses were occupied most intensively during the
parliamentary and theatrical seasons, and reached their apogee
during the period of ‘Grattan’s Parliament’, from 1782 to the end of
the century, when the Irish Parliament had achieved legislative
independence from London.
After the passing of the Act of Union in 1800 and the political
decline of Dublin, the houses increasingly became the dwellings of
prominent barristers and medical men, and also sometimes their
consulting rooms, and the religious complexion of the Square began
to change from Protestant to Catholic. Following the 19th- and 20thcentury
drift of the wealthy to the suburbs, and the foundation of the
Irish Free State with its legislature in Leinster House in 1922, the
buildings were often divided into business offices (especially for
solicitors, doctors and dentists) and flats, and many were acquired by
the State to house Government departments. During WW2 air-raid
shelters were built in the gardens of houses on the Square, no 73
among them.
In recent decades, with the transfer of Government departments to
purpose-built office blocks, the Merrion Square houses have
increasingly provided accommodation for national organisations and
cultural and educational bodies, in the lee of the Natural History
Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland. These organisations currently
include Foras na Gaeilge, the Dublin Institute of Advanced
Studies, the Irish Red Cross Society, the Royal Institute of the
Architects of Ireland, the Goethe-Institut, the Irish Architectural
Archive, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland, the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon, the
Central Catholic Library, the Georgian Society, the American College
Dublin of Lynn University, the National University of Ireland, the
Keough Naughton Centre of the University of Notre Dame – and the
Irish Traditional Music Archive/ Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann.

The Earl of Aldborough’s Minuet
Da Capo
The Countess of Aldborough’s Minuet
composed by the E— of A—b—h
3
Two undated but c. 1800 minuets published by both E. Rhames and Hime of Dublin.
It is not known which Earl of Aldborough is in question, but it was likely John
Stratford’s brother Edward, the 2nd Earl.
Belan House, Co Kildare, a home of the Stratford family, to which John Stratford
moved from no 73 Merrion Square on becoming the 3rd Earl of Aldborough

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 5
OCCUPANTS Of NO 73 MERRION SQUARE
1792–1801 Honourable John Stratford, Stratford Lodge,
Baltinglass, Co Wicklow 6
Stratford (c. 1742–1823), one of fourteen children,
belonged to a prominent Wicklow family of English
settlers of the Cromwellian period. 7 He was a member
of the Irish Parliament for Baltinglass (1763–76), for
Wicklow (1776–90), and again for Baltinglass
(1790–1800), and a governor of Co Wicklow in 1795.
Regarded as a moderate, he voted against Catholic
relief and for the Act of Union. 8 In 1801, on the death
of his eccentric brother who had succeeded his father
the 1st Earl, he became 3rd Earl of Aldborough of
Upper Ormond; 3rd Viscount Aldborough of Belan,
Co Kildare; 3rd Baron of Baltinglass, Co Wicklow;
and 3rd Viscount Amiens. He lived subsequently at
Belan. 9 His wife Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of the
Archdeacon of Raphoe, had a certain notoriety; she
was also accounted the best horsewoman in Ireland. 10
1801–1824 Right Honourable Lodge Evans Morres (from
1815 Lodge Evans de Montmorency), Baron
Frankfort, Maryville, Finglas, Co Dublin 11
Morres (1747–1822), admitted to the Irish Bar in
1769, was a member of the Irish Parliament for
Innistoge (1768–70), for Bandon Bridge (1776–96),
for Ennis (1796–97) and Dingle (1798–1800). Highly
ambitious, he beseiged Dublin Castle for advancement
and was regarded by an official there as an
‘importunate savage’. 12 He was Chief Secretary to the
Lord Lieutenant for 1795–1800, and was appointed to
the Treasury Board in 1796. 13 In 1800, having voted
for the Union, he was created 1st Baron Frankfort of
Galway, Co Kilkenny. He also lived at Green Street,
Grosvenor Square, London. His Merrion Square
house is shown in his possession even after his
death; 14 it may have lain vacant or it may have been
occupied by his son-in-law Henry Montague Browne
before it was legally transferred to him in 1825.

6
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
1825–1835 Very Reverend Honourable Henry Montague
Browne, Glebe House, Mullingar 15
Browne (1799–1884), son of James Caulfield Browne,
2nd Baron Kilmaine, Co Mayo, was later Dean of
Lismore of the Church of Ireland. He was married to the
Honourable Catherine Penelope de Montmorency,
daughter of Lodge Evans Morres/ de Montmorency,
Baron Frankfort, and was an executor of the latter’s will.
1835–1865 William Smith, Lisaniskeir, Co Dublin, barrister 16
Smith (born 1801) was the eldest son of Aquila Smith of
Dublin and Catherine Doolan, and was educated at
Gray’s Inn, London. 17 He was admitted to the Irish Bar
in 1839, 18 and was appointed Registrar of the Land
Commission in 1881. 19
1866–1898 Major Henry Taaffe-Farrell (later Ferrell) JP, DL,
Moylurg House, Boyle, Co Roscommon; Junior
United Services Club, London; Kildare Street Club 20
Ferrall (c. 1832–98) was a prominent Roscommon landowner,
Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant for Co Roscommon,
and Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd Battalion of the
Connaught Rangers from 1877. A leading Irish Unionist and
a Catholic, he was also a long-term member of the Board of
Guardians of the South Dublin Union.
1898–1906 Mrs Alice Taaffe-Ferrall (née Keogh) 21
1907–1936 Professor Robert Dwyer Joyce, FRCS, MECSE,
ophthalmic and aural surgeon 22
Joyce (c. 1874–1959) was the son of Patrick Weston
Joyce (1827–1914), the famous Limerick-born
collector of Irish traditional music, historian and educationalist,
and was the nephew of the poet, song-writer
and medical doctor Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830–1883),
author of the songs ‘The Boys of Wexford’, ‘The Wind
that Shakes the Barley’, etc. He qualified in London in
1895 and become a Fellow of the Royal College of
Surgeons in Ireland in 1899. In the Census of 1911 he
is shown as an Irish speaker, living in no 73 with his
wife Mary and four daughters and three servants – a
parlour maid, a cook, and a servant maid. 23

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 7
Joyce was a consulting ophthalmic surgeon in Holles
Street hospital; ophthalmic surgeon in the Mater and
Richmond hospitals; and from 1935 Professor of
Ophthalmology in University College Dublin. 24
About 1936 he moved to live in Ballsbridge, with
consulting rooms at 11 Merrion Square. 25
P.W. Joyce – who must often have been a visitor to this
house – and his brother R.D. Joyce are well
represented in the ITMA collections. During the period
of his son’s residency in no 73, P.W. Joyce was
president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
at 63 Merrion Square (former home of the ITMA,
1991–2006). The Society published there in 1909 his
final collection Old Irish Folk Music and Song.
P.W. Joyce and the title page of his 1909 magnum opus
1936–1947 Department of Local Government & Public
Health; Department of Agriculture 26
In 1936 the title to the building was purchased by the
Commissioners of Public Works from members of the
Malone and Price families at a cost of £1,600, with
£50 annual ground rent payable to the Earl of
Montgomery & Pembroke. The premises were
assigned to the Combined Purchasing Section of the
Departments of Local Government and Public Health.
In 1941 the mews of no 73 was converted to a
veterinary store for the Department of Agriculture. 27

8
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
1947–1949 Department of Lands 28
1950–1953 Department of Social Welfare 29
1953–1990 Irish Manuscripts Commission & Irish Land
Commission (Solicitors Branch) 30
1991–2005 Irish Manuscripts Commission & Irish
Architectural Archive 31
2006– Irish Traditional Music Archive
In July 2006 the Irish Traditional Music Archive moved
from its former home at no 63 Merrion Square to no 73.
The building had been allocated to the ITMA by the
Office of Public Works, which had refurbished it
extensively from 2005 under the direction of OPW
Senior Architect Niall Parsons. The ITMA was opened
officially there on 15 November 2006 by Mr John
O’Donoghue TD, Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism.
The ITMA is a national public archive and resource centre for all with an
interest in the contemporary artforms of Irish traditional song, instrumental
music, and dance. It was founded with the primary aims of collecting,
preserving and organising the materials of Irish traditional music, and of
making the materials and information held as widely available as possible
to the general public.
It holds the largest multi-media collection in existence of the materials of
Irish traditional music: currently over 29,000 commercial and noncommercial
sound recordings, 20,000 books and serials, 12,000
photographs and negatives, 9,000 melodies in digital form, 7,000 ballad
sheets and items of sheet music, 3,000 programmes, 2,000 videotapes and
DVDs, and a mass of other materials such as posters and flyers. It also
holds the largest body in existence of information about the music,
organised on unique computer catalogues. A systematic programme has
begun of making the catalogues and digitised materials available on the
Internet via the ITMA website www.itma.ie.
The materials and information held are made fully available for reference to
all visitors to the ITMA. Guidance to the collections is given, and general
information and consultancy on the music. An information service is also
given directly by phone, post and fax, and remotely through the ITMA
website. Materials and information are also made available through lectures,

10
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
exhibitions and publications by ITMA staff, and through the ITMA’s
extensive cooperation with the performing, teaching, broadcasting,
publishing and archival activities of others, including RTÉ Radio and
Television, TG4 Television, The Journal of Music in Ireland, Na Píobairí
Uilleann, the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Gael Linn, etc., etc.
The ITMA currently has a core staff of ten, with other part-time workers. Its
operations are directed by a Board of twelve with performing, collecting,
broadcasting, archival, financial, marketing and management experience.
Users of the ITMA include singers, musicians, dancers, private-interest
listeners, students at all levels, teachers, researchers and writers, librarians,
broadcasters and publishers, arts administrators, and the general public, a
significant number of whom come from abroad.
The ITMA is funded by the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon in Dublin
and also by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in Belfast, and by
individual donors, especially through its support group Friends of the Irish
Traditional Music Archive. It receives project funding from sponsors such
as the Heritage Council, Cairde na Cruite, Temple Bar Cultural Trust, and
the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership. In addition it receives support in
kind from publishers and hundreds of private donors.
The new ITMA premises in no 73 Merrion Square have public rooms
equipped for listening to, viewing, reading, and studying items from the
collections and accessing its databases; an audio and video recording studio;
specialist rooms for the preservation, processing, copying and cataloguing
of audio, video and print materials; reception and administrative areas; and
specialist storage areas.

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 11
OTHER HOUSES ON MERRION SQUARE
Remarkably, for an area that was once a bastion of British culture, other
houses on Merrion Square also have longstanding associations with
Irish traditional music.
David Richard Pigot & John Edward Pigot
At no 80 Merrion Square the Right Honourable David Richard Pigot
(1797–1873), the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer from 1846 and a
barrister originally from Cork, lived from 1834. A colleague of Daniel
O’Connell (who lived at no 58), and a Vice-President of the Society for the
Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland from its foundation
in 1851, he was a contributor of traditional tunes to the collections of the
artist and antiquarian George Petrie (1790–1866), the foremost nineteenthcentury
collector of Irish traditional music. The ITMA holds original manuscripts
of Petrie and copies of his music collections.
David Pigot’s son, the Cork-born barrister John Edward Pigot (pen-name
‘Fermoy’, 1822–71) lived at no 80 until 1851. He was an active collector
of traditional music from the 1840s to the 1860s, and was joint Honorary
Secretary from 1851 of the Society for the Preservation and Publication
of the Melodies of Ireland. His manuscript collection of over 3,000 tunes
is now in the Royal Irish Academy. A friend of Thomas Davis (who lived
on Baggot Street), Pigot was a music editor of the Young Irelander newspaper
The Nation in the 1840s, and the music editor of John O’Daly’s
1849 Dublin-published collection The Poets and Poetry of Munster. 32 A
copy of Pigot’s RIA manuscript and of various editions of the Nation
songs and the O’Daly volume are held in the ITMA.
‘Sagairt tar teóradh’, a melody contributed to George Petrie’s traditional music
collections by David Richard Pigot, published by Charles Villiers Stanford ed.,
The Complete Petrie Collection of Irish Music (London 1902–05)

12
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
‘Inghin an Fhaoit ón nGleann’, a melody from the manuscripts of John Edward
Pigot in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, published by P.W. Joyce in his Old Irish
Folk Music and Songs (Dublin 1909)
James Clarence Mangan
At no 28 Merrion Square the Dublin poet James Clarence Mangan
(1803–49) was employed as a clerk from about 1826 to 1829. 33 He made
versions in English of Irish-language traditional songs, most notably for
John O’Daly’s collection The Poets and Poetry of Munster and
including the famous ‘Dark Rosaleen’. Presumably he collaborated with
John Edward Pigot, music editor of the volume. Mangan was later
employed by George Petrie as a scrivener for the Ordnance Survey. The
ITMA holds several editions of the O’Daly collection and copies of
other published Mangan-related and O’Daly-related material.
George Petrie (left), James Clarence Mangan, Breandán Breathnach

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 13
The Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of
Ireland 1851
Many of those prominently involved in the Society for the Preservation
and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, the first formal Irish
traditional music society, lived on Merrion Square or in its vicinity. The
Society was established under the presidency of George Petrie in
December 1851, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, to preserve, study
and publish ‘the immense quantity of National Music still existing in
Ireland’. 34 It was directed by a twenty-three-man Council. As well as
David Richard Pigot and John Edward Pigot, Thomas Beatty MD and
William Stokes MD lived on the Square, at nos 18 and 5 respectively. In
the vicinity of the Square lived the Treasurer of the Society Robert
Callwell (Herbert Place), its other joint Hon. Secretary Robert D. Lyons
MD (Merrion Street), Rev. Charles Graves DD (Fitzwilliam Square),
Benjamin Lee Guinness (Dawson Street), Thomas Rice Henn (Upper
Mount Street), Henry Hudson and Samuel Maclean (St Stephen’s Green),
Joseph Huband Smith (Holles Street), Rev. Jas. H. Todd (Trinity
College), and William Wilde (later Sir William, father of Oscar; Westland
Row). 35 Most of those associated with the Society were members of the
Royal Irish Academy, which was then situated in Grafton Street.
One of the aims of the Society, never realised, was ‘the formation of a
central depôt in Dublin, to which persons... may be invited to send
copies of any airs which they can obtain, either in Ireland or among our
countrymen in other lands’. 36 The Irish Traditional Music Archive might
be said to be a realisation of that aim. Its collections contain the
published works of the Society and later editions of them.
The Arts Council & Breandán Breathnach
The Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon, the Irish state’s development
agency for the arts (including the traditional arts), has been based in no
70 Merrion Square since 1959. In 1980 it appointed a Traditional Music
Officer for the first time, and it currently has a Traditional Arts section
through which it funds traditional artists, projects, festivals, and arts
organisations (including the ITMA) – see www.artscouncil.ie.
From the early 1980s until his death, Breandán Breathnach (1912–85),
the great expert on Irish traditional music whose personal collection is
the foundation collection of the ITMA, had an office in the basement of
no 70 in which he worked principally on his monumental index of Irish
traditional dance music. A member of the Arts Council from 1984, he
chaired for it a committee on the establishment of a national archive of
traditional music and was the author of its report.
— Nicholas Carolan

14
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
Notes
1 Registry of Deeds, Dublin, memorial no 300430 of lease dated 30 December 1786, for
150 years from 29 September 1786, from Rt Hon. Richard Lord Fitzwilliam of Merrion
to James Doyle, merchant of the city of Dublin. Wilson’s Dublin Directory shows ‘Doyle
and Roe’ as wholesale merchants in Temple Bar from the 1780s to the 1790s. This is presumably
the same Doyle since a Peter Roe developed the Merrion Square plot adjacent
to James Doyle’s on the east (see The Statutes at Large, Passed in the Parliaments of
Ireland... vol. XV, Grierson, Dublin, 1792, pp. 787–96, 31 Geo. III, 45: ‘An Act for
Enclosing and Improving Merrion Square, in the City of Dublin’). A James Doyle,
grocer, is also shown in the same decades with premises in Abbey Street and New Row.
2 Registry of Deeds, Dublin, memorial no 292526 of indenture of lease, 19 August 1792,
from James Doyle, City of Dublin, merchant, to Hon. John Stratford of the same city of
a house etc. on the south side of Merrion Square, bound on the east by a new brick
dwelling house belonging to Peter Roe, and on the west by another new brick dwelling
house belonging to James Doyle. The lease ownership of no 73 (not to be confused with
occupancy of the premises) passed from members of the Doyle family to members of
the Malone family in 1856, to members of the related Price and Malone families in
1898, 1899 and 1903, and from them to the Commissioners of Public Works in 1936
(OPW, Property Management Division, file no D.20 1/5/44, p. 5).
On 29 January 1796 Doyle sold another newly built brick house etc. on the south-west
side of Merrion Square: ‘Bounding on the south east to premises belonging to the said
James Doyle... and on the north west to Humphrey Worthingstons holding’ (Registry of
Deeds, Dublin, memorial no 319805; a map of the Fitzwilliam Estate, now in the Pembroke
Estate papers in the National Archives and reproduced in Mary Clark & Alastair Smeaton,
eds, The Georgian Squares of Dublin: An Architectural History, Dublin, 2006, p. 84, confirms
this position of Doyle’s plot). This house is the present 74 Merrion Square, premises
of the Central Catholic Library and also home to the Irish Georgian Society.
See also Registry of Deeds, Dublin, memorial no 16, vol. 29 of 1865, of indenture
of lease, 6 Sept. 1865, between William Smith of Merrion Square, barrister-at-law, and
Henry Taaffe Farrell [sic], Raglan Rd, Co Dublin, ‘reciting that by indenture of Lease
bearing date 13 [recte 19] August 1792 James Doyle demised unto John Stratford...
Number 15 in said Square’. This latter memorial proves that no 15 and no 73 were one
and the same house as the number is documented as having changed from 15 to 73
during Taaffe Ferrall’s tenure (Thom’s Directory, issues of 1879 to 1881).
3 See previous note.
4 In 1816 the Fitzwilliam Estate passed into the possession of the Earl of Pembroke and
became the Pembroke Estate, which it remains.
5 For the general history of Merrion Square see Maurice Craig, Dublin 1660–1860: A
Social and Architectural History, Cresset Press, London, 1952, and other editions;
Nicola Matthews, ‘The Development of Merrion Square’, Masters in Urban & Building
Conservations thesis, University College Dublin, 1997; Christine Casey, The Buildings
of Ireland: Dublin, Yale, 2005; Clark & Smeaton as at Note 2 above; etc.
6 See Edith Mary Johnson-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692–1800. Commons,
Constituencies and Statutes vol. vi, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 2002, pp.
366–7. See also Note 2 above. Samuel Watson’s The Gentleman’s and Citizen’s
Almanack, Dublin, issues of 1796 to 1800, shows Stratford, then a member of the
Commons of Ireland, living on Merrion Square at least from 1796 to 1800. The
Almanack does not give the number of his house but Note 2 shows it to have been no 15.
7 See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography vol. 58, Oxford University Press, Oxford,

The Premises of the Irish Traditional Music Archive 15
2004, pp. 23–4; and the online site www.thepeerage.com ‘Stratford’.
8 Johnson-Liik 2002, vol. vi, p. 367.
9 See G.E. Cokayne et al., eds, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the
United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, London, 1910–59, vol. 1, p. 99; vol. 3, p. 17.
10 Johnson-Liik 2002, vol. vi, p. 367.
11 See Johnson-Liik 2002, vol. v, pp. 319–21. See also Wilson’s Dublin Directory, Dublin,
for these years; and the online site www.thepeerage.com ‘De Montmorency’.
12 Johnson-Liik 2002, vol. v, p. 320.
13 The Times, London, 23 June 1796.
14 Pigot & Co’s Provincial Directory of Ireland 1824, Dublin, 1824, p. 20.
15 See Wilson’s Dublin Directory, Dublin, for these years; and the online site
www.thepeerage.com ‘Browne’.
16 Registry of Deeds, Dublin, memorial no 210, volume 4 of 1835, of deed of conveyance,
dated 24 Feb. 1835, from Rt Hon. Viscount Frankfort de Montmorency (deceased), the
Rt Hon. Henry Montague Browne of Mullingar (one of de Montmorency’s executors),
and others, to William Smith, Co Dublin, Esquire. See also Note 2 above for the transfer
of the premises from Smith to Taaffe Ferral.
17 Edward Keane, P. Beryl Phair & Thomas U. Sadleir, eds, King’s Inn Admission Papers
1607–1867, Irish Manuscript Commission, Dublin, 1982, p. 454.
18 Pettigrew & Oulton’s Dublin Directory 1842, Dublin, 1842, p. 550.
19 The Times, London, 11 Oct. 1881.
20 The Downside Review, Bath, 1898, p. 310. See also Note 2 above and Thom’s
Directory, Dublin, for these years. His name frequently appears in The Irish Times, as
attending the Lord Lieutenant’s levee in Dublin Castle or involved in charitable Poor
Law activities.
21 See Kelly’s Handbook of the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, London, 1888, p. 1042;
Thoms’s Directory, Dublin, for these years.
22 See Thoms’s Directory, Dublin, for these years.
23 National Archives website www.census.nationalarchives.ie, census return for 73
Merrion Square.
24 Irish Times obituary, 21 January 1959, p. 10.
25 Thom’s Directory, Dublin, 1938, which shows his home address as 10 Clyde Road.
26 Thom’s Directory, Dublin, for these years.
27 OPW, Property Management Division, file no D.20 1/5/44, pp. 5, 16.
28 Thom’s Directory, Dublin, for these years.
29 Ibid.
30 Both organisations transferred to the premises in October 1953 (OPW, Property
Management Division, file no D.20 1/5/44, p. 16). See also Thom’s Directory, Dublin,
for these years.
31 See www.irmss.ie and www.iarc.ie.
32 See Nicholas Carolan, ‘The Forde-Pigot Collection of Irish Traditional Music’ in
Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library, Bernadette Cunningham, Siobhán
Fitzpatrick, Petra Schnabel eds, RIA, Dublin, 2009.
33 Eileen Shannon-Mangan, James Clarence Mangan: A Biography, Irish Academic
Press, Dublin, 1996, pp. 65–75.
34 George Petrie ed., The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland vol. 1, Society
for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, Dublin, 1855, p. v.
35 Thom’s Irish Almanac and Official Directory... for the Year 1851, Dublin, 1851, pp.
957–1122 passim.
36 Petrie 1855, p. vi.

16
No 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
‘Labhairse féin mo chéile liom’, part of a traditional song-text sung by girl spinners,
from original George Petrie manuscripts of the ITMA
First published by the Irish Traditional Music Archive/ Taisce Cheol Dúchais
Éireann on 29 July 2008 as one of a series of events to mark the 21st
anniversary of the establishment of the Archive on the same date in 1987
Research & Text
Music Setting
Photography
Scanning
Drawings etc.
Layout & Design
Printing
Nicholas Carolan
Maeve Gebruers
Treasa Harkin, Danny Diamond
Mícheál Ó Catháin, Colum O’Riordan
Courtesy Niall Parsons, OPW (inside and rear
covers, p. 1), Irish Architectural Archive (p. 4)
Jackie Small
Hackett Reprographics, Dublin
© Irish Traditional Music Archive 2008, revised reprint 2009
With thanks to the Chairman, Board and staff of the Irish Traditional
Music Archive; to Maeve Carolan; to the staffs in Dublin of the Property
Division of the Office of Public Works, Na Píobairí Uilleann, the Irish
Architectural Archive, the Registry of Deeds, the Dublin City Library
and Archive, the Library of Trinity College Dublin, the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland, and the National Library of Ireland; to all who
have enabled the growth of the ITMA to date by the donation of material
and information; to the support group Friends of the Irish Traditional
Music Archive and other project funders for financial support; to the
Mícheál Ó Domhnaill Trust for the funding of this 2009 reprint; to the
Office of Public Works; and to the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon
in Dublin and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in Belfast who are
the major funders of the Irish Traditional Music Archive