~nd l;Sth centuries rwrote their Gaelic poems to -·suit an alreltldy existing melody. · Tb.ere j~ scarcc1y a county in Ireland which hrts not within the last 100 years contributed its quota of folklore and traditional music. But with the decay of llrish as a spoken language in so many counties a tremendous amount of oral tradition has perished. It is only naturial that eou:-:·.ties like Donegal, Mayo, Galw~ay, Kerry, Cork and Wat1erford, where Fior-GheaU.acht areas still exist, should yield a greater harvest of ancient music and song. Much has already been <lone to recover old manuscripts and :to wrjte down or record the music of the ·past. Much still 1remains to be done. One disheartening feature connected with Donegal music is our 1ack of manuscripts. TlH~ late Henry Morris, who worked so unselfishly all his life a1s a collector o.f traditional songs, lamented the :fact that in all his travels th!"'ough Donegal he came across only two manuscripts-one, a rather worthless composition, the other, written in Louvain. He accounts for this ·Ly the fact that, in the mQJtter of Irish, Donegal and Nocth U1ster generally and, in fact, Connaught too, became illiterate after the 17th century; while in South Ulster and Munster the literary cultivation of the language survived. The -result is that ·numerous Donegal songs and tunes which mi,ght have lbeen -preserved, had there been scribes to deal with them, must have perish. OU the lips o.f the o:.der rgenerations. It is undoubtedly tiiUe, moreover, 1th:at songs a·s found in MSS are, blrnth as to words 1and music, a fairly faithful reproduction of the original ·composition; whereas the versions transmitted by oral tradition have suffered considerably in the process. That is borne out by the fact that in iDonegal alone we find several versions of a iparticular song with notable variations of words and melody. On the other hand the oral tradition has Points in its favour. The manuscript while preserving the main .features of the original melody may ,be but a poor reproduction of the 'viva vox'. Any listener who has heard traditional songs or music well rendered must realise that the melody is enrichd with musical .phrases, 12'race notes and elusive qualities rthat are almost impossible to reproduce in any known system of musical notation. Hence I do not think 1that we need altoge·ther deplore the fact thalt our Donegal 1MS1S have disapp~ared or that variations of the original songs have cre,pt in. A variant of an air is not necessarily inferior to the protOitype : what matters most is not 'that the air is "correat" but that it is good. Folklorists:-What nonegal lacks in manuscripts it makes up for in its 1wea1th of oral tradition. Collectors of lfolklore, songs and music have \been at work in this county for at least fifty years, yet despite their endeavours there are still ma.ny sources left untapped. In his t1wo well-known books, Celad de Cheoltaibh Uladh and Dhai Che-ad de Cheoltaibh Uladh, Henry iMorris includes about 150 Gaelic songs he four.d in Donegal. From one old lady alone, Eibhlin M1urray who lived near the Doon Well, .he got the words m1d music of 60 songs (he i.nc1udes 40 in his second book) 1and he tells us that, 296
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