{"id":6109,"date":"2021-02-22T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=6109"},"modified":"2026-07-08T14:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:14:05","slug":"the-citizen-and-henry-hudsons-collection-of-irish-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/the-citizen-and-henry-hudsons-collection-of-irish-music\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Citizen’ and Henry Hudson’s Collection of Irish Music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Aed\u00edn N\u00ed Bhr\u00f3ithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ninety years ago, Francis O\u2019Neill made the University of Notre Dame the valuable gift of his remarkable personal library, a library known primarily for its collections on Irish music and Irish history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Included are some bound volumes of a periodical called The Citizen or Dublin Monthly Magazine<\/em><\/a> of 1841, and its successor Dublin Monthly Magazine<\/a><\/em>, 1842.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Though the magazine covers literature, history and politics, it is for the music that O\u2019Neill collected these volumes, as borne out by both his pencil annotations on the pages and his listing of these volumes under \u2018Musical History and Literature\u2019 in his inventory of the collection (O\u2019Neill Library Inventory, MSN\/MN 0502: Series 2<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The periodical ran, with various name-changes, from 1839 until 1843. When William Elliot Hudson (1796-1853) became editor, his brother, Henry Hudson (1798-1889) contributed a regular section on Irish music. This is the same Henry Hudson, a dentist with a practice on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, whose manuscripts found their way into various collections including that of Francis O’Neill. We know how O’Neill came by the manuscript from a letter he wrote to Charlotte Milligan Fox in 1911:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I obtained the MSS. Volume referred to on pages 68 and 249 of \u201cIrish Folk Music\u201d through Nassau Massey, Cork, I was informed that some four or five similar volumes had been purchased for the Boston Library. These latter, it appears, reached Mr. Massey, and were disposed of before the volume I now possess came into his hands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill\u2019s letter is published in an article by Fox, \u201cConcerning the William Elliott Hudson Collection of Irish Folk Songs\u201d in which she describes her discovery of the five notebooks in the Boston Public Library, and also argues erroneously that the author is William E. Hudson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hudson transcribed the songs and melodies at a time of enthusiasm for collecting and preserving traditional music of Ireland. Edward Bunting’s published collections, beginning with the melodies he transcribed from the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, inspired a number of others to engage in similar work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the manuscript notebooks are filled with the songs or melodies, his published sections on Irish music include also lengthy introductions to the songs. The February 1941 issue of The Citizen<\/em> also includes an essay on the printing of Irish music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In our present number we again present our readers with three Irish airs. In the mechanical departments of the work, we are but experimenting. The neglect of every matter of art in Ireland has hitherto been so great, that we have had to cope with difficulties, which few, possibly , of our readers, are prepared to appreciate. The metals to be graven, — the tools to be employed,– the inks to be used, are all in a state of imperfection. The result is, and it has been the case for years, that those requiring any musical work of nicety to be executed, go, or send to London for it; and thus, even in Bunting\u2019s last beautiful work, in the bringing out of which so much notationality has been tastefully displayed, the reader will find the last page deformed with the announcement, \u201cLondon, engraved by H. T. Skarratt, 5, Eyre-street, Hatton-garden.\u201d One hundred and thirteen plates for an irish work, especially national, engraved in London!<\/p>\nThe Citizen or Dublin Monthly Magazine<\/em> XVI, no. III, February 1841. P. 134<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hudson assigned Irish language titles along with English titles to most of his tunes. Examples are “Fuaim na dTonn” \/ “The Sound of the Waves” and “An Deoruide Tuirseach” \/ “The Weary Wanderer”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“The Wearing of the Green”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hudson’s series of notebooks of music manuscripts is divided across three libraries: one in the National Library of Ireland, five in the Boston Public Library, and one here in Notre Dame’s Special Collections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A page from the Hudson manuscript MSE 1434-2B 021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our notebook has been digitized may be viewed online<\/a>, and digital copies of those at the Boston Public Library are available in the Internet Archive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book for Irish Airs, nos. 1-111<\/a>
Numbers 1-424<\/a>
Numbers 428-737 <\/a>
Manuscript beginning with 732<\/a>
Manuscript with a note on Hudson’s own compositions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seventh manuscript is in the National Library of Ireland, with the following catalog description: Traditional Irish airs, collected by Henry Hudson, in the 19th cent. From the O Casside Mss.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Colette Moloney and Deirdre McDonald, ‘The Irish Music Manuscripts of Henry Hudson’, in Kerry Houston, Maria McHale & Michael Murphy, eds., Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century<\/em><\/a>. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jimmy O’Brien Moran. ‘Henry Philerin Hudson, MRIA: an Irish Macpherson?’ B\u00e9aloideas<\/em>, 81 (2013), pp. 150-169.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips Barry, ‘Irish Music in the Hudson Manuscripts’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society<\/em>, 13 (1913), pp. 9-10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ninety years ago, Francis O\u2019Neill made the University of Notre Dame the valuable gift of his remarkable personal library, a library known primarily for its collections on Irish music and Irish history. Included are some bound volumes of a periodical called The Citizen or Dublin Monthly Magazine of 1841, and its successor Dublin Monthly Magazine, … Continue reading ‘The Citizen’ and Henry Hudson’s Collection of Irish Music<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":6123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75053,12646],"tags":[12614,77929],"class_list":["post-6109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irish-studies","category-miscellaneous","tag-music","tag-periodicals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6109"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12166,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109\/revisions\/12166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}