James Goodman (musicologist)

Canon James Goodman (22 September 1828 – 18 January 1896)[1] was a Church of Ireland clergyman, a piper and a collector of Irish music and songs.

He was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1851 (his father the Reverend Thomas Chute Goodman had been rector of Dingle).

A statue to commemorate him, playing his uilleann pipes, was erected in 2006 at the gate to the Abbeystrewery parish church in Skibbereen town.

He was widely admired and respected in the locality and is remembered for playing music seated under a tree outside his rectory or mending his pipes and sharing tunes with visiting pipers.

Goodman was appointed Professor of Irish in Trinity College Dublin in 1879 and combined this position with his clerical duties in Skibbereen, spending alternating six months in each location.