Edward Bunting

At the age of seven he was sent to study music at Drogheda and at eleven he was apprenticed to William Ware, organist at St. Anne's church in Belfast and lived with the family of Henry Joy McCracken.

[1] Bunting's arrangement of the festival melodies for the pianoforte and notes were published in London as A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland in 1796.

[2] Bunting organised a second festival in 1813 and wrote to the Belfast Charitable Society, based at Clifton House, for support.

Bunting, who lived in Belfast with the McCrackens until his marriage in 1819, moved to Dublin where he held the post of organist at St. Stephen's Church and taught music.

[1] Bunting's papers were lost for many years, but were rediscovered in 1907 and currently reside in the Special Collections department of Queen's University of Belfast.

Bunting claims that music passes through the ages unchanged, making it therefore just as good an indicator of the culture of the ancients as the study of "civil and military antiquities".

This music of the ancients originated in the educated bard class of Harpers who travelled between the houses of the Irish gentlemen, performing, teaching, and composing to please their current patron.

Bunting was contracted to notate the tunes played at this festival in an effort to preserve the ancient tradition, which was seen to be quickly fading.

Gaining inspiration from his contact with the Harpers, especially Denis Hempson (Donnchadh Ó Hámsaigh) and Arthur O'Neill, Bunting visited counties Londonderry, Tyrone and the province of Connacht in an effort to continue collecting ancient airs from "the country people" and to learn from Hempson whatever he could about the harp.

While complimenting Moore's "elegant" poetry, Bunting "saw with pain, and still deplores the fact, that in these new Irish melodies, the work of the poet was accounted of so paramount an interest, that the proper order of song writing was in many instances inverted, and, instead of the words being adapted to the tune, the tune was too often adapted to the words, a solecism which could never have happened had the reputation of the writer not been so great as at once to carry the tunes he deigned to make use of altogether out of their old sphere among the simple and tradition-loving people of the country – with whom, in truth, many of the new melodies, to this day, are hardly suspected to be themselves."

In Bunting's opinion, Turlough Carolan, though a wonderful composer, was particularly guilty of incorporating this foreign music into his compositions.

Despite this eloquent description, Bunting contends that harp tunes (as opposed to airs) are "impossible" to fit into "any similar model".

He begins by refuting the trend then current to give Irish music too much "plaintive," "national," and "melancholy" feeling.

Bunting claims to have been quite "surprised to find that all the melodies played by the Harpers were performed with a much greater degree of quickness than he had till then been accustomed to".

To conclude the chapter, Bunting gives the reader an idea of some "times", "moods", and "keys" used by the ancient harpers, as well as a vast vocabulary list of other Irish musical terms.

Petrie's Memoir begins with the legend of the origins of "Brian Boru's harp", currently housed in the library at Trinity College.

In Petrie's words, "we are told that Donogh, the son and successor of the celebrated Brian Boru, who was killed at the battle of Clontarf in 1014, having murdered his brother Teague, in 1023, was deposed by his nephew, in consequence of which he retired to Rome, carrying with him the crown, harp, and other regalia of his father, which he presented to the Pope to obtain absolution […] These regalia were kept in the Vatican till the Pope sent the harp to Henry VIII, with the title of Defender of the Faith, but kept the crown, which was of massive gold.

Bunting continues his discussion with details of the greatness through the ages of the Irish harp, illustrated by the legends of St Brigid and Angus King of Munster.