Abstract
The three-volume publication Ancient Music of Ireland has ensured that the name of Edward Bunting (1773–1843) will for ever be associated with Irish traditional music. This ground-breaking collection, whose volumes appeared in 1796, 1809 and 1840, is dominated by folk melodies collected during Bunting’s tours of Ireland; but it originated in his work at the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, when he was just 19. It says much about Bunting that the festival’s organizers should have entrusted this apprentice to William Ware, the organist of St Anne’s parish church, Belfast, as ‘a skilful Musician’ whose job was ‘to transcribe and arrange’ the music played by the harpers. Bunting was therefore a central figure in one of the festival’s most important tasks: ‘attempting to revive and perpetuate—The Ancient Music and Poetry of Ireland’ (p. 40). Thanks to the power of publication, his is the name by which the festival is remembered, even above those of the harpers.
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