George Petrie (c. 1790–1866), a Dublin professional artist, was a leading figure in the cultural and intellectual life of 19th-century Ireland. The benefits of his work in the areas of Irish art, archaeology, history, topography, architecture, the establishment of cultural institutions – and traditional music – are felt to this day.
From his youth Petrie had the habit of noting down traditional melodies in manuscript on his sketching tours around Ireland and in Dublin, and he contributed to the publications of the older collector Edward Bunting. After the devastation caused to traditional culture by the Great Famine, Petrie was prominent in the 1851 establishment in Dublin of the Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland (see below). His own collection was the first mooted publication, and with the assistance of colleagues he undertook to edit selected melodies with a commentary. The first volume was published in 1855, and is reproduced here in facsimile from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Although this first volume was published in 1855, it has recently been brought to our notice by Dr Jimmy O’Brien Moran that the first sections of it were being published in forty-page numbers from 1853, presumably to satisfy the demands of subscribers. A page of one of these numbers is reproduced here.
