The REV. DANIEL J. MURPHY ARCHIVE @ nui gALWAY
Documenting the pre-Famine memory of Ireland
ABOUT the rev. daniel J. Murphy archive
In 1890s America, there were an estimated 400,000 Irish speakers. Over 40,000 of them had left their Gaeltacht homes in Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, and Kerry to work in Pennsylvania's coalmines and in Philadelphia's mills and factories. From 1884 to 1935, two Irishmen – Fr. Dan Murphy (1858-1935) of Sligo and J.J. Lyons of Galway – set about transcribing folklore and songs from their fellow countrymen and women all around Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Together, they transcribed around 1,200 sean-nós songs, many of which did not survive the decline of the language in Ireland. A song collection of such magnitude and high quality puts this largely unknown opus on a par with the work of Ireland’s best-known and most prodigious music collectors including Edward Bunting, George Petrie, Sam Henry, and Séamus Ennis. However, the achievement of Murphy and Lyons is all the more extraordinary for having emerged from an atypical context: an industrialized urban cosmopolitan centre on the East Coast of America. In scale and context, it echoes the celebrated work of their contemporary and fellow countryman Chief Francis O’Neill (1848-1936), who collected c.1,850 tunes in Chicago.
With each song transcription capturing a unique moment of encounter and art, the Rev. Murphy Archive demonstrates forcibly but eloquently the extent to which the Irish diaspora treasured, performed, and celebrated their home-country heritage in their new homes in America. This archive tells the story of how these two men preserved the memories and songs of scores of Irishmen and women living in Philadelphia and its environs over a 50-year period, of how they created a monument to Irish heritage, to American heritage, and to the diasporic experience.
With each song transcription capturing a unique moment of encounter and art, the Rev. Murphy Archive demonstrates forcibly but eloquently the extent to which the Irish diaspora treasured, performed, and celebrated their home-country heritage in their new homes in America. This archive tells the story of how these two men preserved the memories and songs of scores of Irishmen and women living in Philadelphia and its environs over a 50-year period, of how they created a monument to Irish heritage, to American heritage, and to the diasporic experience.
WHERE WAS THE ARCHIVE CREATED?
Watch/LISTEN to the story of the archive
An interview with Myles Dungan on "The History Show" on RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday 2 May 2021, with Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile.
A video of an English-language online lecture on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection given by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile for the University of Liverpool on 12 May 2020 can be viewed at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/irish-studies/events/culture-unconfined/cultures-unconfined-deirdre-ni-chonghaile/?fbclid=IwAR02BDOEMdYcpmsxyU_7g37aMj74AEfMGdEA87Is9CdNeNw-apAEGfcBHtY.
A video of an Irish-language lecture on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection given by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin on 15 March 2018 can be viewed at http://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=860&mediaId=30126.
Prof. Miriam Nyhan interviews Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile about her work on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection of sean-nós songs transcribed in Pennsylvania in 1884-1935. The full interview was broadcast on 22 August 2015 on the Glucksman Ireland House NYU Radio Hour www.nyuirish.net/radiohour/ It is featured here by kind permission of Prof. Miriam Nyhan.
A video of an English-language online lecture on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection given by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile for the University of Liverpool on 12 May 2020 can be viewed at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/irish-studies/events/culture-unconfined/cultures-unconfined-deirdre-ni-chonghaile/?fbclid=IwAR02BDOEMdYcpmsxyU_7g37aMj74AEfMGdEA87Is9CdNeNw-apAEGfcBHtY.
A video of an Irish-language lecture on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection given by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin on 15 March 2018 can be viewed at http://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=860&mediaId=30126.
Prof. Miriam Nyhan interviews Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile about her work on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection of sean-nós songs transcribed in Pennsylvania in 1884-1935. The full interview was broadcast on 22 August 2015 on the Glucksman Ireland House NYU Radio Hour www.nyuirish.net/radiohour/ It is featured here by kind permission of Prof. Miriam Nyhan.
A video of an English-language online lecture on the Rev. Daniel J. Murphy Collection given by Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile for the Society for Musicology in Ireland on 16 August 2020 can be viewed on YouTube:
In a video produced in October 2020 for the Great Famine Voices Roadshow, emigrant descendants of James Hack Tuke’s migration schemes from Counties Galway and Mayo during the “Forgotten Famine” of 1879-1882 pay tribute to the Quaker Philanthropist who rescued their ancestors from poverty to start new lives overseas. The songs of Tuke emigrants feature in the Murphy Archive.
PROTOTYPE WEBSITE FOR ONLINE DIGITAL RESOURCE
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Researcher profile -
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International advisory board
- Guy Beiner, Craig & Maureen Sullivan Millennium Professor in Irish Studies, Boston College
- Angela Bourke MRIA, Professor Emerita of Irish, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore & Linguistics, UCD; Folklore of Ireland Council
- Tiber Falzett, Lecturer, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore & Linguistics, UCD
- David Kelly, Digital Humanities Manager, Moore Institute, NUI Galway
- Kerby A. Miller, Curators’ Professor, University of Missouri
- Mick Moloney, Global Distinguished Professor of Irish Studies and Music, NYU
- Niall Ó Cíosáin, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, NUI Galway
- Cormac Ó Gráda MRIA, Professor of Economics, School of Economics, UCD
- Lillis Ó Laoire, Personal Professor, Scoil na Gaeilge, NUI Galway
- Ríonach uí Ógáin, Professor Emerita of Folklore, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore & Linguistics, UCD; former Director of the National Folklore Collection of Ireland; Folklore of Ireland Council
READ About the archive
The story of the cultural lives of Irish-speaking immigrants in nineteenth- and twentieth-century North America is relatively untold. Emigrants brought with them a treasury of song and story in Irish that, through continued engagement and practice, sustained them in their new environs. Some simply sang their songs and told their stories. Others documented them, collected and studied them, and sometimes published them and so engaged in a transnational discourse of Irish-language culture. The vitality of these New World activities is apparent in contributions to contemporary journals and newspapers. However, a staggering amount of evidence survives in a collection of manuscripts that has only recently come to light, the Rev. Murphy Collection. Created in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania between 1884 and 1935, it includes over 1,200 Irish-language songs in numerous versions. Counties on the western seaboard are well-represented but other less obvious areas also feature. It is the largest single collection of manuscripts documenting Irish song – in Irish or in English – ever to have been created by independent, non-professional, but highly competent and dedicated collectors.
The value of the collection lies not just in its enormous scale, extraordinary diversity, and remarkable origins, it lies especially in the rigorous methodology of its chief creator, Rev. Daniel J. Murphy (1858-1935) of Kilmacteige, Co. Sligo. Murphy was a major scholar of Irish language, literature, folklore, and song who was meticulous in the work he undertook with his fellow exiles J.J. Lyons and Thomas C. Roache (1872-1946). The collection documents the biographical details (maiden names, native parishes, American addresses) of the contributors as well as contextual information for the items performed. It also features an index of over 600 Irish-language songs, which Murphy developed and later referenced in the course of his studies.
Consequently, in both subject and scholarly application, this epic diasporic collection pre-empts the work of the Irish Folklore Commission by two generations and thus presents an exciting addition to the canon of Irish-language sources. It rivals the work of the ‘great collectors’ of Irish music, including Bunting, Goodman, and Petrie, but is all the more fascinating and significant for having emerged from an atypical context – among New World immigrants in an industrial East Coast metropolis and its hinterland – and recalls the famed achievements of Chief Francis O’Neill and Sgt. James O’Neill in Chicago in relation to Irish instrumental music. It differs from these other great collections, however, for demonstrating forcibly the sustained significance of songs and singing to the Irish-speaking diaspora in North America. Providing concrete evidence of how the Irish language endured, for a time at least, among Irish immigrants well after their arrival, it challenges the depiction of large-scale abandonment of the language. It demands a more nuanced look at language shift in the diaspora, and raises questions about the integration of the Irish and the development of their formidable sense of identity in America.
The value of the collection lies not just in its enormous scale, extraordinary diversity, and remarkable origins, it lies especially in the rigorous methodology of its chief creator, Rev. Daniel J. Murphy (1858-1935) of Kilmacteige, Co. Sligo. Murphy was a major scholar of Irish language, literature, folklore, and song who was meticulous in the work he undertook with his fellow exiles J.J. Lyons and Thomas C. Roache (1872-1946). The collection documents the biographical details (maiden names, native parishes, American addresses) of the contributors as well as contextual information for the items performed. It also features an index of over 600 Irish-language songs, which Murphy developed and later referenced in the course of his studies.
Consequently, in both subject and scholarly application, this epic diasporic collection pre-empts the work of the Irish Folklore Commission by two generations and thus presents an exciting addition to the canon of Irish-language sources. It rivals the work of the ‘great collectors’ of Irish music, including Bunting, Goodman, and Petrie, but is all the more fascinating and significant for having emerged from an atypical context – among New World immigrants in an industrial East Coast metropolis and its hinterland – and recalls the famed achievements of Chief Francis O’Neill and Sgt. James O’Neill in Chicago in relation to Irish instrumental music. It differs from these other great collections, however, for demonstrating forcibly the sustained significance of songs and singing to the Irish-speaking diaspora in North America. Providing concrete evidence of how the Irish language endured, for a time at least, among Irish immigrants well after their arrival, it challenges the depiction of large-scale abandonment of the language. It demands a more nuanced look at language shift in the diaspora, and raises questions about the integration of the Irish and the development of their formidable sense of identity in America.
ARticle about the archive
"'Sagart gan iomrádh': An tAthair Domhnall Ó Morchadha (1858-1935) agus Amhráin Pennsylvania". In Litríocht na Gaeilge ar Fud an Domhain. Faoi eagar ag Ríona Nic Congáil, Máirín Nic Eoin, Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail, Pádraig Ó Liatháin & Regina Uí Chollatáin (2015: 191-214).