Collection HSH-18739 - Hugh Shields Collection

Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 1 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 2 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 3 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 4 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 5 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 6 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 7 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 8 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 9 Hugh Shields Collection. Reel-to-Reel 104 [sound recording] / [various performers]. Track 10
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Identity area

Reference code

HSH-18739

Title

Hugh Shields Collection

Date(s)

  • 1946 - 2003 (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent and medium

?

Context area

Name of creator

(1929-2008)

Biographical history

Shields, Hugh, (1929–2008). Singer, collector, researcher, writer and publisher, leading authority on Irish traditional song with an international reputation. Born in Belfast, he spent most of his life in Dublin, where he studied at Trinity College and became a senior lecturer in French there. He was an emeritus fellow of the college. A specialist in medieval French and other European languages, he had a particular interest in questions of orality and dialect which were common to his professional studies and to his lifelong and highly productive interest in Irish and other traditional song.

From 1982 to 2002 he also lectured on Irish traditional music in the School of Music, TCD, with Breandán Breathnach, Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh and Nicholas Carolan, and in 1985 spent a period lecturing in the Department of Ethnomusicology in the University of California, Los Angeles. He also lectured widely at traditional music festivals and summer schools.

Song:
Shields’s parents gave him his initial interest in singing. As a young graduate teaching in north Co. Derry in 1953 and beginning his work of collection, he first met with the road-worker Eddie Butcher, his main source-singer and friend. Butcher was central to his publishing of traditional song in print and on sound recordings for the next five decades. With his wife Lisa, Shields also collected in Donegal, Down, Wexford and Wicklow, in France, and elsewhere, and he collaborated with the Dublin collector Tom Munnelly.

He edited selections from his field recordings – among them Adam in Paradise; Shamrock, Rose and Thistle 1–3; Old British Ballads of Donegal and Derry; and Chants Corréziens: French Folk Songs from Corrèze – for the record companies Topic and Leader Sound, for the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, and for his own cassette label European Ethnic Oral Traditions.

Publications:
His many seminal published studies of Irish traditional song, which were complex and detailed, appear in leading national and international journals including Ceol, Ulster Folklife, Hermathena, Long Room, Folklife, Folklore, and the Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council.

His books include Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (1981), Ballad Research (1986), Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs (1993), all standard works.

Shields had a particular involvement with the Folk Music Society of Ireland – of which he was a founding member in 1971 – and was the editor for it of its newsletter Ceol Tíre (1973–89), its journal Éigse Cheol Tíre – Irish Folk Music Studies (1973–2001), and other publications. He was also a founding board member of the ITMA from 1987. His varied contributions to its development included the donation to it of his large collection of field recordings, and the editing of its publication Tunes of the Munster Pipers: Irish Traditional Music from the James Goodman Manuscripts (1998).

The 2011 book – All the Days of His Life: Eddie Butcher in his own words: songs, stories and memories of Magilligan, Co Derry – was his final work, jointly edited by him and his wife Lisa. [NIC]

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Collection of audio recordings, personal papers, manuscripts, ephemera, music transcriptions and notation, news cuttings and photographs, relating to the life and work of the collector Hugh Shields. The sound recordings were made chiefly across Ulster in the period 1966–81.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Conditions governing reproduction

In copyright

Language of material

  • English
  • Irish

Script of material

Language and script notes

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

Finding aids

Allied materials area

Existence and location of originals

Existence and location of copies

Related units of description

Related descriptions

Notes area

Alternative identifier(s)

Access points

Place access points

Name access points

Genre access points

Description control area

Description identifier

Institution identifier

IE ITMA

Rules and/or conventions used

ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description. 2 nd ed. Ottawa: International Council on Archives, 2000.
Irish Guidelines for Archival Description. Ireland: Society of Archivists, 2009
Anglo-American cataloguing rules. 2nd ed., 1988 revision. Ottawa : Chicago: Canadian Library Association.

Status

Level of detail

Partial

Dates of creation revision deletion

Language(s)

  • English

Script(s)

Sources

Fintan Vallely, ed., The companion to Irish traditional music. 2nd ed. Cork University Press, 2011

Accession area

Related people and organizations

Related genres

Related places