Bound music manuscript books with handwritten sheet music collected by Nellie Walsh. Written in staff notation with lyrics, each song titled and titles collected in an index on the paper front cover of the book. Several have lyric sheets or staff notation inserted, so not all are well bound together.
Sheet music in staff notation, mostly handwritten onto music manuscript paper, but also contains printed or photocopied printed material. Several songs have lyric sheets or tonic sol-fa attached. These are undated but considering the format may have been used for her choral performances.
Bound music manuscript books, handwritten by Nellie Walsh, in both A4 staff notation books and smaller notebooks with lyrics and some tonic sol-fa. These are collections of songs unattributed to counties or dates, but each titled. They likely helped her when constructing her 'Songs of your county' column, but were also likely for her own personal use.
Small bound paper books containing song lyrics and occasional tonic sol-fa. Mostly handwritten by Nellie Walsh, but some books include inserts of newspaper clippings or typescript. Three are collections of typescript poems on coloured paper. These books are small memo books, day planners, notebooks, and contact books, mostly bound by cardstock, but a handful have thicker cardboard or plastic bindings. They are filled up with songs seemingly unattributed to certain counties or date ranges, but we can assume these fall between 1940s and 1990s.
Clippings, mostly full pages of 'Songs of your country' plus two 'Ireland's own' supplements that are booklets dedicated to the songs of Kerry and Donegal, respectively. A selection of these clippings are without Nellie Walsh's byline, but the majority of them are Walsh's. Most of Walsh's have handwritten dates from 1986. Many pages are dedicated to one specific county, but the others combine songs from multiple areas across Ireland.
Handwritten letters to and from Nellie Walsh, largely but not exclusively related to Irish traditional music, including her 'Ireland's own' column and her singing career. Some letters include requests for songs and submissions of songs, but are unattached to those songs. The earliest letter in this collection has '1895' handwritten later at the top, and addressed to Mrs. Margaret O'Nauralean (?).
Series of song manuscripts from and organised by the 32 counties of Ireland. Many are handwritten by Nellie Walsh herself, sometimes on the back of scraps of paper including envelopes, postcards, bank statements, and typescript notes or memos from the Old Wexford Society, for which Walsh was Honorary Secretary. Several songs are attributed to their writers, with the most belonging to the writer/composer duo John Nestor and Brian Driscoll and writer Dan McEntee. Most of the county files include letters requesting or submitting song, and many of those letters are attached to the song about which they are discussing. Although Walsh published her 'Songs of your county' column from the mid 1960s until the mid 1990s, the songs she compiled appear to date back to the late 1800s. The date range included here is 1898–1989 to account for the dates written on both the songs collected and the letters sent to Walsh to submit songs. The majority of the songs and letters are not individually dated.
Selections of Nellie Walsh's 'Ireland's own' column, either clipped from or photocopies of the magazine, pasted onto thick card that look like they could have been part of a scrapbook. Several are full pages of songs with Walsh's comments, but some are clipped individual songs.
Separate from her contribution to 'Ireland's own,' Nellie Walsh was a singer and collector of traditional Irish music who sang in local and national choirs. As a singer, she had a large collection of sheet music taped together to be performed. She collected folk songs before even starting 'Songs of your county,' so a majority of her personal papers is made up of songs compiled into manuscript books or written on the backs of envelopes, clipped from newspapers, and photocopied. The earliest date in this collection is 1936, but the majority is likely from the late 1940s until the end of her life in the late 1990s.
Typescript programmes, scripts, song lists, and notes, including the script from Nellie Walsh's appearance singing on a radio show on 29 April 1957, several drafts of a write-up on collecting folk songs, and a 24 page booklet of poems and songs that were 'The subject of a lecture given by Mr. Seamus Murphy in November, 1981."
