Early years

Tom Munnelly was born in Rathmines

Rathmines

Rathmines is a suburb on the southside of Dublin, about 3 kilometres south of the city centre. It effectively begins at the south side of the Grand Canal and stretches along the Rathmines Road as far as Rathgar to the south, Ranelagh to the east and Harold's Cross to the west.Rathmines has...

 in Dublin, and went to Clogher Road technical college. He took up factory work at the age of 15. At a scout camp he became intetersted in folk songs. To enlarge his own repertoire he acquired a tape recorder. In 1965 Munnelly met an Irish Traveller

Irish Traveller

Irish Travellers are a traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin, who maintain a separate language and set of traditions. They live predominantly in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.-Etymology:...

 John "Jacko" Reilly and recorded "The Maid and the Palmer". He called it "The Well Below The Valley". It was the first time this song had been collected from Oral tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

 in 150 years. Christy Moore in the magazine "Swing 51" (1989) recalled that "British folklorists ... wouldn't accept that it was genuine. They reckoned it was a put-up and they couldn't accept that this song had appeared in the West of Ireland because it had never appeared there before." In 1972 Munnelly played the tape to Christy Moore

Christy Moore

Christopher Andrew "Christy" Moore is a popular Irish folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is well known as one of the founding members of Planxty and Moving Hearts...

 who subsequently performed it on Planxty's album "The Well Below The Valley". Planxty also sang "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy". Again the source was Munnelly's recordings of Reilly. Later Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....

 was inspired by Munnelly's recording of "Lord Baker

Young Beichan

"Young Beichan" is a ballad, which with a number of variants and names such as "Lord Baker", "Lord Bateman", and "Young Bekie", was collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century, and is included in the Child ballad as number 53 .-Synopsis:Beichan is born in London but travels to...

". Her own version is based on the singing of Reilly.

Academic appointments

A. L. Lloyd

A. L. Lloyd

Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....

 introduced him to D.K. Wilgus, professor of Anglo-American folk song. In 1969 Munnelly became Wilgus's assistant. In 1970 he founded the Cumann Cheoil Tíre Éireann (the Folk Music Society of Ireland

Folk Music Society of Ireland

The Folk Music Society of Ireland was founded in 1971. Its mission was to encourage interest in traditional music in Ireland and its practice and to promote research on this and related subjects. Committee members included Seán Corcoran, Sandra Joyce, Niall Keegan, John Moulden, Tom Munnelly, Dr...

) together with Breandán Breathnach

Breandán Breathnach

Breandán Breathnach was an Irish music collector and Uilleann piper.Breathnach worked as a civil servant with the Department of Education and was responsible for collecting music from around Ireland. By the time of his death he had collected over 7,000 tunes published from 1963...

. In 1971 he joined Breathnach at the Department of Irish folklore at University College Dublin. In 1976 he was asked to recruit performers for the United States Bicentennial

United States Bicentennial

The United States Bicentennial was a series of celebrations and observances during the mid-1970s that paid tribute to the historical events leading up to the creation of the United States as an independent republic...

. His collection started appearing in commercially available form: "Paddy's Panacea" (Topic, 1978) and "Mount Callan Garland" (1994, but recorded 1984).

He recorded over 1,500 tapes (over 20,000 songs) of folksong and folklore. According to "Irish Philadelphia.com", it was the "largest ... collection of traditional song ever compiled by any one person". He then proceeded to transcribe and catalogue every note.

County Clare

In 1978 he relocated from Dublin to County Clare. He married Annette and had two sons, Colm and Tara, and a daughter, Éadaoin. He was chairman of the Irish Traditional Music Archive

Irish Traditional Music Archive

The Irish Traditional Music Archive – Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann is a national public archive, information centre, and resource centre for everyone with an interest in the contemporary art forms of Irish traditional song, instrumental music, and dance, and in their history.-Collections:The...

 in Dublin from 1987 to 1993. On 19 June 2007 he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland at Galway for services to Irish traditional music. He died in Miltown Malbay, County Clare.

Writings

He wrote occasional articles for the "Folk Music Journal", the International Ballad Commission and the on-line magazine "Musical Traditions". Early in 2007, Anne Clune edited a collection of his essays, and tributes to him, "Dear Far-voiced Veteran (Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly)", with contributions from Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is an Irish musician. As a pianist, composer, recording artist and academic, he holds the Professorship of Music at the Irish World Music Centre of the University of Limerick...

and Fintan Vallely.

Discography

Recordings made by Tom Munnelly

• "The Bonny Green Tree - Songs of an Irish Traveller" (John "Jacko" Reilly) 1978
• "Paddy's Panacea: Songs Traditional In West Clare" (Topic, 1978)
• "Songs of the Irish Travellers" (various artists) (1983)
• "The Mount Callan Garland: Songs from the repertoire of Tom Lenihan of Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay, County Clare" (1994) - book plus cassette