I'm sort of learning to understand that my trying to understand Irish music history is more about my finding what presentation of it is not true, rather than reaching any definition of what it is. To try to reframe the discussion :
Two main views predominate.
The first presented at its extreme is that traditional Irish music as we know it is recent, that the tunes are predominantly recent (mostly mid 18th century onwards). Irish music was continuously interrupted, often forgotten or simply diminished to the point of irrelevance, and only took a new popularity after new instruments, new tunes, new social realities and influences , were provided and quite possibly from abroad. This is exemplified by a lack of continuous, at times any, documentation of Irish music over the space of several hundred years prior to 1700 . A few tunes go back to 1600 or so, and that's all the Irish had then. There are no instruments found, there weren't any. A good example of deconstruction possible of the countervailing "romantic" view is found here
https://www.academia.edu/82158173/THE_L ... _1786_1882
And that essay ends with an absence of evidence is "probably" evidence of absence one line conclusion that is worth.... what it is worth.
The second view is that that just linked essay is not wrong, but that it offers no insight at all to music before that date. The newer documented and still now popular tunes are simply the point in evolution Irish music was at as its music was first notated. The main absence of earlier tunes is due partly to those evolving into the documented newer tunes, partly due to lack of earlier annotation. That all Ireland had for a century before were ten or so airs isn't credible. This is actually the gap we are looking at compared to where annotation starts, it stretches from late medieval, say 1400, through to even 1850. Before that span , it seems the evidence of music being at a level equal or greater in prominence to anywhere else exists in one form or another. Within that space there is enough mention of music, but not enough to draw any great conclusions, especially at local folk level. Destruction of music playing stands out in the record for its blatantcy, but a move to more discreet performance obviously won't as easily. A search of early music in Morocco often leads to Almohad destruction of instruments as main record, for comparison.
Working our way back, O'Neill collected a thousand and more tunes that were around in the period of, arbitrarily, 1850 to 1900. The range of explanation goes from :
They were musicians with a cause, sat down and invented all the tunes to restart traditional music.
They collected a medley of Irish and Irish-American tunes that evolved after the famine.
They collected the Irish tunes and derivatives that had been around since 1800, or earlier even, with some newer also.
There is a vast difference between all of those ideas. I would say third. That would imply that there was an undocumented background tradition through 19th century and earlier, the shape of which I would not know.
If we look at others, say Petrie, he seems to have collected song and airs ? He was classically trained and might have thought little of jigs and dance that was deemed common, instead looking for more profound meanings.
The dance masters, they were interested in style of tune more than origin, the origin often being a romantic bonus.
Later (or earlier) stylisations, whether modern realities, or by dance format, managed social setting, or religious demand stand out as points of initiation, when they are not.
History isn't neat in that sense, modern learning wants boxed answers that definitively prove right, but that would be completely unrealistic, tending to be no more than a form of self reward.
The reality of it all is that you have a steadily increasing population throughout time, music from time immemorial, various segregations of society including geographical , various disturbance to continuity, introductions and assimilations of outside influence, all going on continuously to a greater or lesser degree through all of that time.
Among the largest interruptions I count are change of daily setting. Conflict is an obvious one, but a maid singing a milking song is not the same as a version notated in a book in a city library poured over sentimentally by an academic in their spare time before giving a lecture on household emancipation. Even sincere revival of a song might only capture it as interpretation compared to it being sung in its natural setting.
I'm not a musicologist or academic, I just study this all haphazardly as my attention takes me, and I don't intend to or pretend to provide answers. Some books are definitive, but often many take much time to read with little subject matter directly specific to a question, and too often they carry major bias or narrative. I find the tunes themselves speak when played, there are often brief ideas on origin at tunearch, mudcat on lyrics of songs, and a few other sites offer detail. There are plenty of academic papers on any theme, and these are usually much briefer and with more detail than books. Then there are websites for all tastes, I read from all sites, even those I disagree with I will still look over. To round up I will just link various of the resources and presentation of ideas I found useful for anyone interested to get a broader picture, or possibly find something they equate to somehow. Oldest to most recent in time :
In
Flutes, pipes, or bagpipes? Observations on the terminology of woodwind instruments in Old and Middle Irish
Jacopo Bisagni has a look at how the early musical background in Ireland might be better understood via written source, giving some example of study. Though he suggests the transverse flute as later introduction, equally there is no proof either way. Notable is the more humble position of the "flute" in the musical hierarchy.
"It is a well known fact that no Irish written musical record exists prior to the twelfth century. It is for this reason that, as eloquently put by Ann Buckley, ‘it has become a commonplace to introduce this topic with a litany of apologetic negatives, expressions of regret for what is lost and what may once have existed as evidence for the practice of music in medieval Ireland’. Nonetheless, once we have accepted the idea that we shall probably never know which melodies were played and sung in Early Medieval Ireland, it is equally true that the evidence for other aspects of Medieval Irish music is in fact quite plentiful. "
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/F ... c262d57a8a
Song, harp, and poetry are themes that coexist at various levels throughout subsequent years. I leave those as a distinct reality that, although not really distinct, are slightly their own world compared to what is nowadays labelled as "trad". They deserve their own presentation and so I will just leave those at that here, often suppressed I would imagine that ballads, songs and airs are most related.
For an idea on musical realities that were common in europe
Troubadour 13th century, banjo players might enjoy, plus the related estampie
https://earlymusicmuse.com/kalendamaya/
Skipping the tune if nescessary , there is a very pertinent presentation further down on the relationship between church and early music
https://earlymusicmuse.com/birdonabriar/
From there in Ireland we are on to limited notation and then known dances from early 16th century on as notion of existing composition and style of, if not actual music. I'm not sure it is known who in society adopted the dances when, what co-existing or earlier ones might have been. The rennaisance through to 1800 was quite cross cultural in many ways, the world didn't look like it does now in terms of "organisation". What seems sure is that by 18th century dancing is very popular across the whole of society in Ireland.
"The first native Irish documentary evidence of dancing is an account of a Mayor of Waterford's visit to Baltimore, County Cork in 1413, where the attendees "took to the floor" to celebrate Christmas Eve. However, the Norman invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century may have brought with it the round dance tradition, as it was contemporaneously performed in Norman strongholds. Accounts of dancing in the 17th century suggest that dancing was by that time extremely widespread throughout Ireland."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_dance
So I think it fair to assume Ireland had its own forms of dancing in 1500, and from there if not earlier also saw the introduction of european dances, some of which were to then become distinctly Irish. Dancing I know little of, and so am simply aggregating information here, others feel free to correct.
I will start with the Carole which was not nescessarily introduced to Ireland but represents early circular dance
https://www.medievaldanceonline.co.uk/the-carole
The Prima is old from Asturias and still danced , just possibly related
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fRnNhY1qGFg
"There is ample evidence of Irish jigs or Irish step dancing in the 16th century, in 1569 Sir Henry Sydney sent a letter to Queen Elizabeth in which he expresses his enthusiasm for the Irish jigs of Galway. A report from 1600 mentions that some forms of Irish dances were similar in form to English country dances, and later references mention the "rinnce fada", also known as the "long dance" or "fading" "
Wiki
As in Ireland the jig is well known, for the fun of it here is an old dance that looks (I mentioned I don't know dance styles?) "jiggish" to me, by Vaqueiros of northwest Spain
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_contin ... e=emb_logo
The Vaqueiros (exonym) are a semi nomadic herders, an independent and often purposefully marginalised people.
Fast forward to 1700-1850
"Indeed during this particularly turbulent era in Irish history of the 1800s, dancing and music making as a social activity was immensely popular throughout all stratas of Irish society. And it has even been reliably recorded that at 'hedge schools' dancing was one of the most popular subjects, and that if this was not offered the children showed an even greater reluctance to attend than they usually did!!
From 'A Tour of Ireland' by Arthur Young, Dublin 1780 and reprinted in 'Arthur Young's Tour of Ireland 1776-1779', edited by A.W.Hutton, 1892, London, Bell & Sons:
"Dancing is so universal among them that there are everywhere itinerant dancing-masters, to whom the cottagers pay sixpence a quarter for teaching their families. Beside the Irish jig which they can dance with a most luxuriant expression, minuets and country dances are taught; and I even heard some talk of cotillons coming in."
Also when travelling through Killarney he wrote again:
'"ll the poor people, both men and women, learnt to dance, and are exceedingly fond of the amusement. A ragged lad without shoes or stockings was seen in a mud barn, leading up a girl in the same trim for a minuet."' "
Early 18'th and 19'th c. Irish Dance
Instruction Manuals or Manuscripts
http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/dance/dundalk/preface.htm
Which contains further information.
So there you likely have the background to music collected in the 19th century.
Various original texts of tunes at
https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Irish_F ... ollections
Early music reproduction (I haven't browsed them at all)
https://www.ancientmusicireland.com/about-us#
http://ancientmusicofireland.blogspot.com/
Discussions with links
https://thesession.org/discussions/34231
https://thesession.org/discussions/43321
"...and I also have seen a lack of Irish tunes I can date to the 1700s. I own a large collection of reprints of Scottish music from that time but few Irish. Many of the Scottish books contain Irish tunes, and I am starting to find Irish tunes from that period through the Traditional Tune Archive at
http://tunearch.org/wiki/TTA. A good example is the reel The Maid of the Spinning Wheel, published in O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland in 1907 and in a 1756 collection by David Rutherford as The Wild Irishman. So far the older Irish books I have found appear to have a mix of tunes that are recognizable as dance tunes with other types of music, and many are in flat keys as if arranged by a non-traditional musician. I am still studying and learning, so I am far from the last word on 18th-century Irish music. John Whitacre "
Last but by no means least, Ann Buckley's work, listed at
http://irishhistorians.ie/members/ann-buckley/
All the above and more might easily (and more thoroughly) enough be condensed onto a single webpage so that those looking for a basic understanding could orientate themselves a little. That isn't for me to do.