May she live to run again: history, meaning and change in Irish traditional hunting songs

This dissertation is an exploration of Irish traditional hunting songs, and, more broadly, it seeks to understand what these songs mean, and how their meanings have changed to remain relevant in new contexts. Focusing on four English-language Irish hunting songs—‘The Kilruddery Hunt’, ‘The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes’, ‘The Creggan White Hare’ and ‘On Yonder Hill There Sits a Hare’—this research examines the history of each song, from the mid-1700s to the present day, and asks how the songs reflect cultural shifts as Ireland changed from a largely rural, agricultural community, to a more urban, globalised one. It is shown that the ability of traditional songs to carry “more than one level of meaning at a single moment” (Toelken 1995, p. 33) allows meaning to be reshaped and re-contextualised by different singers and audiences. Some songs will lend themselves to certain contexts better than others, and these songs will gain or lose popularity partly based on how adaptable they are to any particular context.

This research uses a broad methodological approach in order to explore each song in detail, and examine patterns across different types of hunting songs in different temporal contexts. The methods used include textual analysis, historical and archival research, and semi-structured ethnographic interviews. The results of these methods are combined to view the songs (their texts and airs), and their historical contexts from multiple angles.

This is the first major study of Irish traditional hunting songs, and one of the few studies that has been conducted on any type of Western hunting songs. It contributes to previous work on meaning and traditional songs, building on studies by Barre Toelken (1995), Toelken and D. K. Wilgus (1986), Constantine and Porter (2003), and others. It uses historical research methods in order to better understand the usefulness of such sources and methods for song studies, and also to explore the use of songs as historical artefacts in their own right. It will be shown that the study of traditional song can help us to better understand the values and ideas of people past and present, and serve as a valuable window into aspects of history, which often go unseen.