P. W. Joyce 
Old Irish Folk Music and Songs 
A Collection of 842 Irish Airs and Songs, Hitherto Unpublished

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. If the names have survived in the two branches, why not the airs? And I thought it just possible – indeed I half hoped – that in Danish collections of popular music I might light on versions of our Molly Astore, Garryowen, The Boyne Water, Patrick’s Day, The Groves of Blarney, &c. In order’ to hunt this matter up, I procured from a well-known publisher in Copenhagen three fine collections of Scandinavian popular traditional music, mostly with words – Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian containing 294 Danish melodies (including twelve of the Faroe Islands), 223 Swedish, and 161 Norwegian. All are accompanied with elaborate notes; but it was tantalizing that I could not read one word of them; for they are all – as well as the songs – in Danish. The music I could read, however and I went over the three collections, air by air. In general character and structure the Danish airs approach nearer to Irish than do the Swedish and Norwegian; but I may say at once that on the whole the result of my search was disappointing. I could find no considerable number of Danish airs either identical with, or closely resembling, those of Ireland. Yet I found a few.