The notion and process of collecting, recording and representing Irish traditional music, song and dance: The Muckross House Collection

This paper looks at the notion and process of collecting, recording and representing Irish traditional music, song and dance for archival purposes. It examines the role of the archive in the Western world and focuses on the Muckross House Collection and my experience as a collector for Muckross House. In addition, it provides an overview of the different research methods and techniques I applied in the field. The Muckross House Collection is examined within the broader context of the nineteenth-century European movement of collecting music, song and dance, and I suggest that these projects and processes were significant to the formation of Western identity.