In this volume, twenty-five of Tom Munnelly's colleagues and friends have honoured his great contribution to ongoing work in areas of folk song collecting, folklore and ethnomusicology.

He is described as having amassed 'the largest and most comprehensive collection of traditional song ever compiled in Ireland by any one individual.' Tom Munnelly was born in 1944 in Dublin and his interest in singing was stoked by family hoolies and communal singing in the Scouts.

Tom's striking originality in speech and writing, his wide-ranging curiosity about life and 'blotting paper memory' made him a conversationalist, raconteur and in time a frequent lecturer and occasional broadcaster. He began to collect songs in the sixties and made acquaintance with well-known singers of that era. He discovered the Traveller John Reilly, carrier of medieval ballads at a fleadh in Boyle, Co. Roscommon in 1965.

He became not only an authority on the songs but on the personalities who sang them. He was employed as a research assistant to D.K.Wilgus, Professor of English and Anglo-American Folksong in UCLA from 1969 to 1971. He has been a member of many arts and music organisations, many of which he founded since the Folk Music Society in 1970.