ABSTRACT
Ireland was already famous as a center of learning since the early Middle Ages, when Irish missionaries traveled to the continent to teach Christianity and to found monasteries. Irish traditional musical and poetic forms have much in common with those of Britain. Pentatonic forms common in Scotland recur in Ulster, and heptatonic modes are distributed in Ireland in much the same proportions as in England: more than half of the stock of tunes are major, and less than half are mixolydian, dorian, or aeolian, in that order of frequency. The use of bellows for the pipes was a continental innovation, but the uilleann pipes developed new features, and are thus distinguished as the only traditional Irish instrument now in use which is of native elaboration. The traditional community regards instrumental music and song as serious matters, though their present function is essentially recreational.
