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Patrick Byrne part 11: England and Ulster in 1851

Header photo: Calotype E (detail). Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh, Coll-1073, CC-BY

This post follows the traditional Irish harper Patrick Byrne on his travels over the course of 1851. Patrick Byrne was in Warwickshire and Staffordshire for the first three months of the year; then he returned to Ireland, where he spent May and June around County Cavan; he spent the summer working in the fashionable seaside resorts of south County Down, and then he spent the autumn back in County Monaghan working for aristocratic patrons at their enormous country houses. We will work through the sources to try and reconstruct his itinerary and see the places that he was visiting.

Patrick Byrne part 10: in the Scottish borders and touring Ulster, 1850

And so we continue to try and work through all of the documents for the life of the traditional Irish harper, Patrick Byrne (1790s – 1863).

You can catch up with his life and work up to this point, in my previous posts about him:
Part 1 covers Patrick Byrne’s early years and education, down to his discharge from harp school in 1822.
Part 2, looks at his early career, working for patrons in Ireland and England from 1822 to 1837.
Part 3 covers his first visit to Scotland over the winter of 1837-8, and his tour of Ireland in 1839-40.
Part 4 looks at him playing for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and then touring mostly in Ireland and a bit in England in 1841-4.
Part 5 covers just six months, from when he went to Scotland at the beginning of 1845 until he headed back to Belfast on 25th June, including the Waverley Ball and having his photographs taken.
Part 6 covers the rest of 1845, and the whole of 1846, touring in the north of Ireland and the English midlands.
Part 7 covers Scotland in the first half of 1847, Ireland for the second part of 1847; England in the first part of 1848, and back in Ireland in Autumn 1848.
Part 8 covers Byrne’s trip to the south of England over Christmas 1848, where he played events in Hampshire and Wiltshire; and then the first half of 1849, when he went to Staffordshire and then came back to Ireland and met the antiquarian John Bell in Dungannon.
Part 9 covers his pursuit of Queen Victoria from Dublin to Balmoral in the summer of 1849.
This post (part 10) follows him from the end of 1849 through to the end of 1850, in the Scottish borders and touring Ulster.

James Duncan

James Duncan was a traditional Irish harper in the 18th century. But since he was still alive in 1792, he was active during my Long 19th Century study period (1792 – 1909) and so I should try to say something useful about what he was doing from 1792 onwards.

Irish harpers in the census records

Since the early 19th century, with one or two gaps, a census has been taken every 10 years, to record the entire population of the United Kingdom. During the 19th century, Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland were all part of the UK, but they were administered differently. The first census in England, Scotland, and Wales was done in 1801, though at first only aggregate numbers of people were collected. The authorities in Ireland started a bit later; they tried to do a census in 1813, but apparently it was not completed. The first census in Ireland to be actually done was in 1821.

Mary Doran

Mary Kerr née Doran lived in the mid 19th century, and she is said to have had a harp. But I don’t know if she was a traditional player or a classical player or what. This post is to try and gather together the information we do have about her and her harp, to see what we think.

Patrick Byrne part 9: Playing for the Queen, summer 1849

Header image © National Galleries Scotland, used under license CC-BY-NC

As we get further and further on in Patrick Byrne’s life-story, we have more and more information. So this post deals with just three months, from July to October 1849, following Patrick Byrne as he chases Queen Victoria around different parts of her realm.

Patrick Byrne part 8: Christmas 1848 to July 1849

Header image courtesy of University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections,
Papers of Henry George Farmer collection, MS Farmer 332 f5r

This post is part 8 of my series about Patrick Byrne.
Part 1 covers Patrick Byrne’s early years and education, down to his discharge from harp school in 1822.
Part 2, looks at his early career, working for patrons in Ireland and England from 1822 to 1837.
Part 3 covers his first visit to Scotland over the winter of 1837-8, and his tour of Ireland in 1839-40.
Part 4 looks at him playing for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and then touring mostly in Ireland and a bit in England in 1841-4.
Part 5 covers just six months, from when he went to Scotland at the beginning of 1845 until he headed back to Belfast on 25th June, including the Waverley Ball and having his photographs taken.
Part 6 covers the rest of 1845, and the whole of 1846, touring in the north of Ireland and the English midlands.
Part 7 covers Scotland in the first half of 1847, Ireland for the second part of 1847; England in the first part of 1848, and back in Ireland in Autumn 1848.

By the end of 1848, Patrick Byrne was in his early 50s; he was well established as a touring performer in Ireland, Scotland and England, both as a public “celebrity” and with networks of private patrons right up to the top of the social hierarchy.

This post includes two very different but equally interesting episodes in his life. One is his professional tour of the south of England; and the other is when Patrick Byrne met the antiquarian John Bell, who wrote down a load of very useful traditionary information about the Irish harp tradition which Byrne had apparently told to him.

Huw Roberts wedi marw

Teyrngedau i Huw Roberts, ar-lein ar BBC Cymru Fyw

Patrick Byrne part 7: 1847-8

We can just continue with Patrick Byrne. This post follows his trip to Scotland in the first half of 1847, and his return to Ireland for the second part of 1847; and then his work in the English midlands in the first part of 1848, and back in Ireland especially around County Cavan in the summer and early autumn of 1848.

Patrick Byrne part 6: 1845-6

We have so much information about Patrick Byrne that I am concerned whether this series of blog posts is going to get too much for me. John Scully made an entire book of “not the complete story” of Patrick Byrne’s life (Ah how d’you do sir, Carrickmacross 2024). But I think there is still value in me continuing to try and work through every single reference I can find about Patrick Byrne, in an attempt to trace his life story. So we will carry on here for now.

This post will cover Patrick Byrne’s activities from when he travelled back to Ireland at the end of June 1845. We will try to follow Byrne for about six months in Ireland to the end of 1845, and then for the first half of 1846 in England, and finally for the second half of 1846 touring the north of Ireland, including a very interesting paper trail of letters of introduction from aristocratic patrons.