The Sound Archive

The Sound Archive preserves these recordings on various formats and digitises them, providing a valuable resource for researchers, historians, musicians, and the public to explore the region's culture and history. Experience a sample of Ulster's sonic treasures below.

Music & Song

Musical highlights of our Sound Archive are the songs and sounds of ordinary people: local folk airs, laments, hymns and ditties rendered in pubs, parish halls, parades and on-street fleadhs. The songs saved by Dr Hugh Shields in the 1960s are here to stay. Also recorded are Belfast Harp Orchestra, blind fiddler John Anderson (Tyrone), Armagh Rhymers, Lambeg drummers, accordion bands, dulcimer players, flautists James Galway and Matt Molloy, uilleann pipers Séamus Ennis and Liam O’Flynn, and traditional singers Maighréad Ní Dhomhnaill and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh – and more live performers at Cultra’s annual Christmas ‘trad’ concerts in the 2000s.

Folk-life and folklore

All human life in twentieth-century Ulster is here. Popular traits and traditions were captured by Folk Museum curators over several decades. The rituals of life from childbirth to weddings to wakes and funerals are regular motifs. So too are domestic life, schooldays, enhanced transportation and communications, weather events, and the local effects of world wars. There are extensive interviews relating to various churches and religious societies of Ulster, plus fraternities and traveller groups. 

Language

Recordings of Ulster’s local accents, led by museum curators, notably, G. B. Adams in north Armagh and local schools in the 1960s, exemplify regional diversity. The Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English Speech features 539 interviews with people all over Ireland, 1972-81. Dr Rona Kingsmore’s recordings of Ulster-Scots accents around Coleraine in 1981 are also notable. Irish-language recordings of native Irish speakers include the last such of east Ulster, and many from Fanad and west Donegal, plus a full collection of Raidió na Gaeltachta (Doirí Beaga) broadcasts, 1972-2012. Numerous recordings of native Manx speakers are accessible too. 

Industry & Agriculture

Ulster’s industrial heritage is well captured in the Sound Archive. ‘Living Linen’, a large-scale oral history project of the turn-of-millennium period, comprises 300 interviews with veterans of this once-flagship northern industry. Elsewhere there are first-hand accounts (and some sounds) of shirt-factories, quilt-making, embroidery, weaving, lacemaking, blacksmithing, spade-making, saddling, coopery and pottery. Fishing, dairying, butter-making and various forms of agriculture feature too, as do hiring fairs and migrant labour experiences. 

Transport

The sounds and voices of Ulster’s rich transport history are well covered in the recordings here. They include tales of the Lagan Canal, told by former haulers, lock-keepers and lightermen; motorcyclists, including 1920s-30s champion Stanley Woods; employees of Harland & Wolff shipyards, aircraft factories, and car manufacturers, including DeLorean Motor Company; workers on the Great Northern Railways; conductors and drivers of Belfast buses, trams and black taxis.

Local Stories

Stories from each of the nine counties of Ulster populate the collection. Voices from virtually every town, village and in between are recorded. Search for your local place-names and you may be surprised! The Ards Peninsula, Belfast, the Glens of Antrim, Rathlin Island and Fermanagh figure strongly among the interviews. Many of the local customs recounted are now largely disappeared, including folklore of superstitions, fairies, ghosts, banshees, pishogues, curses and cures.

Sport

A collection of 63 interviews with leading sportspeople, recorded by volunteers of the Somme Museum for the Ulster Sports Museum project, is accessible in our Sound Archive. These span a wide range of sporting traditions, including Dr Jack Kyle, Trevor Ringland and David Humphreys (rugby); Harry Gregg, Billy Bingham and Pat Jennings (football); Lady Mary Peters and Maeve Kyle (athletics and hockey); John McNally and Barney Eastwood (boxing); Seán O’Neill and Peter Canavan (Gaelic football); Dawson Stelfox (mountaineering); Isabel Woods (cycling); Jimmy Kirkwood (hockey); Janet Gray (water-skiing); and Jim Baker (bowls).