*Updated January 31, 2015*
Here you’ll find a repository of some resources I have used frequently when studying, researching, or browsing for new songs.
Field Recordings
- Irish Traditional Music Archive Digital Library (Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann) - digitized sound recordings, visual and printed items, and interactive music scores available for free online access. (includes the Inishowen Song Project)
- Max Hunter’s Folk Song Collection - archive of almost 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs, recorded between 1956 and 1976. Contains many American folk versions of traditional songs.
- Tobar an Dualchais - over 30,000 oral recordings made in Scotland and further afield, from the 1930s onwards, includiong stories, songs, music, poetry and factual information.
Lyrics and Song Info
- Cantaria folks song archive - Cantaria is a library of traditional and contemporary folk songs, mostly from Ireland, Scotland, and England, intended to be an educational tool for propagating the living song tradition by providing lyrics with recorded examples of songs being sung, historical notes about the songs and in some cases the sheet music as well.
- Comhaltas Archive - a national project of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann aims to preserve, organize and make available materials relating to Irish cultural traditions, including Irish music, song, dance, language and history. Includes song lyrics , audio/visual recordings, tunes, images, documents and periodicals.
- Digital Tradition Folk Song Database (The Mudcat Café)- over 9,000 folk songs in the database. Also the host of a handy forum for submitting and requesting information about songs.
- …Just Another Tune - Folklorist Jügen Kloss’ thoroughly researched site about popular song origins which mostly details song histories and has the background information on quite a few folk and traditional songs.
- Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music - It comprises 4544 web pages cataloguing 3339 albums and 2133 songs and tunes, with cross references to the Child, Laws and Roud folksong indexes and to the Traditional Ballad Index at California State University, Fresno.
- Sangstories: Stories of Scottish Songs - 150 lyrics and background stories here of traditional and newer Scottish songs.
- Sean Williams Irish Song page - concerned primarily with sean-nós (“old style”) Irish singing. Also includes many Irish song lyrics in both English and Irish.
- Songs in Irish.com - “a collection of some of the most popular Irish songs in Irish, or as Gaeilge. Each page includes an English translation of the Irish lyrics and embedded YouTube videos. Chords and tabs are included where possible. There’s a selection of sean-nós songs, pop songs in Irish, Irish ballads and children’s songs we learned at school!”
- Traditional Ballad Index - an annotated bibliography of the folk songs of the English-speaking world
Purchasing Recordings, Books, Video
- SOTI Amazon Store - support Song of the Isles and find many of the recordings found on this blog.
Know of additional resources? Contact SOTI
Song of the Isles 
I’m trying to find a song… it goes something like this
“Neighbours come listen to my story, I’ll tell you a ??? song,
I’m not very good at composing, and some of my notes are wrong..”
I think it might be “the tailor bon”? or the “sailor bon” or something.
I remember it from my childhood, and heard it once in an Irish pub, and never forgotten it… but can’t track it down… I’d be grateful for any pointers.