While the literary excellence of eighteenth-century Irish song in Gaelic has long been acknowledged in Irish scholarship, the English-language song tradition of the same period has received far less attention. This oversight may derive from an emphasis on Irish-language poetry that owes as much to politics as it does to letters – although it probably also reflects the more variable quality of songs in the English language. At least one genre of English-language song, however, is distinguished not only by at times comparable quality but also by stylistic and historical links to the older Irish tradition: the songs of the hedge schoolmaster.

This group of songs reflects influences in language and style that existed partly as a result of important social changes that occurred during the eighteenth century, including the disintegration of the Gaelic aristocracy and the compression of Catholic Irish society into a more condensed, less rigidly defined social order than the one that preceded it. On an artistic plane, as we have already seen, this resulted in the convergence of aristocratic and popular literature, especially in the realm of song-poetry. On an educational level, it contributed to the expansion of a system of instruction known as the ‘hedge school’. Since many eighteenth-century Irish poets were at some time in their lives also hedge schoolmasters, these two developments were not unconnected; and both played a role in the generation of a new song-type which tradition itself attributes to the hedge schoolmaster.