With an unrivalled collection of more than 1,500 folk-songs assembled in a lifetime devoted to traditional music and social history, Tom Munnelly was revered by all with an interest in Irish folklore. A singer and field collector who played a large part in founding the Irish Traditional Music Archive, he became one of the great authorities on Irish song, and his proud legacy is the rich array of material now performed all over Ireland and the world.

Born in Dublin in 1944, Munnelly grew up in the Southside suburb of Crumlin, where community choirs and campfire singarounds sparked his interest in folk-song. He had no academic training and on leaving school he tried various jobs – as a machine operator in a textile factory, a store-man and a bookkeeper – but the lure of folk-songs soon gripped him and he went on his first field recording trip in Ireland in 1964, gleaning precious material from travelling singers.

He was encouraged by other collectors and folklorists such as Seamus Ennis and Bert Lloyd, who introduced him to the eminent American academic D. K. Wilgus, Professor of Anglo-American Folk Song at the University of California, Los Angeles. He subsequently became Wilgus’s research assistant, cataloguing, annotating and describing 1,750 song manuscripts for the Irish Folklore Commission in Dublin. In 1970 he linked up with three other distinguished folklorists – the uilleann piper Breandán Breathnach, the classical composer Professor Seóirse Bodley and the singer Dr Hugh Shields – to found the Folk Music Society of Ireland (Cuman Cheoil TÍre Éireann), serving on the committee for the rest of his life.

The Department of Education then set up a traditional music collecting scheme and invited Munnelly to be its first full-time collector. The personable, sharp-witted 27-year old had found his vocation. He approached song collecting with a rare passion and zeal and after the scheme was transferred to the Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin in 1975 he lectured extensively on traditional song, his energy and charisma enthusing others with the importance of keeping the tradition alive.

His love and passion for unaccompanied singing was sealed by his discovery of John “Jacko” Reilly, a penniless traveller from Co Leitrim. Reilly was in poor health (he was to die of pneumonia in 1969 aged 44) but he had a rich repertoire of songs which he performed in an earthy voice. Munnelly took him to Dublin to sing at the Tradition Club but was infuriated by the indifferent reaction. He resolved to overcome ignorance and promote unaccompanied singing. He introduced Reilly to Christy Moore, who was so deeply affected that he changed his whole approach to music and adopted many of Reilly’s songs, including Raggle Taggle Gypsy, The Well Below the Valley, Lord Baker and The Navvy Boots, introducing them into common currency with the band Planxty. Munnelly’s recordings of Reilly were eventually released commercially in 1978 on the album The Bonny Green Tree – Songs of an Irish Traveller.

By then Munnelly was spending so much time researching and making field recordings in the West of Ireland that he moved permanently from Dublin to the heartland of Irish music in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare. There he became chairman of the Willie Clancy Summer School, a now famous annual gathering of students of Irish music held in Miltown, commemorating Clancy, a legend in the town and one of Ireland’s greatest uilleann pipers. It was a position he held for 13 years and his song seminars, his love of the old “ sean nós” style of unaccompanied singing, irrepressible humour, gregariousness and an infectious willingness to impart stories and share wisdom remained a key feature of “Willie Weeks” for the rest of his life.

In 1985 he became a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, helped to set up the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, an indispensable resource of music and information in Merrion Square, which he chaired for five years. He also launched the Lahinch Folklore School and the Clare Festival of Traditional Singing. All through that time he maintained his first love – going out into the field collecting songs, many of which were to make a big impact on the folk music scene.

With his big personality and bushy beard he was a driving force in Irish music for nearly four decades. He gave lectures in every university in Ireland and also wrote extensively – his publications include essays about John Reilly and Tom Lenihan, another West Clare traditional singer, and Willie Clancy Week, a stalwart whom he championed strongly, resulting in two albums of recordings.

In May this year his career was celebrated with the publication of a book Dear Far-Voiced Veteran: Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly, presented to him at a special ceremony at Spanish Point, Co Clare, proudly attended by his wife Annette, and their three children. In June, though frail, he received the honorary doctorate in Literature from the National University of Ireland at Galway.

Munnelly’s determined work has sustained Irish traditional music in inestimable ways. Ireland’s greatest music collector, he will also be remembered for the warmth, wit and generosity which typified an attitude that encouraged so many singers and musicians to share their heritage with him.

Tom Munnelly, folklorist, archivist, collector and singer, was born in Dublin on May 25, 1944. He died after a long illness on August 30, 2007, aged 63.