Sam Hanna Bell Samuel Beckett John Hewitt Bernard (Barney) Hughes James Joseph Magennis VC Frances Elizabeth Clarke Stewart Parker William Carleton Rosamond Praegar

Samuel Henry (1878 - 1952):
Collector of Folk songs


Sam Henry was a customs man, a pension officer, a traditional fiddle player, and a popular lecturer. He wrote extnsively for the local papers, and went into the country-side to collect the songs he printed in his series of ballads and songs which, from 1923 until 1939, appeared in the Northern Constitution, Coleraine. These songs were collected into Songs of the People. He presented an unpublished manuscript to the Belfast Free Library, to the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, and to the Library of Congress in Washington. They remained unpublished. Sam Hanna Bell, when he was producer with the BBC in Belfast, commissioned Sean O'Boyle to examine the Sam Henry collection, and to prepare an index to be used by the BBC. John Moulden published in 1979, Songs of the People: selections from the Sam Henry Collection, Vol. I, but it was not until 1990 that the collection was finally published in entirety by the University of Georgia Press. It is the largest single collection of songs from Ulster between the world wars.



Born: 09 May 1878
Died: 23 May 1952
Kate Newmann