2                                                                                   The Co. Champaign Irish Tunebook, Vol 1

      Special thanks also to those whose software development work made this book technically possi-
ble: first and foremost Donald Knuth, author of TEX; Daniel Taupin, developer of the Music TEX en-
hancements; Chris Walshaw, developer of the ABC notation and the software for translating it into
Music TEX source; Alan Ng, who made a conveniently downloadable package of ABC2MTEX, Mu-
sic TEX, and TEX; Hippocrates Sendoukas, author of the DVIWIN program used to view and print
the TEX output with Windows; and Ivan A. Derzhanski, developer of the Gaelic type font eiad used
here. Thanks also to Dave Glenn, who steered me to this software.
      A special salute, too, goes to those who maintain the Celtic musical presence on the Inter-
net through the Ceolas site on the World Wide Web, http://celtic.stanford.edu/ceolas.html; the
IRTRAD-L mailing list; and the rec.music.celitc newsgroup. James N. Stewart, member of the old
Irish Folk Club and player at the contemporary sessions during his all-too-brief renewed residence
here, also deserves special thanks; he developed the comprehensive index of published sources of
tunes, TuneIndex, which is accessible at Ceolas. Michael Robinson and Philippe Varlet on IRTRAD-
L both merit special thanks for their research into the sources of tunes. Information from them is
credited with the notations [MR] and [PV], respectively.

      A Caveat

      The world even of traditional music does not stand still.
      In Ireland of old, the musician had a place of great dignity. One old Gaelic song shows
us a culture where a piper was such a respectable professional that parents made him an unwanted
match for their daughters. Amateur participants in this music is a product of the post-Famine di-
aspora. Francis O'Neill played the flute, but he made his living heading the Chicago police depart-
ment, and he called his memoir Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby. In the new environment the
musician sought to preserve and transmit the music above all. Commercial and proprietary claims
were hardly an issue.
      In the past two decades, however, this music has become a mass market niche. Irish professional
musicians have regained and even surpassed their ancient prestige and wealth--and composers of
Irish traditional tunes have become aware of their rights as creators of art. Their hand is strength-
ened by U.S. copyright law. A person who composed a tune in the United States before 1978 had
to take special action to secure copyright in it, but any tunes composed later are automatically un-
der copyright until 50 years after the composer's death unless she takes special action to put them
into the public domain.
      For this reason, several tunes played in the Co. Champaign sessions that are or may be the pro-
tected work of living composers have had to be omitted from this volume, in particular "Sean Ryan's
Polka"; "The Champaign Reel" (played and named by Liz Carroll at a visit to the Irish Folk Club
in 1979); "Brenda Stubbert's Reel"; and "The Snowy Path," a slip jig composed by Mark Kelly of
the group Altan. I hope to clarify the status of these, obtain permissions where necessary, and in-
clude them in future volume(s) of the Co. Champaign Irish Tunebook.
      As for Nos. 26 and 30, the words to No. 94, and the English words to No. 111, I wrote them,
but they are hereby declared to be in the public domain. May they be found worthy of the name
"traditional."

Champaign, Illinois, May 1996                                                                         Jerome S. Colburn