Alexander Martin Freeman (1878 in Tooting, London – 18 December 1959) was a scholar of medievalIrish texts and collector of Irish music.[1][2] A native of Surrey, he was educated at Bedford Grammar School and Lincoln College, Oxford.[3] He married a lady from Donegal.
He collected traditional songs from older generations of singers in the West CorkGaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) of Ballyvourney, County Cork, during 1913/14, which became the Ballyvourney Collection.[2][4]His Ballyvourney collection featured as numbers 23–25 of the Journal of the Folk Song Society, 1920–21.[3] This collection consists of almost a hundred songs, with original texts, prose translations and annotations, constituting incomparably the finest collection published in our time of Irish songs noted from oral tradition.[3]
His other works of scholarship are varied, and includes his edition of Annals of Connacht (1944), his magnum opus.[1]
He was on the Publication Committee for the Irish Folk Song Society from 1920 until 1939, when the society was dissolved.[2] He contributed songs and texts occasionally to the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. He sat on the editorial board of the Society as a member.
A lecture was given by Iarla Ó Lionáird on his Muskery Collection in Cork University on 30 January 2014.
