This book charts the story of Irish traditional music in Ireland, outlines its relationship with the music of the Gaelic aristocracy, and describes how it developed through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into what is probably the richest folk music tradition in western Europe. Music does not exist in a vacuum, and the social background to the music in each period forms an essential part of the approach, as does the relationship between traditional music and other forms such as classical and popular music.