Thanks for all your comments. It seems that abc has carried the day! Does anyone know of a program that can convert MIDI to abc? (as manually inputting all the tunes again in abc would be rather time-consuming!) A free program would be even better!

Paul D - I haven't transcribed the dances as to be honest they're not really what I'm interested in. However if you could send me the Walsh tunes as sib files then that would be great and thank you very much! My email is on the website.

crazy little woman - I'll add tunes as when I find them. I've got another trip to London pencilled in for the end of March so watch this space. I got the majority from the British Library and they have a really good online catalogue whereby you can order books in advance.

I've noticed a fair amount of tune-replication in these manuscripts which is one of the things that makes it all the more exhilarating when you find a tune that is a) a real corker and b) doesn't appear anywhere else.

Cheers

chris