I've had a look in the online archives of the Manchester Guardian to see if there are any reports of a branch of the Irish Folk Song Society active in Manchester or Old Trafford in the early 20th century but I can't find any. It seems likely therefore that G H Abrahams was writing to Thomas MacDonagh in an individual capacity as a member, and the text of the letter which Thompson has just posted would seem to confirm that.

The Irish Folk Song Society was a London based organisation, founded in 1904 by Mrs Charlotte Milligan Fox (1864-1916). The Society published 29 volumes of Journals between 1904 and 1932, and these were reprinted in 1967.

There must have been some overlap in membership between the original Folk Song Society and the societies which followed in Ireland, Wales and elsewhere. Evidently G H Abrahams had dual membership. The early Journals of the societies published lists of their members so it would be an interesting study to trace who all these people were and what their interests were.

Unlike Thomas MacDonagh, George Henry Abrahams doesn't seem to have won much fame in the end. He compiled the official guide to Stretford in 1919 and he became Town Clerk when Stretford was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1933. According to the records on Ancestry he was born in Macclesfield in 1872, and died in 1939.

Matthew