"Is it an archive of traditional music held in Ireland"
Yes.
As far as traditional song is concerned, while there are many songs where the origins are identifiable, many more are of unknown origin and could be from anywhere.
Collector, Tom Munnelly identified 50 Child ballads which had survived among field singers up to the 1990s here, though some had disappeared from the repertoires elsewhere; unlettered Travellers were particularly important in keeping the older songs alive.
They hadn't been 'claimed' by they Irish - they had become Irish -
Twenty years ago, you couldn't throw a stone around here without hitting an elderly singer who didn't know Lord Lovel, or The Suffolk Miracle.
We are getting songs from a 95 year old singer who has given us Lord Lovel, Lord Bateman, Katherine Jaffaray, The Keach in the Creel, The Girl with a Box on her Head.
Other songs we have recorded include Captain Wedderburn, The Cruel Mother, The Blind Beggar ('s Daughter), Lord Randall, Edward, Lamkin, Famous Flower of Serving Men........ all Irish versions of standard traditional songs.
Among the rarest found over here were The Maid and the Palmer, The Demon Lover, Prince Robert, Johnny Scoot and Young Hunting, probably the finest piece of ballad singing I have ever heard from a field singer (an elderly Traveller, accompanied by the sound of his son cutting up firewood to sell, in the background)
In the 1980s, we recorded a story from an elderly Clare man living in London, it included 2 verses from a song I have never heard sung, 'The Mercahnt and the Fiddler's Wife' - I was eventually able to trace it in Thomas D'urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (published between 1698 and 1720)
There are many examples of songs regarded as 'English' or 'Scots' which have taken root over here and have become 'Irish', or might even have originated here - as nobody has managed to confirm the origin of most of our folksongs, it is somewhat 'premature' to designate them as having come from anywhere in particular, and any archive worth its salt must include as wide a selection as possible if our song tradition is going to make sense.
Jim Carroll