a reasonable book to start with, would be the johnny o leary book , personally i think it preferable to learn by ear but if and when i use books that might be one i would use , there are others, a book by mally.. 100 irish polkas

I've seen that - didn't recall the title and couldn't think of any reason why I'd want it.

The point is that people who do Irish music around around here WOULDN'T USE IT - I've only seen it for sale in England. The Irish music scene in Scotland is not plagued by a deluge of superfluous print publications in the same way as the Scottish music scene is. And I think that's a strength.

There is no way the people who produced all those Scottish tune books could see what would result from them, and they are all pretty well produced. But their impact has been to create a subculture of music tunebook addicts (or, in the case of the rote-memorizers, recovering tunebook addicts). The Irish scene has contracted a bit but it hasn't got generationally stratified in the same way - the way people get their repertoire is less filtered.