I'm sure Orac will be along shortly to (yet again!) point out the Irishness or otherwise of many of the songs mentioned here.

The terms 'Trad' and 'Folk' although often used interchangably in most international contexts are used differently in this country and there is a third 'classification' known loosely as Ballads, which to many would be mutually exclusive with the other two. I know its all folk music in the broadest definition of the word, that many traditional songs are ballads and vice versa, but the distinction is made over here and a lot of people would be able to define the difference very well. There have been endless debates on the subject, which have been known to come to blows - those of us really interested in the music meanwhile are in the other part of the Pub playing and singing !

By the way in the 3 way classification system just mentioned the original 20 songs listed wouldlalmost all be classified as Ballads ads they form the basis of the repertoire of wqat are known as Ballad Groups - most notably The Dubliners as mentioned earlier - apart from A JAR OF PORTER which I don't even recognise, but it may be one I know under another name.

As others have said there are already huge numbers of CDs with track lists almost identical to Ray's first post, I'm not sure the world needs another one but if you want to then please call it something like "20 Folk Songs, Rightly or Wrongly assumed by some people, who may not know any better to be Irish" or else we'll all have to endure another bout of "Yes it is, No its not" type "debate" on this and other forums.

Sorry if this seems overly cynical. Besides anything else there are at least five or six of the songs listed that, granted may be popular, but would and do make most people I know who are interested in Irish Trad cringe on a regular basis.