Gone are the days when all Irish school children would learn Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies as a matter of course. Moore has disappeared off the radar and I suspect most young people would be hard pressed to recall the airs, let alone the words, of any of his songs, for example, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, ‘The Minstrel Boy’, ‘The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls’ or ‘The Meeting of the Waters’. How many of us from a somewhat older generation could name any number of titles? It might be surprising to discover that Moore wrote no less than 124 songs, and this year, in celebration of two hundred years since the first publication of the Irish Melodies, a year-long diary of events will acknowledge Moore’s...