“Be Thou My Vision” is an ancient irish melody for Christian. Are there any other ancient Irish melodies like “Be Thou My Vision” I could find?
Thanks!
You can also try asking over at the Praise Whistlers site: http://www.praisewhistlers.org/
Ah, thanks for that one!
Have just Googled the lyrics, and am getting it down as we speak, listening to this rendering. The drone effect gives a ground for me and suits the melody well. This made my day. 
Tommy Reck used to play that. The video is a bit too OTT Bord Failte for me.
Just managed to find out what the mountain with the oratory and the stations of the cross in the first video is: Maum Ean Oratory, will need to go have a look there as soon as we get a day decent enough for going up a Connemara mountain.
Thanks for that.
Heartbreaking..
Slan,
D. 
I expected no less. 
It is, for me, too. Thanks for the Reck recording by way of a good palate-cleanser.
Love the tune. But how ancient is it? In my searches I’m coming across attributions to Seán Ó Ríada as the composer. Either way, I’m keeping it. It brings to mind the powerful stillness at dawn.
Doesn’t really matter if it’s ancient, as long as it’s a good tune. It’s one of O’Riada’s but has well settled in since he wrote it.
There is no great body of religious music in Ireland, Caoineadh na Tri Mhuire is supposed to go back a long way. It’s a dark old thing, the three Mary’s lamenting at the cross. Joe Heaney did a lovely job on that one by the way.
A few hours ago I was at the hermitage of Coleman MacDuagh in the middle of the Burren. There’s a little cave there where the Saint himself is supposed to have lived in the seventh century, it was a place of pilgrimage as early as the tenth century, there’s a Holy Well there that provides a cure for back-aches (you’ll have to lay yourself on the slab over the well for maximum benefit), a mass rock and the remains of a little early medieval church. The whole place is overgrown by hazel shrub and oak and covered in inches of moss. lovely spot but what music there was at the time, if any, nobody knows.
How about “Morning Has Broken”?
Although it’s not a tune recommendation, I am much taken with the singing of Finola O Siuchru, she has a CD Solas na Soilse with songs for Christmas. I haven’ heard the CD but I have heard her sing, unaccompanied, a number of songs from this song cycle. Lovely expressive traditional singing. And you can learn the tunes off the CD ofcourse.