and he also has some of his colleagues see it we'll talk about the book of kells and many other passions the other weather cooperated that you could come here instead of just coming for us to come to your studio because this way we can invite all of your guests into our library so we are right now in the what we call the irish room at the john jay burns library boston college the burns library as you well know is our library on library we're open to the public even though we're here on our university campus we have lots of programs and we're glad to add people to our mailing list and to invite them to our programs and to learn more about our collections think people who might not know that it's a public please still think we should have this help it is and it's in two ways so as mentioning we have lots of events like in a couple of weeks we're going to be hosting a group from strokes town park which is into and sharing stories of their family histories and immigrants who came from the family that's going to have we'll have a conversation with our colleague kathy williams about it because i want to know what i'm so that's the kind of thing and we really invite the public to come in for those kind of come and meet here and with their classes with their professors to handle these documents and to do research on them we have people coming regularly again from ireland from other countries to work in our collections so we're open to  of course featured several shows on an irish painting world ireland i rish arts and crafts i'm good and that's how you learn about the birds library many people learn about the library even through art museums a recluse colleagues with that with beautiful it is it's noted scholars call it the most beautiful illuminated manuscript there are others this particular one is believed to have been done about the year eight hundred   or him there and many scholars believe that it was at least begun there and evidence that it was had to be a rather wealthy monastic settlement because as you mentioned kitty the illumination is just brilliant and it would have taken many many cows to create these vellum pages and that's how the the book was created using calfskin treated in a special way to create  are many beautiful vellum leaves as they call them with beautiful beautiful script handgun and skulls also believe that there might have been up to three artists that work came and it's believed that there the book of kells may have been transported to come to me which was another another monastic settlement that was governed under the same one as i own a and county meets monastic settlement was cal's so it got the name but then other scholars think it might have been done in one of the script tare i'm so in monasteries in the north of england because the were famous ones there the book of linda's father is another gorgeous gorgeous gospel book and it kind of gives some evidence that kells may have been worked on there too but it basically it's a gospel book it contains the four new testament gospels and includes some abbreviated histor boston donated this facsimile to the parents and now we want to tell you that the bombs left only has ancient things like the book of kells but they also have co books and there is a really beautiful one by a contemplative a poet so we are collecting contemporary books by writers that are still living and we are also making an attempt to collect their literary papers so but this particular poet even boland is famous in the irish poetry world and she did a beautiful book called to the book and also a very special almost handmade paper but i chose this book because i want to time and not just the contemporary irish writers but the fact that we have other historical works in the form of many scripts so if you look at this book you see the poem emigrant letter and you see a skin  and this is a letter of a family name printed gas and they had emigration from ireland during one of the big waves of immigration in ireland and that was the eight hundred forty s and the their first family member a young lad came over to seek a job in body forty one but then more of the family members moved over and they were writing back and forth and a lot of the letters were what was actually happening in ireland and this particular letter a brother writes to his family in an america saying if it wasn't for that three dollars you sent i would have had to still sell my car so there is a lot of that back and forth a lot of the yes it is my name's elizabeth sweeney and librarian for the irish music archives here at the john jay burns library at boston college now you have to tell us about the shot and other music at really want to know more about well there's so much to know i can give you a little outline there was an ancient bardic tradition lasting about four hundred and fifty years from say twelve hundred to sixteen fifty it was part of gaelic ireland and parts of gaelic scotland and the harper would have been very highly placed in that society and everything was learned by here and nothing written down that that i'm aware of it's also barely into the think that this will probably more valu sure yes so the parts that we have are more modern than the harp tradition that we were just talking about the harps are they date from about eighteen one thousand eight hundred twenty so there revive all hearts but have a much more recent instrument at diatonic button accordion in the d c sharp tuning and we are looking forward to announce to non singing this very soon it belonged to a great tradition is is very strong and it's taken different twists and turns and its influence today i think by some of the competitive structures that have fostered dan the furniture yeah yeah yeah a lot of today's fiddle tunes accordion tunes and so forth with be characterized as dance music even though today little yes we have this seamus connelly collection of irish music that was launched a year and a half ago and it's free on line three hundred and thirty plus tunes and songs many of songs very much yet and since read the burns library i would be remiss if i did not mention the frederick manning collection john mccormick i realize you do yes sometimes you have  boston college and how it is that we have these irish collections here so boston college was founded here in boston eight hundred sixty three is when it was chartered so and that was in the middle of the last the nineteenth century have to say right now when there were many immigrants coming to boston from from europe and particularly from ireland and the problem was they didn't have many good places to go to school they weren't as welcome to here as immigrants especially those of you know what like the irish catholic  that's where the jesuits the society of jesus of priests who were the jesuit order of the catholic church actually set up boston college as kind of a mission school if you can think about that which is school here in new england so again for these immigrant populations ireland some came during the height of the famine the great irish famine of the eighteenth forty's and black forty seven others came later like such person's family because ireland for those you know a million and a half were lost literally burns eventually made his home and it was his parents who sent him out to boston college to get his education and he did very well by and he was a very prodigious young man studied hard i worked hard and achieved many successes as a young man so he was a graduate of our class of one nine hundred twenty one high and then i decided he wanted to pursue last studies boston college inhabits law school for another decade so on burns went to harvard to do his law school degree and he was one of the few were catholic students to be admitted at that time and became actually professor following his graduation and the first that yes he did became the for the youngest into the to the roosevelt administration a new deal era setting up the security and exchange commission the f c c and it was joseph p kennedy who appointed judge burns at that point to be the first general counsel so the legal adviser to the security exchange commission and he did that for a few years and then retired from his civic service at that point and went to private law practice with offices both in boston and new york so remarkable  career and one of the reasons that the judge burns was so remarkable this way as he was an avid reader and that's something he learned on in the desert so he and a great love for books and so i even  in his when he was very busy with his career he was still as an alarm being very generous to boston college he helped to organize at the time it's called the friends of the library group so that other alumni like the dance while they didn't build the building this building that we're in now was here but eventually it was renovated time judge byrnes did first though as he started getting a library at the university and its library some monies to buy collections and it was really he who established this special collections of rare books now at the time it was more focused on what they called the british catholic authors so victorian poets like francis thompson's whom's many people don't remember these days but was that university that it is today and not just a smaller local commuter school and you know renowned for its education but to become really a national university so it had to build a bigger library collection so the building right now is the original college library here to chestnut hill right on the edge of boston in newton pass so that's where we are today and this in the college library building was built in in the one nine hundred twenty s and it served us very well for all of those years but then in the one nine hundred eighty s again becoming a national twenty's and create the burns library so what we're seeing here this room the irish room is a result of a renovation that happened in one thousand nine hundred six that created the john j burroughs library so it named in honor of judge burns so that it's quite an honor him to contribute and to to organize the rest of the family to to contribute to the renovation of the building to endowments that allow us to purchase collections and to conserve them and that's particularly where the irish collections focus came becoming a fully independent republic with the active arlen and then you know because preceded sense over the last seventy five and more more years here so it's it is a comprehensive collection particularly