Frank Harte, who has died aged 72, was a singer, collector and folk historian. He saw himself as a "story teller in song" and specialised in the songs of Dublin city. With Dominic Behan, Luke Kelly and Jimmy Crowley he represented the urban strand of the Irish tradition. But there were other strings to his bow, and he wholeheartedly embraced the wider tradition and passionately believed that Ireland's songs were the unwritten history of the people.
His introduction to Irish music came from hearing a Traveller, who was selling ballad sheets at a fair in Boyle, Co Roscommon, sing The Valley of Knockanure. In time the declamatory street style became one of his hallmarks. However, he was also capable of tender renditions of love songs such as She's Like the Swallow, sensitively expressing the sentiment without any trace of sentimentality.
He was also a collector of songs and the stories behind them, and assembled a database of more than 15,500 recordings. He was unstinting in his praise of singers who keep the tradition alive. Eddie Butcher, Liz Jeffries, Geordie Hanna and Kevin Mitchell were among those whose generosity he acknowledged, and he in turn was happy to share his songs with younger singers like Karan Casey and Niamh Parsons.
Born on May 14th, 1933, he was the son of Peter Harte, a publican, and his wife, Jane (née Shaughnessy) of Chapelizod, Co Dublin. He was educated at Blackrock College and Bolton Street College of Technology, where he studied architecture. On graduating, he spent three years working in the United States. In the late 1950s he returned to Ireland and set up a practice in Dublin. He combined this with teaching at the School of Construction, Bolton Street. Among his major architectural commissions was the National Stud.
He was aware of the urban tradition from an early age. "[ There] was a great mixture of people in Chapelizod - Catholics and Protestants - and of course there were a lot of Chapelizod people involved with the British army in the Ordnance Survey in the Phoenix Park. There was also a fair few of the old crowd knocking around - the Dublin Fusiliers who had come back from the first World War and they all had an input too ... I would also hear a lot of the old music-hall songs and Victorian melodrama songs such as She Was Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage, things that would tear your heart out, bring tears to your eyes."
Patriotic and political song had an honoured place in his repertoire - the fact that such songs were passed on orally down the centuries was a measure of their worth. They endured, he believed, because they gave people hope, vindicating them and validating them as people of worth.
Notwithstanding his republican outlook, he insisted that the Orange song was as much a part of the Irish tradition as the Fenian song.
He was at his best in a live session, and regularly sang at Sunday morning sessions at the Brazen Head. In 2003 he was selected as the TG4 Traditional Singer of the Year.
He recorded several solo albums of Dublin songs and his book, Songs of Dublin, was published in 1978. Despite his preference for singing without accompaniment, he enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Donal Lunny. Their albums include 1798: The First Year of Liberty (1998), My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte (2001) and The Hungry Voice: The Song Legacy of Ireland's Great Hunger (2004). He completed an album of navvies' songs shortly before his death.
His sleeve notes for these albums are remarkable for their research and scholarship. Packed with information, the notes for Napoleon Bonaparte run to 56 pages and constitute an outstanding contribution to Irish ballad lore. Fintan Vallely hailed the album as the "great triumph of Frank Harte's life work", which merited a doctorate for "making more accessible not only Irish song, but Irish and European history too".
His wife, Stella, daughters, Sinéad and Orla, and sons, Darragh and Cian, survive him.
Frank Harte: born May 14th, 1933; died June 27th, 2005