Irish dress history sources online:
A list of sources for Irish dress history research that free to access on the internet:
Primary and period sources:
Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): a database of historical texts from or about Ireland. Most have both their original text and, where applicable, an English translation. Authors include: Francisco de Cuellar, Luke Gernon, John Dymmok, Thomas Gainsford, Fynes Moryson, Edmund Spenser, Laurent Vital, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn
The Edwin Rae Collection: A collection of photographs of Irish carvings dating 1300-1600 taken by art historian Edwin Rae in the mid-20th c. Includes tomb effigies and other figural art.
National Library of Ireland: Has a nice collection of 18th-20th c. Irish art and photographs. Search their catalog or browse their flickr.
Irish Script on Screen: A collection of scans of medieval Irish manuscripts, including The Book of Ballymote.
The Book of Kells: Scans of the whole thing.
The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne by John Derricke published 1581. A piece of anti-Irish propaganda that should be used with caution. Illustrations. Complete text.
Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610) by Constantia Maxwell published 1923. Contains a nice collection of primary source quotes, but it sometimes modernizes the 16th c. English in ways that are detrimental to the accuracy, like changing 'cote' to 'coat'. The original text for many of them can be found on CELT, archive.org, or google books.
An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish By Joseph Cooper Walker published 1788. Makes admirable use of primary sources, but because of Walker's assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle Ages, it is significantly flawed in a lot of its conclusions. Mostly only useful now for historiography. I discussed the images in this book here.
Chapter 18: Dress and Personal Adornment from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by P. W. Joyce published 1906. Suffers from similar problems to An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish.
Consumption and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland Susan Flavin's 2011 doctoral thesis. A valuable source on the kinds of materials that were available in 16th c Ireland.
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy Volumes 1 and 2 by William Wilde, published 1863. Obviously outdated, and some of Wilde's conclusions are wrong, because archaeologists didn't know how to date things in the 19th century, but his descriptions of the individual artifacts are worthwhile. Frustratingly, this is still the best catalog available to the public for the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. Idk why the NMI doesn't have an online catalog, a lot museums do nowadays.
Volume I: Articles of stone, earthen, vegetable and animal materials; and of copper and bronze
Volume 2: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy
A Horsehair Woven Band from County Antrim, Ireland: Clues to the
Past from a Later Bronze Age Masterwork by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 1998
Jewellery, art and symbolism in Medieval Irish society by Mary Deevy in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe- Papers of the 'Medieval Europe Brugge 1997' Conference (page 77 of PDF)
Looking the part: dress and civic status and ethnicity in early-modern Ireland by Brid McGrath 2018
Irish Mantles, English Nationalism: Apparel and National Identity in Early Modern English and Irish Texts by John R Ziegler 2013
Dress and ornament in early medieval Ireland - exploring the evidence by Maureen Doyle 2014
Dress and accessories in the early Irish tale, ‘The Wooing of Becfhola’ by Niamh Whitfield 2006
A tenth century cloth from Bogstown Co. Meath by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 2004
Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia edited by Sean Duffy published 2005
Re-Examining the Evidence: A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress from 750 to 900 CE by Alexandra McConnell
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