Irish traditional music, and to a lesser extent the traditional music of the rest of the Celtic lands and Britain, is an important part of our daily lives - it keeps us going, picks us up when we're down, and urges us to dance (metaphorically, anyway) for joy.

Song Resources - [Les says] As a singer, I'm always on the lookout for a new and interesting song, or for the lyrics to a song I heard in passing during a session.

• CDs - CDs are still a great resource for getting good tunes and songs (and good recordings that invite you to listen over and over...) I almost always buy CDs when they're available, because CDs still come with something that MP3 downloads rarely have: the liner notes. Not only do the liner notes often contain lyrics, but they also usually have a history of each song (or tune), including any copyright information! If you're fortunate enough to have artists come through your area, I recommend buying the CDs directly from them as they usually get more profit that way.
• The Digital Tradition - Mudcat Cafe's Digital Tradition lyrics archives and forums are a treasure trove of traditional songs. The forums are especially useful for dredging up the history of a song or alternate versions of lyrics and melodies. Some of the lyrics in the archive have associated MIDI files that provide a rough base for the melody, though I highly recommend finding a good recording rather than relying on the MIDI whenever possible.
• The Celtic Lyrics Corner - This site focuses more narrowly (though not exclusively) on songs from Scotland and Ireland coming from recorded albums. It has an extensive Puirt à Beul ("mouth music") collection and a good selection of lyrics in Irish and Scots Gaelic, including many good translations.
• Books - There are a number of good books out there with collections of songs. The Child Ballads are perhaps the most famous collection of traditional songs, and there are several versions available in print; I use "The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads", which includes melodies. Along those lines I also have a small collection from Cecil Sharpe and a much larger tome by Peter Kennedy - "Folksongs of Britain and Ireland" - which includes small sections of lyrics in several Celtic languages. For printed lyrics in Irish I recommend the two small collections titled "Ceolta Gael" and "Ceolta Gael 2".

Tune Resources - There's really no substitute in Irish music for learining tunes (or songs, for that matter) by ear from other players. Dots (i.e. sheet music) and ABC notation at best provide the base pattern for a tune. At their worst, they can mislead you with wrong notes or a version of the tune that conflicts with the version played in your area. Recordings by popular bands often contain arranged versions of tunes that might or might not correspond to something played in a session. If you use anything other than other players when learning tunes, use them as backup resources only whenever possible. Ranting lecture out of the way, the above-listed dots and ABCs are out there and can prove useful on occasion.

• Tunepal - Tunepal is probably the best overall electronic resource for a traditional player. Available as an app for your smartphone (and also available via your PC), Tunepal listens to a tune being played in the background and identifies it for you based on its archives of O'Neill's, TheSession.org, and other sources. It can also search by tune name, keep track of tune lists for you (including location of where it was heard if you want), and has a MIDI player that's useful if you don't understand the dots or ABCs well enough to know if it identified the right tune!
• TheSession.org - The Session is a community-supported archive of tunes input in ABC notation. It can show tunes in ABC or dot notation, and has attached forums for discussion on tunes. There are a few problems with the site's concept of tune data - mostly that the first person to enter a tune gets to define the "authoritative" version of that tune as shown in the search results; if that person enters a non-standard or just plain poor setting of a tune, the only correction provided is in the commentary on the tune's forum entry - so compare the notes against what you know and don't be afraid to search the forums for better settings.
  

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