Frank Harte

Frank Harte (14 May 1933 – 27 June 2005) was a traditional Irish singer, song collector, architect and lecturer. He was born in Chapelizod, County Dublin, and raised in Dublin. His father, Peter Harte, who had moved from a farming background in Sligo, owned ‘The Tap’ pub in Chapelizod.

Harte emigrated to the United States for a short period, but returned to Ireland where he worked as an architect, lecturer at DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) in Rathmines, Dublin before concentrating fully on singing and collecting songs.

Harte’s introduction to Irish traditional singing came, he said, from a chance listening to an itinerant who was selling ballad sheets at a fair in Boyle, County Roscommon, sing “The Valley of Knockanure”: