Blúiríní Bealoidis 44 - Legends & Literature (with Ailbe van der Heide)
Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore PodcastShow Notes
Ailbe van der Heide is Collections Curator at the National Folklore Collection, having joined the staff in 2020, shortly after graduating from the MA in Irish Folklore in 2020. For several years now, Ailbe has managed the National Folklore Collection’s reading room service, along with fielding an array of queries from members of the public keen to explore our collections. Throughout her work, and in response to enquiries made regarding our collections, Ailbe noticed an at times stark difference between the material found as part of our fieldwork collections, and that which can be found online regarding supernatural figures in Irish tradition. Researchers looking for information on supernatural lore would often cite specific terminology which was indicative of literary forms, rather than expressions of folk culture. On the interplay between literature and folk tradition, Anne O’Connor has noted that:
“Folklore and writing exist in specific social and historical circumstances: it is not mere chance that certain stories arise and gain currency at certain times, and the tracing of such complex and interwoven interactions has long been the challenges of professional folklorists, in Ireland and elsewhere. Written texts are also produced within particular cultural contexts but their interpretation is not necessarily dependent on a detailed knowledge of the circumstances of their production. Any analysis of oral narratives and belief complexes in Ireland reveals and raises inevitable questions of adaptation, attribution, contextualisation and interpretation, and these questions become even more apparent when analysing literary recourse to Irish folklore.”
In this episode, Ailbe and Jonny explore the interplay between oral literature, folk tradition, gothic literature, examining the discrepancies and distortions between those two forms, and considering their impact on popular culture. It would appear that many contemporary conceptions of the supernatural in Irish tradition stem less from our oral literature and folk tradition, but from a 19th century literary tradition. This episode (we hope!) will appeal to artist’s, writers, filmmakers, and anyone who is interested in aspects of folk horror, literature and the supernatural. My thanks to Ailbe, and to Andrew and Veronica in University Relations, for filming and producing the podcast! Some links:
19th century sources mentioned: Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/39752/pg39752-images.html
Fairy and Folktales of the Irish Peasantry by W.B. Yeats https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33887/pg33887-images.html
Fair Gurtha; or, the Hungry Grass by William Carleton https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Magazine/WwdFAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22man+of+hunger%22&pg=PA435&printsec=frontcover
Irish Folk Lore: Traditions and Superstitions by John O’Hanlon https://archive.org/details/IrishFolkLoreTraditions/page/n25/mode/2up
‘The Child that Went with the Fairies’ by Sheridan le Fanu https://www.online-literature.com/lefanu/1772/
Ordnance Survey Letters, Londonderry https://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/ebooks/OSI-Letters/LONDONDERRY_14%20D%2021.pdf
20th and 21st century sources: Blood Relations by Brian Earls A Handbook of Irish Folklore by Seán Ó Súilleabháin Folktales of Ireland (with forward by Richard Dorson) by Seán Ó Suilleabháin The Lore of Ireland by Daithí Ó hÓgáin Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Identity, Modernity by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin Miraculous Plenty: Irish religious folktales and legends by Seán Ó Súilleabháin (translated by William Caulfield) Neighborliness and Decency, Witchcraft and Famine: Reflections on Community from Irish Folklore by Ray Cashman
More from Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast
Steve Roud is a Librarian, folklore scholar and creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains upwards of 750,000 entries to around 45,000 English language folk songs, as found in books, recordings, manuscripts and other sources the world over. His index, and ‘Roud Numbers’ (a numbering system employed to identify the same song across many different titles) are widely acclaimed for the scope, breadth, depth and impact. Steve worked as a local studies Librarian in the London Borough of Croydon, and also served as Honorary Librarian for the Folklore Society for eighteen years. He has published books on calendar custom, popular tradition, folk belief, London lore, children’s games, and folk drama. In 2004, he was the winner of the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. In 2009, he was one of five people to be awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This award recognises "those who have made unique or outstanding contributions to the art or science of folk dance, music or song, and/or those who have given exceptional support in furthering the aims of the Society”. For four years now, Steve has been visiting the NFC, parsing through our manuscript and book, broadside and pamphlet collections for entries to add to his index. He is an incredibly gifted, meticulous and generous scholar, who is always glad to share his expertise with us, particularly in discussion around the inherent problems in the description, cataloguing and indexing of folklore materials. It was an honour, and a great pleasure to host Steve at the NFC recently, and during his visit (for our collective benefit) I subjected him to a 75 minute interview, in which we discussed his index, the problems inherent in describing folk song, approaches to the cataloguing of folklore, conducting research in folklore archives, and the problems inherent in the digitisation of folklore records and some scholarly critique of the NFC’s online platform Dúchas.ie.
Video recording of this episode is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OcxwmDuUeU&ab_channel=UCD-UniversityCollegeDublin
Regarding food in Irish tradition, Kevin Danaher, writing in 1964, noted that "Sometimes we get the impression that Ireland, in ancient times, was a land of plenty, and again we get quite the opposite impression - that our forebears lived out their lives on the very edge of starvation. In reality both these impressions are wrong." As an expression of culture that permeates every aspect of life, food holds a central place in Irish folk tradition, and for episode 41 of Blúiríní Béaloidis, I am delighted to be joined by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Senior Lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology at Technological University Dublin to discuss food in Irish folk tradition. Máirtín, along with Dorothy Cashman, was co-editor of the recent "Irish Food History: A Companion", published by the Royal Irish Academy in hardcopy in 2024, and available freely online via EUT+ at the following link: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/irishfoodhist/1/
Hello a chairde, and welcome to episode 40 of Blúiríní Béaloidis, the podcast from the National Folklore Collection.
Bees have been cultivated in Ireland since early times. Of value for their wax and honey, there were also believed to be blessed creatures, as Dáithí Ó hÓgáin writes: "probably because of the use of their wax to make church candles, and one medieval legend describes a swarm of bees building a little container around a lost communion wafer to protect it. They were also thought to be possessed of special wisdom, and to take an acute interest in the affairs of their owners. If a bee entered the house it was regarded as a good omen, and the bees in their hive would be told in advance of projects that the family intended to undertake in the belief that they might effect a beneficial influence. When a member of the family died, it was customary to place a black piece of cloth on the hiveso that the bees could join in the mourning". For this episode of Blúiríní I was honoured to have been joined by my friend and colleague from the National Museum of Country Life in county Mayo, and alumnus of the taught MA in Irish Folklore at UCD, Tiernan Gaffney. Tiernan is an Assistant Keeper of the Irish Folklife Collection at the National Museum of Ireland, his folklore research often explores the creation and connection of communities within shared spaces. Join us for episode 39 of Blúiriní Béaloidis as we honour those blessed, wise and industrious little ones, and talk about an upcoming National Museum of Ireland exhibition, “Murmur of Bees”which will launch in the summer of 2023.