Blúiríní Béaloidis 21 - Samhain / Halloween (With Dr. Billy Mag Fhloinn)
Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore PodcastShow Notes
The festival of Samhain has since ancient times been considered as a major turning point in the ritual year. In marking the threshold of darkness and the end of the season of light, the eve of Samhain (observed all over Ireland at sundown on the 31st of October) is characterised by heightened supernatural activity, a return of the ancestral dead, divination magic, mischief, ritual disguise and the suspension of normal modes and rules of behaviour.
For this edition of Blúiríní, Jonny is joined by a special guest, Dr. Billy Mag Fhloinn. Billy is a folklorist, archaeologist, author and lecturer, whose book ‘Blood Rite: The Feast of St. Martin in Ireland’ was published in 2016, and who has contributed to international television productions by the BBC, PBS and the National Geographic Channel. For more information about Billy and his work, and to contact him directly please visit his site https://tradition.ie/
This edition of Blúiríní also features contributions from Aghast and Halo Manash
Aghast were an all-female group from Norway, whose haunting and atmospheric album 'Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis' was released in 1995. For more information, see http://www.metaladies.com/bands/aghast/
Halo Manash hail from Finland, and aim to 'seek, explore, experience, study and decipher reflections of the ever-shifting shapes and spaces of different worlds', in order to 'revitalise one of the oldest subconscious forms of communication, to open the gates and widen the horizon of perception concerning states of otherness lying in-between the cardinal directions.' Our special thanks for their generosity in permitting us to include their music in this edition of the podcast. For more information, and to support them directly, please visit http://www.helixes.org/halomanash/about/
More from Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast
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:
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.