This blogpost was originally supposed to be about our acetate disc digitisation and publication project as we near its end but after the launch of our latest and last (for a while) batch of acetate discs at this year’s Oireachtas na Samhna festival, it was clear that the festival itself was the real story. With the festival now finished for another year I thought it would be good to try to show how important the festival is for the Irish language community, as well as how significant it is as a cultural heritage event.
In the 7th century, the word oireachtas meant a “gathering” or “assembly” of those who governed Ireland.
The first ever Oireachtas festival was held on Monday, 17 May 1897, in Dublin. It was a half-day festival and more than a thousand people attended. It has grown a lot since these early days. It was at a meeting of the Gaelic League, in August 1896, that the decision was made to hold such an event, one based on the Welsh Eisteddfod and the Scottish Mòd. The Oireachtas sprang from the following resolution: “That an Oireachtas, or public assembly, on behalf of the Irish language, be held annually by the Gaelic League, at which prizes would be offered for readings, recitations, songs and dramatic sketches in Irish.” You can find more information here about the Oireachtas.
Setting out our stall.
This year’s Oireachtas na Samhna was held in my home town of Belfast, for the first time since 1997, which made this year all the more special. Each year at the Oireachtas the NFC has a stall which is a great way to meet people who use our website Dúchas.ie or who visit us on site at the NFC in University College Dublin. It’s also a great way to introduce ourselves to people who haven’t heard of us or haven’t visited Dúchas.ie. Other colleagues also attend, including colleagues from Gaeltacht UCD and colleagues from Gaois, Fiontar agus Scoil na Gaeilge, Dublin City University who we partner with on the Dúchas.ie project. It’s so important for us to be here to receive feedback and also to be in the middle of this, the most important Irish Language event of the year.
Launching the Acetate disc collection.
We usually have new material on Dúchas.ie to launch and this year was no exception. Myself and my colleagues, Ailbe van der Heide and Jonny Dillon, were all there as part of a joint launch with colleagues from DCU. We were launching a new batch of photographs and the latest batch in our acetate disc collection. I spoke in previous posts, available here, about the acetate disc collection and its importance in the history of the Sound Archive. We have a total of 1750 acetate discs of which 1200 are digitised and the first 900 discs containing over 2000 individual items or clips are available on Dúchas.ie here. The last batch is currently being digitised and we hope to have them all finish in the very near future. This would be the end of a long but worthwhile and essential process to ensure the preservation of one of our most important audio collections for future generations.
We played a few clips that are new to the website including this piece of music from Máire de Barra.
And an Irish tongue twister too which got a few laughs from the audience at the launch.
A successful event.
All in all it was an eventful and worthwhile experience and hopefully we can continue our outreach work at events like this in the coming years. And I’ll end this post with a lovely story which shows the significance of our work at these events.
The Schools’ Collection.
A man who attended the launch and subsequently got in touch told me that he sat down with his mother and went on the Dúchas.ie after attending our launch.
They were trying to find his mother’s sister in the Schools’ Collection, as they knew she had participated in it. After a bit of searching they found her and they were both overjoyed and very emotional as the sister had died young from TB not long after her participation in the Schools’ collection. The man was so thankful that he and his mother got to see her sister’s work in the collection and it is preserved now online. After we got back from the Oireachtas and having read his email, I was also able to find the original copy of her notebook which she sent in to the commission and we’re currently arranging a visit to see the original version held here in the National Folklore Collection.
This post was written by Éamonn Ó hAdhmaill, Oifigeach Sinsearach Teicniúil | Senior Technical Officer, Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann | National Folklore Collection.
Well done Éamonn, thanks for the update and the lovely story at the end.