Chuir Leo le cartlann fuaime Roinn Bhéaloideas Éireann ar go leor slite – mar bhailitheoir agus mar chartlannaí, áit a ndearna sé clárú ar an ábhar agus a raibh sé ábalta a mhéar a leagan láithreach ar pé ábhar a bheadh ag teastáil. Chuir sé go han-mhór leis an gcartlann grianghraf chomh maith, mar a … Continue reading Leo Corduff: Collector and Photographer
From the time it was founded in in 1935, the Irish Folklore Commission (IFC) expressed an interest in gathering information about the clothing and dress. The section on clothing included in A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1942) is detailed and asks for information on many different aspects of the clothing worn by previous generations. It … Continue reading Clothing Worn and Clothing Remembered
The surrounding world has always acted as a source of inspiration for the folk imagination. This can apply to natural features, such as lakes, mountains and the sea, but can also apply to man-made structures, ancient and contemporary alike. While the origin and use of many ancient monuments may be unclear to us, these structures … Continue reading Shaping the Landscape
On receiving an offer to accompany a former Royal Navy fisheries protection vessel for sea trials in July of 1947, Taoiseach Éamon De Valera took the opportunity to go on holiday. On this voyage he visited the Blaskets, The Aran Islands and Tory Island off the coast of Ireland, but he also paid a visit … Continue reading Mie Mannin, Mie Nerin / Good for Mann, Good for Ireland
I am happy to inform you, dear reader, that if you are viewing this blog post, you have survived one of the most ill-fortuned days in Irish folk tradition, occurring Sunday last. Whitsunday - Domhnach Cincíse in Irish - was a day regarded with suspicion and trepidation, and Whitsuntide or Whit week, the period from … Continue reading Domhnach Cincíse, Day of Misfortune
While visiting Scandinavia in 1928, a visit which influenced him greatly, Séamus Ó Duilearga was introduced to the many approaches to collecting and cataloguing folk tradition already pioneered by scholars there. The Swedish model in particular would continue to influence the systems of classification employed by the Irish Folklore Commission when it was founded seven … Continue reading Collecting Folklore by Questionnaire
Users of the 1937-1939 Schools’ Collection often comment on the beautiful handwriting of the contributing students. Indeed, it was often the student with the neatest handwriting who copied the chosen material from the smaller copybooks to the larger, final manuscripts now bound into the Schools’ Collection and available online on dúchas.ie. The careful handwriting is … Continue reading Illustrating Tradition: Maps from the Schools’ Collection
Caoimhín Ó Danachair — or Kevin Danaher, as he was more widely known — was collecting folklore in his home town of Athea, Limerick, on behalf of the Institute of Irish Folklore from as early as 1934. In 1935, while Ó Danachair was still a student of archaeology, the Director of the National Museum of … Continue reading Caoimhín Ó Danachair: The Ethnographer’s Eye
In general, I may say that these part-time collectors have been excellent, because we do our best to pick them carefully. -Seán Ó Súilleabháin, 1950 On walking into the archive of the National Folklore Collection (NFC), you are greeted by walls of numbered manuscripts. To your right are the rolling shelves holding the bright green … Continue reading Part-time Collecting for the Irish Folklore Commission
One of the modules in the MA in UCD’s Irish Folklore and Ethnology program is a brief internship in archival methods. This module typically takes place in the National Folklore Collection (NFC), but the 2020 module was moved online due to COVID-19. For the 2020 module, students were given a number of topics to choose … Continue reading Infectious Diseases in the National Folklore Collection