UCD LIBRARY CULTURAL HERITAGE COLLECTIONS
Welcome to the UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog. Discover and explore the historical treasures housed within our Archives, Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and Digital Library
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 …
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 …
On receiving an offer to accompany a former Royal Navy fisheries protection vessel for sea trials in July of 1947, Taoiseach รamon 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 Cincรญse in Irish - was a day regarded with suspicion and trepidation, and Whitsuntide or Whit week, the period from …
While visiting Scandinavia in 1928, a visit which influenced him greatly, Sรฉamus ร 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 …
Users of the 1937-1939 Schoolsโ 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 Schoolsโ Collection and available online on dรบchas.ie. The careful handwriting is …
Continue reading "Illustrating Tradition: Maps from the Schools’ Collection"
Caoimhรญn ร Danachair โ or Kevin Danaher, as he was more widely known โ 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 ร Danachair was still a student of archaeology, the Director of the National Museum of …
Continue reading "Caoimhรญn ร 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. -Seรกn ร Sรบilleabhรกin, 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 UCDโs Irish Folklore and Ethnology programย 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"
โOne of the greatest sources of information we have in Ireland is the Ordnance Survey Books, which were made about a century ago by three men, John OโDonovan, Eugene OโCurry, and George Petrie. They went around and took down all the place names of the country and recorded material of very great importance. But the …