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:

“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

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.

As a health warning for this episode - listeners (or viewers!) hoping to listen to scores of lovely ballads will be sorely disappointed, as our discussion essentially consists of nerding out about folklore indexes for over an hour.

Steve’s Folk Song Index can be found here, at the website of the Vaughan William’s Memorial Library: https://www.efdss.org/vwml-catalogues-and-indexes/vwml-help/roud-indexes-help

For a wonderful talk of Steve’s at the Library of Congress, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVTMoN4Arvo

My thanks especially to Veronica, Andrew and Dominic in UCD Communications, for their support of the podcast, and for filming this episode!

Video recording of this episode is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OcxwmDuUeU&ab_channel=UCD-UniversityCollegeDublin

Henry Glassie is College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, and has published widely in the fields of material culture and vernacular architecture. His contribution to the discipline of Irish Folklore and Ethnology has been exceptional. Having lived in Ballymenone, Co. Fermanagh, for almost a decade in the 1970s, Professor Glassie published a number of studies inspired by the community there, including All Silver and No Brass (1975), Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982) and The Stars of Ballymenone (2006). These books are landmark works which have become classic texts for students of Folklore in Ireland and abroad, along with many other items on Professor Glassie’s long list of publications. Henry has rendered invaluable service to our understanding of Irish popular tradition and vernacular culture, and he can truly be described as a towering figure in the study of Irish Folklore for more than half a century. Even in his retirement, he remains a staunch and committed friend to Ireland and to the people he worked with while carrying out fieldwork here.

Henry has had a long and extremely positive relationship with UCD since the establishment of the Department of Irish Folklore in the university in the early 1970s. With the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of his first major publication on Irish Folklore, All Silver and No Brass, it was deemed especially appropriate for the University to take the opportunity to honour Professor Glassie, and on Wednesday 21 May 2025, Henry was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from UCD, in recognition of his remarkable contribution to the growing area of Irish Studies in general, and to the field of Irish Folklore and Ethnology in particular.

It was a great honour and personal privilege for me to sit and 'Pass the Time' with Henry, and over the course of ninety minutes we explored his background, interests, intellectual life, and experiences of field work, as well as delving into the topics of place, creativity, art, meaning, identity, belonging and despair; invoking old friends such as Fred B. Kniffen, E. Estyn Evans, Michael J. Murphy, Seán Ó Súilleabháin, Ellen Cutler, Tommy Love, Michael Boyle, Peter Flanagan, and Hugh Nolan as we trooped our way homewards.

My thanks to all my colleagues at the NFC, as well as Susan Lysaght, Sandra Collins, Evelyn Flanagan, Andrew Fogarty, Veronica Aguilar Olmos, Dominic Martella for making this episode possible, and - most especially - to Henry and Pravina for their generosity, openness and kindness.

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/

For this episode of the podcast we discuss Máirtín's background, exploring the way in which he came to take such an interest in Ireland's food history, as well as examining the themes of continuity and change in the context of the Irish diet. Join us as we explore Irish food traditions in the context of calendar observances, the life cycle and ritual observances, as well as considering regional foodways, the importance of hospitality and the impact of the Irish language on our understanding of both food and place in Irish tradition. From milk, butter and the Brehon Laws, to spice bags and purple Snack bars, join us as we explore changing attitudes to food in Ireland.

This is also the first episode of the podcast which we have been able to record on video, and I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Andrew Fogarty, Veronica Aguilar Olmos and Dominic Martella for their support for the series to date, and for organising the shoot. I hope listeners and viewers will please forgive my excessive humming-and-hawing in this episode - I felt quite nervous in front of the new setup! Video for this episode is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x4PdbSXrSk&ab_channel=UCD-UniversityCollegeDublin

Hello a chairde, and welcome to episode 40 of Blúiríní Béaloidis, the podcast from the National Folklore Collection.

It would be remiss of me not to commence this episode of the podcast with long, grovelling apologies concerning the absence of signs of life regarding the series over the last year and a half. The good news is that the podcast still exists, the work of the NFC continues apace, and the bad news, well… there is no bad news really; just the reality of one individuals less-than-perfect attempts at keeping a variety of plates spinning while kicking cans down the road. Forgive me please!

Forty episodes ago, we commenced our wanderings through the folklore furrow by asking 'what is folklore?' Now, having traversed some of the way together, we will stop to consider well, what is a folklore archive?

Folklore archives, in actively setting out to document the traditional customs, practices and memories of ‘ordinary people’, have tended to develop on the margins of the professional archival world. They offer unique cases for archival research, as the systems of classification and description they employ, along with the impulses that motivate them, pose questions regarding the relevance of formal archival ideas (which often developed in response to the needs or large and powerful government bureaucracies).

In this episode we will explore the role and nature of archives generally, and will consider the form and nature of the folklore archive specifically. We'll hear from the visionary individuals who established the folklore archive in Ireland, will explore Ireland's troubled relationship with archives, look at the systems of classification and description which are employed in folklore archives, and consider what use this material offers us in these troubled times.

I have many people to thank for helping me to create this episode; Cathal Goan, for his kind permission to use excerpts from his wonderful 1985 radio documentary 'Lest They Perish', Cormac O'Malley for permission to use recording of him reading account of the destruction of the Public Records Office of Ireland in his father Ernie O'Malley's memoir 'The Singing Flame', my colleague Kate Manning, Principal Archivist at UCD Archives for her alerting me to a fascinating 1935 government memorandum concerning the establishment of the Irish Folklore Commission, my colleagues at the National Folklore Collection for their assistance, support and good humour, and finally to yourselves, dear listeners, for your continued interest and support in our work.

So, sin a bhfuil! We're already working away on a new series of interviews and episodes, and please God, will return with more next year.

Beirigí bua agus beannacht!

Jonny