“A work of National Importance”: Child–Adult Dynamics in Bailiúchán Na Scol/The Schools’ Collection, 1937–1939

Children are often seen as important agents in molding the culture of emerging nations, and children in Ireland are no exception in this regard.¹ In the early years of the Irish Free State (established in 1922), children were expected to play a significant role in the revitalization of the Irish language and in the preservation of Ireland’s folklore, both of which were vital components of the newly independent state’s identity and self-image. The study of the Irish language, for example, became compulsory in National Schools (primary schools) from St. Patrick’s Day 1922 onwards, and Irish-language publishing was very much concerned with reading material aimed specifically at children in the early decades of the new state.²

The early years of the Irish Free State also saw the establishment of the Irish Folklore Commission, an organization which was set up in 1935 to document and study the folklore of Ireland. The Irish language was in decline (a decline that Gaelic Revivalists were trying to reverse), and an integral part of the culture (i.e., the folklore traditionally told in that language) was disappearing with it. As Mícheál Briody explains: “Ireland was believed to possess a folk tradition, particularly in the Irish language, incomparable to anywhere else in western Europe with the exception of Gaelic Scotland, and relatively little Irish folklore had been collected up to that time.”³ To remedy this paucity of documented material, the commission employed a team of full-time and part-time collectors to collect folktales and traditions from all over Ireland, concentrating especially on the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas. The organization also distributed questionnaires on various subjects to a group of correspondents throughout the island, which proved to be another very successful method of gathering material.⁴

In 1937, the Irish Folklore Commission set up an ambitious new scheme through the National Schools, in which pupils collected folklore from older family members and neighbors. The pupils then documented this material in their school copybooks instead of writing their usual weekly composition in class. The pupils’ work was later sent to the Folklore Commission, where it became known as “Bailiúchán na Scol” or “The Schools’ Collection.” Over a period of eighteen months, well over half a million pages of folklore were collected by more than fifty thousand pupils in five thousand primary schools across the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State.⁵ While there were other attempts to encourage children’s writing in the early twentieth century, these efforts are not comparable to the Schools’ Collection in terms of the volume of writing it produced.⁶

The scheme was conceived by two folklorists, Séamus Ó Duilearga (also known as James Hamilton Delargy), the director of the commission, and archivist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, who both traveled the country giving advice to teachers on the scheme’s implementation in the schools. While these two men were the driving force behind the initiative, they depended, to a large extent, on both the Department of Education (which funded the scheme and circulated information about it) and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (which secured the cooperation of the teachers involved in the scheme). Ó Súilleabháin, an ex-schoolteacher himself, also compiled guidelines on the types of stories and material that should be collected, including a series of questions under fifty-five headings which were designed to elicit valuable material from the informants. These guidelines were arranged into a booklet entitled Irish Folklore and Tradition, which was issued to all the schools that were involved in the project. As Séamas Ó Catháin points out, the booklet demonstrates a “generous [i.e., wide-ranging] interpretation” of what folklore entailed. Headings include local lore and traditions such as “Hidden Treasure,” “Local Heroes,” “Local Cures,” and “Festival Customs,” as well as historical subjects such as “In the Penal Times” and “Famine Times.” Religious material included “Stories of the Holy Family,” “A Collection of Prayers,” and “The Local Patron Saint.”⁷ The booklet also brings...