The Discovery of Irish Folklore

Anyone interested in Irish literature, whether in the Irish or the English language, will be familiar with the concept of folklore. For those whose knowledge is confined to works in the English language, the concept often remains nebulous because the collection, study, and discussion of Irish folklore during the twentieth century have largely been undertaken through the medium of Irish. The resultant system of academic specialization has led to a persistent tendency, among critics and other commentators, to occlude the relationship between Irish folklore and Irish writing in English—though during the latter half of the twentieth century a few significant studies have investigated continuities between the Gaelic tradition, associated with Irish folklore, and the Anglo-Irish literary tradition.¹ Nevertheless, within and outside academic circles, many remain confused about what constitutes Irish folklore, and what its relationship is, or should be, to literature.

Although the concept was already familiar to antiquaries interested in popular traditions and to an English-speaking reading public that had been introduced to Edgar Taylor's translation of Grimms' Kinder-und Hausmärchen in 1823, the term "folklore" was not coined until 1846 when the English antiquary William John Thoms, under the pseudonym Ambrose Merton, first used the term in a letter published in the English periodical, The Athenaeum. In an effort to align English scholarship with the work of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Thoms proposed "a good Saxon compound, Folk-Lore—the Lore of the People" to denote "the manners, customs observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, &c of the olden time." Lamenting the loss of much such material, Thoms sought aid "in garnering the few ears which are remaining, scattered over that field from which our forefathers might have gathered a goodly crop."² The letter raises issues that would be reflected in the subsequent development of folklore scholarship. The word "folklore" is a relatively modern label, coined to describe a body of material at a time when it seemed threatened with extinction. As Diarmuid Ó Giolláin has remarked, " 'Folklore' appeared as it was disappearing, it was discovered as it was being lost, [and] it was recovered as it ceased to be."³ Thoms's founding conception of folklore links it to agrarian tradition, and conceptualizes it as a vestigial antithesis to modernity. Furthermore, the designation of the term folklore as "a good Saxon compound" introduces an element of national ideology that persisted in the subsequent development of folkloric discourse. The Irish term béaloideas, meaning "oral instruction" dates back at least as far as the seventeenth century, but was not used as a translation for the term "folklore" until 1927.⁴

Fifty years later, Bo Almqvist, head of the Department of Irish Folklore in University College Dublin, defined Irish folklore as "all such things as are mentioned and enquired about in A Handbook of Irish Folklore" and asserted that this covered "the totality of folk culture, spiritual and material."⁵ Seán Ó Súilleabháin's comprehensive A Handbook of Irish Folklore, a 1942 guide for collectors, contains questions arranged thematically under the fifteen distinct categories.⁶ Thus, according to the definition that underpinned the development and establishment of Irish folklore as an academic discipline in the Republic of Ireland, "folklore" consists of a variety of material conditions, cultural practices, and traditions.

Notably, the academic study of Irish folklore in the Irish Free State, and later, the Republic, has concentrated on narrative traditions, and particularly on the collection and classification of oral narratives from Irish-speaking areas.⁷ This contrasts with Northern Ireland, where folklore scholarship has tended to focus more on material culture, customs, and folklife in general.⁸ The Southern concentration on narrative reflects the central place of the folktale in international folklore scholarship which, until the late 1960s—using the typology devised by the Finn Antti Aarne in 1910 and expanded by the American Stith Thompson in 1961—was concerned with classification by motif and tale type.⁹

In the Irish context, the privileging of Gaeltacht areas led to a process described by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin as "the Gaelicisation of Irish folklore."¹⁰ Ó Giolláin refers to...