Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (review)

Winner of the prestigious 2007 Ratcliff Prize for the study of folklore in Britain and Ireland, Remembering the Year of the French is a remarkable piece of scholarship that looks to oral traditions and other popular forms of commemoration for a more inclusive or "democratic" vision of Ireland's past. Beiner's fascinating case study is the folk history of the 1798 Franco-Irish campaign in Connacht and its aftermath, remembered locally as an Bliain na bhFrancach, or the Year of the French. The vernacular historiography of these events comprises oral folklore genres, commemorative rituals, and material culture most often neglected in mainstream academic historiography. Beiner's attention to folk history on its own terms broadens considerably our appreciation of the 1798 Rebellion. Alternative and compensatory narratives vivify otherwise anonymous local combatants, villains, and victims and transform nationally known individuals into exemplars of ideas that have engrossed storytellers and audiences over time. In addition, Beiner's contribution extends well beyond this case study with measured and persuasive claims about the value of folklore in transforming historical research and about the nature of social memory and how and why it should be studied.

Sometimes referred to as collective or cultural memory, social memory is the central concept around which the book revolves. Beiner's discussion of the concept in the first chapter is particularly valuable for its synthesis of a diffuse body of work originating in several fields of study not necessarily in communication with each other. His working definition characterizes social memory as manifested in grass roots discursive reconstructions of the past (i.e, folk history), jointly shaped or negotiated in social interaction, and therefore reflecting the influence of many voices. Concerned with the past but responding to shared contemporary concerns, social memory always involves selective imaginings of the past in response to a perceived present and a desired future. As such, social memory is inherently subject to change over time and in the service of different interested parties—but then, so, too, is academic history. Although academic history and social memory speak to different audiences and concerns, and work through different genres of expression, Beiner argues persuasively that they are inseparable and interdependent.

Beiner strikes a masterful balance between depth and breadth in the ensuing chapters of Part One, "Collecting Memory," which discuss key concepts related to social memory, theoretical orientations, and folk history sources—notably the massive National Folklore Collection housed at University College Dublin and founded on the work of the Irish Folklore Commission (1935–71). Moreover, Beiner establishes a coherent vision of the overlapping territory of folklore, anthropology, and history while displaying a healthy disregard for the traditional and often stifling divisions of academic labor between established disciplines. Those invested in an emerging transdisciplinary model for the academy should take note.

On the whole, Remembering the Year of the French is accessible, full of intriguing detail, and eminently teachable. Some undergraduate students may need encouragement through Part One's treatments of intellectual history, but they can be assured that early attention is rewarded by later sections. My only criticism of this first section—and to a lesser degree, of following sections—is that the prose is muddied at times by an inherited miscellany of overlapping and sometimes synonymous terms for the articulations of social memory—folk history, mythistory, mnemnohistory, ethnohistory, historical folklore, historical traditions, popular historical discourse, history-telling, vernacular historiography, orally preserved social-historical tradition, or from the Irish, seanchas. To be fair, given the polygenesis of terminology and ideas relating to history and memory in various fields, this reduplication is not the author's fault, but the careful reader may want to keep lists or to sketch Venn diagrams of related terms.

With the stage set, the chapters of Part Two, "Folk History," delineate characteristic aspects of specifically Irish folk history in order to interpret and evaluate it properly on its own terms. In contrast to official, elite, or academic...