Irish folklore () refers to the folktales, balladry, music, dance and mythology of Ireland. It is the study and appreciation of how people lived. The stories are usually told to explain the unexplainable.
The folklore of Ireland includes banshees, fairies, leprechauns and other mythological creatures, and was typically shared orally by people among small communities. Many tales and legends were passed down from generation to generation, so were the dances and song in the observing of important occasions such as weddings, wakes, holidays, etc.
Definition What constitutes Irish folklore may be rather fuzzy to those unfamiliar with Irish literature. Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, for one, declared that folklore was elusive to define clearly.
Bo Almqvist (c. 1977) gave an all-encompassing definition that folklore covered "the totality of folk culture, spiritual and material", and included anything mentioned in Seán Ó Súilleabháin's A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1942)., cited by
It was not until 1846 that the word "folklore" was coined, by English writer William Thoms, to designate "the manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, &c of the olden time". The term was first translated into Irish as béaloideas (lit. 'oral instruction') in 1927.
Folktales and songs Tales have been traditionally recounted in fireside gatherings, such social gatherings, in which traditional Irish music and dance are also performed, are labeled by some as the , though this is a term borrowed from Scottish Gaelic. The story-telling, songs and dance were also part of how special occasions were commemorated, on such days as Christmas, Halloween (, eve of Samhain), Bealtaine, held on the first day of May, or St. Patrick's Day. Irish folklore is closely tied with the pipe and fiddle, the traditional Irish music and folk dance.
The keening composed by Eileen Dubh Ní Chonaill in her husband's wake is a piece of poetry passed down by folk tradition.
Other than folktales and legends, the folkloristic genres is complemented by memorates, beliefs, and belief statements., back cover
Handcraft and herb lore Also part of Irish folklore are the handed-down skills, such as basket-weaving or making Brigid's crosses.
As an example, shallow wicker baskets called skeeoges as strainers (to empty the boiled potatoes and hot water on, to drain the liquid) were recorded in the Co. Wexford area by Patrick Kennedy in the 19th century. A later folklore collector was unable to ascertain whether this practice was carried out in the locality during the field work in the 1950s (or in the revisit in 1970's). This basket's name skeeoge supposedly derived from the Gaelic word for "shield" ().
The Irish Folklore Commission has accumulated a collection of crosses made on St. Bridget's Day (1 February), and various craft objects made of plaited straw, etc., gathered from across the county.
Folklore can also include knowledge and skills such as , or to treat an illness, i.e., herb lore.
Common themes
There are certain stock motifs, often stereotypes, in Irish folklore.
Fairies One commentator attributes to Andrew Lang the sweeping definition that Irish folklore is all about fairies. The belief in fairies () has been widespread.
Some, such as Irish poet W. B. Yeats, have divided the fairies into multiple categories and/or species (see Classifications of fairies). However, Irish fairies are typically divided into two main categories: the fairy race and the solitary fairies.
The race of fairy people () were thought to be descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a godlike race who came to Ireland and conquered the people there. They are described as human sized, beautiful, powerful, and in tune with nature, similar to the modern day fantasy race of Elves.
Instead of living together like the elite fairy race, solitary fairies are secretive and isolated, often staying away from humans and coming out at night. The solitary fairies include a wide range of magical creatures in Irish folklore.
One type of Irish fairy is the female banshee, the death-messenger with her keening, or baleful crying over someone's death, and known by many different names.
Another well-recognized Irish fairy is the leprechaun, which many have identified as the maker of shoes. The cluricaune is a sprite many treat as synonymous to the leprechaun, and Yeats muses on whether these and the far darrig (fear dearg, "red man") are the one and the same. Mackillop says these three are the three kinds solitary fairies, but Yeats goes on to say "there are other solitary fairies", naming the Dullahan (headless horsemen), Púca, and so forth.
The changeling is often ascribed to being perpetrated by fairies. The theme is assigned its own migratory legend type, "The Changeling" (ML 5085).
Fairy land Fairies are also connected with the Irish traditional belief in the Otherworld ().
Fairy forts and hawthorn trees, also known as fairy trees, are places where fairies are thought to reside. Thus, to tamper with these sites is seen as hugely disrespectful to the fairies.
Hawthorn tree There are several trees sacred to Ireland, but the lone hawthorn (aka the "may" tree) is particularly considered a fairy haunt, and patches underneath where the grass have worn down are reputed to be due to fairies dancing. Though literary fiction more than folklore, two consecutive poems by Samuel Ferguson, "The Fairy Thorn" and "The Fairy Well of Lagnanay" describes the lone Fairy Hawthorn (The Whitethorn).
Fairy mounds The notion that Irish fairies live in fairy mounds (fairy forts, fairy hills) give rise to the names or ('people of the [fairy mound]').
In the instance of "The Legend of Knockgrafton" (name of a hill), the protagonist named Lusmore is carried inside the fairy "moat" or rath by the fairy wind ().
Heroic sagas Other classic themes in Irish folktale literature include Cú Chulainn, Children of Lir, Fionn Mac Cumhail, from medieval heroic and tragic sagas.
Folklore material in the 'Pre-Croker period', according to Bo Almqvist's reckoning, do tentatively include various Medieval written texts (the heroic tales in the Ulster Cycle, Finn Cycle, the Cycle of the Kings, and the hagiography of St. Patrick and other saints, etc.), with the proviso that these works can no longer be considered intact folk legends, given the accrued literary layers of the "fanciful and fantastic". However they are an excellent well-source of comparative study, as collected folktales are sometimes traceable to these medieval sagas. An example is the tale of Cú Chulainn's horse remnant in the legend type of "The Waterhorse as Workhorse" (MLSIT 4086), or so argued by C. W. von Sydow.
In the 20th century, the Irish Folklore Commission collected a large corpus of such romantic heroic sagas, particularly the stories of Fionn Mac Cumhail and the Fianna.
History of collecting Early collectors For most of the 19th century, collection of Irish folklore was undertaken by English-speakers, and the material collected were recorded only in English.
Thomas Crofton Croker who compiled Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825–28) is considered one of the earliest collectors. Although Alspach's paper focused on the early works "contributing ... to the folklore background of the [Celtic] revival". Croker is the first among the significant "antiquary-folklorists" (the label applied by Richard Dorson) to emerge from mere antiquarians.
Tales in the Irish language The Irish-speaking West, the Gaeltacht included for example the Aran Islands, where some folklore-collecting was performed by Danish linguist Holger Pedersen back in 1896, though the resulting collection was never published until a century later. The playwright J. M. Synge also included a couple of folktales in his The Aran Islands (1907).
Irish Folklore Commission
Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Delargy), who founded the Folklore of Ireland Society and its Béaloideas magazine in 1927, was later appointed to head the Irish Folklore Commission (IFC) in established by the Irish government in 1935. Seán Ó Súilleabháin was the archivist for the IFC since its inception. After having undergone 3 month tutelage in Uppsala, Sweden under C. W. von Sydow on the methods of folklore archiving, the archivist became instrumental in establishing collecting policies for the IFC. One of Ó Súilleabháin's projects was the Schools' Scheme for primary school children to collect folklore (1937-1938). IFC established a network of 200 or 300 correspondents all over Ireland to whom long questionnaires were sent out to task them with particular areas of folklore collecting.
Ó Súilleabháin soon compiled a how-to guidebook for folklore-collecting fieldwork, entitled Láimh-Leabhar Béaloideasa (1937) in Irish, later expanded and published in English as A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1942). The methodology was based on the Uppsala system he studied, and the books became the standard bible for any Irish folklore collector.
An Irish Folklore Treasury In the 1930s, Irish schoolchildren were tasked with the asking of older relatives and neighbours about stories and superstitions from times past so that ordinary people's lives could be preserved and celebrated. This collection of stories became the National Folklore Archive's Schools Collection.
In 1935, The National Folklore Commission (NFC) was created by the Irish Government. It contains about 2 million transcript pages, 500,000 index cards, 12,000 hours of sound recording, 80,000 photographs, and 1,000 hours of video material collected from across all 32 counties of Ireland.
John Creedon introduces and contextualizes 14 different stories in "An Irish Folklore Treasury", published by Gill Books in 2023.
Folktale classification An effort to catalogue all the known international folk tales in Ireland, either in print or in oral circulation (as of 1956) was mounted by Seán Ó Súilleabháin and Reidar Thoralf Christiansen, culminating in The Types of the Irish Folktale (1963), a compilation of some 43,000 versions under 700 international tales.
Christiansen was the creator of the index of Norwegian migratory legends (ML index), and Bo Almqvist adapted this for Irish legends, calling it MLSIT (for Migratory Legend Suggested Irish Type). Although The Types of the Irish Folktale purportedly deals with folktale but not folk legend, there are found to be some intersections between these comparative study apparatuses.
Sociological trends Folklore is a part of national identity, and its meaning has evolved through time.
Irish identity In Ireland the word folklore has deep meaning to its people and brings societies together, it is a word that has ideological significance in the country. To put it succinctly, folklore is an important part of the national identity., quoting Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, : "the legends have a peculiar and special value as coming direct from the national heart".
Effects of Christianity on Irish folklore