Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on the 6th of December 1921, bringing an end to the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence. To mark 100 years since the signing of the treaty, I joined my colleague at the National Folklore Collection, Ailbe van der Heide, to discuss her work in researching, editing and transcribing Urban Folklore Project recordings dealing with this tumultuous period of Irish history. The 1979-1980 Urban Folklore Project originated as a Government employment scheme to provide work for university graduates at a time of severe economic recession in 1979-1980. The project was undertaken by the Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin, directed by Dr Séamas Ó Catháin, and consists of over 700 tape recorded interviews which today form part of the Natinoal Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. Among the recordings are featured vivid contemporary accounts of the War of Independence as well as material concerning the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Irish Civil War. Join us as we listen to the combatants and bystanders who bore witness to the burnings, raids and guerrilla warfare of the War of Independence, and who worked as part of a hidden network operating under the watchful eye of the crown forces and intelligence services. On 6 December 2021, Ailbe van der Heide and Dr. Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh will be delivering a free online lecture titled 'War of Independence Memories' for the Folklore of Ireland Society. To register, please visit: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pHhotkMrSvuOK_JC4Eq5LQ

With the coming of the cool wet weather of autumn, life begins to turn inward again . The fields lie fallow and bare, flowers wither, leaves decay, and all life seems to return to the earth. It's in this period of fading light, that strange and beautiful forms begin to arise from the undergrowth in the temperate regions all over Europe. In woodlands, fields, gardens and along roadsides, colourful fungi and mushrooms of all shapes and sizes quietly spring forth and flourish as if from nowhere, while all else appears in a state of decline. A short entry in volume 1670 of the Main Manuscript Collection at the NFC contains information collected from around Ireland on the topic of mushrooms in folk tradition. The material contained in this volume, previously unpublished and explored in this podcast episode, explores traditional attitudes to mushrooms in Irish tradition and outlines their uses along with popular beliefs concerning them. Audio from the NFC sound archive also features, along with audio material from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the singing group Landless. My thanks to archivist Danielle Castronovo at the Economic Botany Herbarium of Oakes Ames, Harvard University for her help in filling the gaps of some correspondence between R. Gordon Wasson and the Irish Folklore Commission. My thanks to archivist Maeve Gebreurs at the Irish Traditional Music Archive for forwarding Diane Hamilton's 1957 recording of Robert Cinnamond's rendition of the song 'Gathering Mushrooms'. Thanks likewise to Emmett Gill, archivist at Na Píobairí Uileann for pointing me in the direction of the collection of which this song is a part. Thanks too to Dónal Lunny, copyright holder, for permission to include this piece in the podcast. A variety of sources are consulted and discussed throughout, some links below: Prehistoric fungal representations in Tassili Algeria https://www.britannica.com/place/Tassili-n-Ajjer A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms? https://www.jstor.org/stable/41242925 The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007153614800077 Dioscorides: De Materia Medica https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/materiamedica.html Mushroom Artwork of Otto Marseus van Shrieck https://bit.ly/3nEwy3n Plutarch: Essays and Miscellanies https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3052/3052-h/3052-h.htm#link2HCH0065 The Hypothesis on the Presence of Entheogens in the Eleusinian Mysteries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327838578_The_hypothesis_on_the_presence_of_entheogens_in_the_Eleusinian_Mysteries Mircea Eliade - Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691210667/shamanism Nora Chadwick: Imbas Forosnai http://searchingforimbas.blogspot.com/p/imbas-forosnai-by-nora-k-chadwick.html An Irish Materia Medica: Tadhg Ó Cuinn https://celt.ucc.ie//published/G600005/index.html William Camden: Brittania https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Camden/32 Seeking the Magic Mushroom: Life Magazine May 1957 (via MAPS.org) https://bibliography.maps.org/bibliography/default/resource/15048 Tina and R. Gordon Wasson - Russia, Mushrooms and History (vols. 1, & 2) [PDF] https://doorofperception.com/2015/04/r-gordon-wasson-seeking-the-magic-mushroom/ Audio featured from the Irish Traditional Music Archive: https://itma.ie Landless: https://landless.bandcamp.com/ National Folklore Collection online portal: https://dúchas.ie

There are numerous accounts in tradition of wayfarers who suffer fits of confusion and disorientation while traversing the natural landscape. Such bouts were at times attributed to the influence of the fairies (who would set wanders astray for their own amusement) or the power of the stray sod (an enchanted sod of earth which set those who trod upon it astray). While the accounts vary, these occurrences involve situations in which individuals are forced to navigate a landscape characterised by its sudden shift into unfamiliarity and strangeness. Tilled fields that are worked by day become unnavigable and impassable by night. Well-worn and intimately known paths, crossroads and laneways are rendered odd, unknown and eerie all at once. The landscape at times becomes unrecognisable, indefinite and nameless. Landmarks are erased, inverted or otherwise replaced with new and unidentified features. Grand residences and strange houses appear on the side of hitherto barren hills. Impenetrable fogs, mists and coloured hazes descend and disorientate. Rivers, ditches, woods and walls appear to block all progress through the land. Lights rise and float in the distance and familiar reference points fall away, leaving the experiencer to navigate strange and foreign scenery which is at once indeterminate and unknown, with disenchantment coming at the dawn, leaving the exhausted wayfarer to suddenly realise their location, often only short distance from their homes. For episode 30 of Blúiríní Béaloidis Jonny traverses fields, hedges, ditches and heights examining narratives concerning stray sod and 'seachrán sí' (fairy straying) traditions; from the graves of unbaptised children to illusions and phantasms appearing in the natural landscape, and from spirits of the dead refused entry to either heaven or hell, to workings of the fairy host, join us as we explore the liminal personae who inhabit those isolated and unknown portions of the landscape.

My guest for this edition of Bluiríní Béaloidis is writer and documentary maker Manchán Magan, whose recent book 'Thirty-Two Words For Field' is a meditation on old Irish words and the nuances of a way of life that is vanishing with them. The book considers the 'richness of a language closely tied to the natural landscape' which 'offered our ancestors a more magical way of seeing the world'. It considers the 'sublime beauty and profound oddness of the ancient tongue that has been spoken on this island for over 2,000 years'. In this discussion, we consider how language and tradition binds us to the landscape, expolore the role of tradition in modernity and speculate on the ancient connections between Ireland and India. Manchán's book 'Thirty-Two Words For Field' has been nominated for numerous awards, and (as of December 2020) is already in its fourth printing. Copies can be purchased from directly from the author here: http://manchan.com/32-words-for-field Or at all good independent book shops: https://www.easons.com/thirty-two-words-for-field-manchan-magan-9780717187973 https://www.dubraybooks.ie/thirty-two-words-for-field_9780717187973

Seals have been an integral part of coastal life in Ireland for generations, and as such there exists a large body of tradition, belief and narrative regarding them. They were described in tradition as being enchanted people, wise women, fallen angels and drowned (or indeed reincarnated) fishermen, and encounters with them often relate how they would speak to, plead with or warn those fishermen who were about to attack or kill them out at sea or on the shore. Certain families in Ireland (Coneelys, O'Kanes, Dowds, O'Sheas and Gallaghers among them)were considered to have been the result of a union between a mortal and an enchanted seal, and many narrative accounts collected in Ireland describe how such unions came about when a mortal man who came upon a seal-woman in human form on the shore stole her cloak (which allowed her to change form) took her home, married her and had children with her, until one day she discovered her hidden cloak and left her children and husband to return to the sea. For this month's edition of Blúiríní Jonny is joined by Ailbe van der Heide to discuss the topic of seals in folk tradition, join them as they traverse the coasts and islands around Ireland and further afield to consider the interplay between nature, culture, appearance and reality which is brought across by these liminal beings. Some material mentioned in this episode: 'Monolingual Irish Speaker': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP4nXlKJx_4&ab_channel=AnGhaeilge Seán Ó hEinirí (John Henry) in conversation with Professor Séamas Ó Catháin of the Department of Irish Folklore. This video is from a documentary called 'In Search of the Trojan War' from 1985. 'People of the Sea' by David Thomson: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/309401.The_People_of_the_Sea Bairbre Ní Fhloinn: 'Tadhg and Donncha...' in Islanders and Water Dwellers (1996) https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/folklore-commission/islanders-and-water-dwellers/ Linda May-Ballard: Seal Stories and Belief on Rathlin Island in Ulster Folklife Martin Puhvel, 'The Seal in the Folklore of Northern Europe' Folklore, volume 74 issue 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1963.9716898 Bo Almqvist 'Of Mermaids and Marriages. Seamus Heaney's 'Maighdean Mara' and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's 'an Mhaighdean Mhara' in the Light of Folk Tradition', Béaloideas, Iml. 58 (1990), pp. 1-74 (Available online through JSTOR) Alexander H. Krappe, 'Scandinavian Seal Lore', Scandinavian Studies , Vol. 18, No. 4 (1944) pp. 156-162

It was said in tradition that 'there isn't an ailment or infirmity the cure of which doesn't grow in the fields or along the hedges', and indeed, our forebears employed a wide range of historical practices to drive out infirmity and illness. While a great deal of folk cures were entirely practical in their application, many others turned to the use of magic, sacrifice and the use of charms, rituals or prayer – modes of thought quite at odds with altogether more modern, secular perspectives. Far from being casually forged in the half-light of ignorance, our folk cures reveal those measures which, being deeply concerned with human life and welfare, were called on in times of crisis, in order to provide reassurance and comfort in the face of insecurity, illness and anxiety. For this episode of Blúiríní, Jonny examines definitions of folk medicine before taking a look at the healing deities of Classical European Paganism, and Irish mythology alike. Our explorations will then turn to consider the host of plagues, pestilences and infirmities outlined in our medieval chronicles, before we take a look at folk cures recorded in the archives of the National Folklore Collection University College Dublin. As we presently accustom ourselves to life in varying degrees of 'lockdown', it is worth turning to the past, in order to draw on the endurance, strength and patience with which our forebears held themselves through hardship. As the saying goes, 'Ní neart go chur le chéile!' ('There is no strength without unity!') Selected Readings of Interest: Chapter Title: Talitha Qum! An Exploration of the Image of Jesus as Healer-PhysicianSavior in the Synoptic Gospels in Relation to the Asclepius Cult Chapter Author(s): Frances Flannery Book Title: Coming Back to Life Book Subtitle: The Permeability of Past and Present, Mortality and Immortality, Death and Life in the Ancient Mediterranean Book Author(s): Bradley N. Rice Book Editor(s): Frederick S. Tappenden, Carly Daniel-Hughes Published by: McGill University Library. (2017) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvmx3k11.22 Some Notes on Homeric Folk-Lore Author(s): W. Crooke Source: Folklore, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar. 30, 1908), pp. 52-77 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1254711 Accessed: 20-03-2020 12:03 UTC Indo-European Dragon Slayers and Healers and the Irish Account of Dian Céacht and Méiche: https://www.academia.edu/10246879/Indo-European_Dragon-Slayers_and_Healers_and_the_Irish_Account_of_Dian_Céacht_and_<Méiche Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T300010/index.html The Identification of Some Pestilences Recorded in the Irish Annals Author(s): William P. MacArthur Source: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 6, No. 23 (Mar., 1949), pp. 169-188 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30006592 Accessed: 20-03-2020 12:41 UTC The Ancient Irish Hot: Air Bath Author(s): Seaton F. Milligan Source: The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Fourth Series, Vol. 9, No. 81 (Oct., 1889 - Jan., 1890), pp. 268-270 Published by: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25506556 Accessed: 20-03-2020 12:22 UTC Dr. Pat Logan: Making the Cures: Ancient Cures for Modern Ills, The Talbot Press, Dublin (1972) Seán Ó Súilleabháin: Nósanna agus Piseoga na nGael / Irish Folk Custom and Belief National Folklore Collection - www.Dúchas.ie

Our lives are built on the stories we tell. At both an individual and a communal level, they orient and mould us, shaping our perspectives and outlining our reality. In an age where life can seem increasingly fettered by rules and regulations, where communication is drowned by endless jargon and noise demanding our attention, where the past is heaved overboard in order that we might more quickly race blindly towards the future, where places become zones, where endless change is automatically equated with progress, and where the sacred is replaced by the material, the stories we tell ourselves modernity seem increasingly to offer little by way of consolation, enchantment, wonder or joy. With this in mind, and in search of alternate perspectives for episode 22 of Blúiríní Béaloidis, I'm setting off from the National Folklore Collection, driving across Ireland to the village of Crusheen near Ireland's western coast, where I have arranged to meet a man who has been described as a ‘national treasure’, a ‘master storyteller’ and ‘inspired performer’ alike. Eddie Lenihan is an author and storyteller who has been collecting traditional stories and customs from an older generation for over 40 years. His 2003 book, Meeting the Other Crowd has been translated into many languages, and is dedicated by Eddie to ‘all those tellers now gone whose voices are not forgotten and to those still with us whose knowledge is more indispensable than ever’. As usual, throughout this episode you’ll hear a mixture of conversation along with original archival field recordings from the National Folklore Collection concerning the topics under discussion. For more information regarding these excerpts, see below. To learn more about Eddie, and to support his valuable work, please visithttp://eddielenihan.weebly.com/

This twentieth edition of Blúiríní Béaloidis comes as something of a bittersweet occasion, with Claire raising a parting glass to 'gently rise and softly call - goodnight and joy be with you all', leaving the National Folklore Collection to embark on a new adventure! In their final episode together, Claire and Jonny highlight some of their favourite archival excerpts from previous editions of Blúiríní, reminiscing on the treasures of the Collection as they go. From song and story, to text and context, they give thought to those who have gone before us - to their nobility and artistry - noting the inspiration that absent friends and family can still provide us today. Jonny will return in the coming months with a new series of Blúiríní featuring interviews and field recordings, but in the mean time we fill up our glasses and bid fond farewell to our dear Claire 'For The Sake of Completeness' Doohan, wishing her a world of joy and every success in the new chapter opening up before her!