Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast

Ailbe van der Heide is Collections Curator at the National Folklore Collection, having joined the staff in 2020, shortly after graduating from the MA in Irish Folklore in 2020. For several years now, Ailbe has managed the National Folklore Collection’s reading room service, along with fielding an array of queries from members of the public keen to explore our collections. Throughout her work, and...

Steve Roud is a Librarian, folklore scholar and creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains upwards of 750,000 entries to around 45,000 English language folk songs, as found in books, recordings, manuscripts and other sources the world over. His index, and ‘Roud Numbers’ (a numbering system employed to identify the same song across many different titles) are widely acclaimed for the scope,...

Video recording of this episode is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OcxwmDuUeU&ab_channel=UCD-UniversityCollegeDublin Henry Glassie is College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, and has published widely in the fields of material culture and vernacular architecture. His contribution to the discipline of Irish Folklore and Ethnology has been exceptional. Havi...

Regarding food in Irish tradition, Kevin Danaher, writing in 1964, noted that "Sometimes we get the impression that Ireland, in ancient times, was a land of plenty, and again we get quite the opposite impression - that our forebears lived out their lives on the very edge of starvation. In reality both these impressions are wrong." As an expression of culture that permeates every aspect of life, fo...

Hello a chairde, and welcome to episode 40 of Blúiríní Béaloidis, the podcast from the National Folklore Collection. It would be remiss of me not to commence this episode of the podcast with long, grovelling apologies concerning the absence of signs of life regarding the series over the last year and a half. The good news is that the podcast still exists, the work of the NFC continues apace, and t...

Bees have been cultivated in Ireland since early times. Of value for their wax and honey, there were also believed to be blessed creatures, as Dáithí Ó hÓgáin writes: "probably because of the use of their wax to make church candles, and one medieval legend describes a swarm of bees building a little container around a lost communion wafer to protect it. They were also thought to be possessed of sp...

Lying in fields and ditches, at the edge of old and overgrown graveyards and in lonesome places all over Ireland rest forgotten echoes of our past. Large and unwieldy stones; blocks of granite and sandstone flags which, used in former times as tests of strength, still reverberate with the memory of heroic feats. The tradition of stone lifting, while well-attested in Scotland, Iceland and other par...

"Long as the day is, night comes, and alas, the night is coming for me too... Someone else will have pastime out of my work when I'm gone on the way of truth. A person here and a person there will say, maybe, 'Who was that Peig Sayers?' but poor Peig will be the length of their shout from them. This green bench where she used to do the studying will be a domicile for the birds of the wilderness, a...

Irish Travellers, known in their own language as Mincéirs or Pavees and in Irish called ‘An Lucht Siúil or, ‘The Walking People’, are a nomadic ethnic minority in Ireland with a distinct history, culture and identity. Historically, Travellers were called Tinkers, a reference to their trade as tinsmiths, and they also made a living through engaging with the settled community; by buying and selling...

The Civil War was a schismatic moment in Irish history, and the fault lines it left split families, tore apart communities and turned former comrades in arms against one another in a bitterly divisive period of violence and conflict. According to historian Anne Dolan, ‘The memory of the Irish Civil War has been assumed, distorted, [and] misunderstood. It has been manipulated, underestimated, but m...

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 histor...

In life, there is much which seems uncertain to us. Concerning death however, there can be no doubt. It was an honour to speak with funeral director, death-care practitioner and proud Sligo native David McGowan on the topic of death for episode 33 of Blúiríní Béaloidis. Sit with us as we explore attitudes and customs regarding death and dying, from the practicalities and preparations of the corpse...

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...

For this episode of Blúiríní I am joined by sculptor Aidan Harte, whose recent work 'The Púca of Ennistymon' was commissioned by Clare county Council for the town of Ennistymon in the west of Ireland. The piece caused widespread controversy and made headlines nationally and internationally over the summer, being denounced as a pagan idol and sinister statue irreflective of the character and herita...

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 occur...

The Irish Folklore Commission (established in 1935) tasked itself with the documentation of the unwritten customs, beliefs and narratives of the Irish people; those ‘disiecta membra’ (as James Hamilton Delargy described them) of a rich heritage which it was feared was in danger of dying out and disappearing forever unless swift action was taken to gather up the fragments that remain, lest they per...

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 co...

The Banshee is a well known supernatural figure in Irish folk tradition. In origin a patron goddess caring for the fortunes of her people, the banshee of folk belief is usually considered to be a harbinger of death, being said to follow certain families from generation to generation. Traditions about her are spread widely throughout the country, and for this episode of the podcast Jonny has the pr...

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 wh...

Midsummer has long been observed as a period of jubilant celebration, with communal gatherings at bonfires and prayers, recitations, music, songs, dance and merriment being the order of the night. Join Jonny for episode 25 of Blúiríní Béaloidis as he explores the origins of midsummer festivities in Europe; recounting the raucous antics of the Brotherhood of the Green Wolf in France, considering th...

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, ritual...

Lying in overgrown fields, by churches and next to roadsides all over Ireland, are hidden holy wells and sacred springs which have for countless generations been visited as sites of pilgrimage and devotion. These wells are generally small bodies of water dedicated to a local patron saint, and were often renowned for the healing properties. For this edition of Blúiríní, we shall trudge across the f...

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 r...

The festival of Samhain has since ancient times been considered as a major turning point in the ritual year. In marking the threshold of darkness and the end of the season of light, the eve of Samhain (observed all over Ireland at sundown on the 31st of October) is characterised by heightened supernatural activity, a return of the ancestral dead, divination magic, mischief, ritual disguise and the...

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 Blúi...