Folklore

After deciding on Irish Folklore as my research project, I began combing through Trinity and UCD's faculty indexes in search of a possible professor to interview. UCD is home to the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics, and it is much bigger than I imagined. I located a professor who's concentration is Irish Folklore, Bairbre Ni Fhloinn, and she was kind enough to meet with me on Friday.
I eventually stumbled upon the National Irish Folklore Collection that is housed in the Newman Center on UCD's campus (I got lost a few times because the campus is so huge!). The center is locked and can only be accessed with a member of the faculty, so when Bairbre met me I had to fill out an access form.
Bairbre is an eccentric professor and a person that radiates interest in her subject. We sat in her office for nearly an hour discussing the history of folklore and the importance of it in modern Irish culture. As she sat in her desk chair, maroon reading glasses poised on the bridge of her nose, she told me that folklore isn't just about the stories that have been passed down, it also encompasses the history of people, whether that means what they wore or how they talked. Unsurprisingly, many of these more tangible things were the roots for the actual stories that were eventually recorded. Bairbre also discussed the connection between folklore and Irish identity. The National Folklore Commission was founded in the 1930s when Ireland was struggling to distance itself from England. This may be a somewhat small detail, but recording Irish history and its tales was a way of the Irish preserving their identity as a nation and projecting themselves as an independent creature.
After our interview, Bairbre gave me a tour of the collection. Inside, they have a library of more contemporary texts that students have access to if needed. Another room contains shelf after shelf of handwritten books with various things documented inside. Some were stories, and scrawled on the page is the date and location of the first time the story was recorded. Others were pages discussing festivals and fashion of people thousands of years ago. The number of books counted to around 1,200. Another room held filing cabinets where students can look at notecards with definitions of different folklore terms and stories on them. Those cards also tell which books and pages to look at for further research. The tour was fascinating, and I had no idea that the folklore collection there would be so big or so old. Some of the books were written years and years ago.
Meeting Bairbre was something I thoroughly enjoyed because I loved hearing a born and bred Irish person discuss an important piece of her culture. I would not be able to piece together the more cultural importances of folklore and modern day Ireland because I do not live it like she does. I am glad I had the chance to explore UCD and experience a key piece of their culture that I would not have seen otherwise.