The Folklore of Ireland (freshman seminar)

Barbara Hillers
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures
Harvard University

Course Description

Ireland has a rich heritage of oral literature, expertly collected by the Irish Folklore Commission and unparalleled in western Europe and America. The seminar will explore this literature and its place in the community that created and fostered it. The tenant farmers and labourers of the west of Ireland farmed a few acres of land in what was essentially a subsistence economy, yet they knew scores, often hundreds, of stories and songs. They could tell wondertales of great magic and beauty, and elaborate hero-tales that took several hours to relate. Casual conversation was embellished and laced with joke and repartee, proverb, anecdote, and legend. The seminar will introduce students to the most important genres of Irish folklore, including songs and ballads, folk- and hero-tales, fairy legends and belief, proverbs, and charms. Participants shall explore this folklore against the background of the tradition bearers and their culture: what meaning did it have for the materially impoverished communities that produced it? Does folklore represent all members of a community or is there a folklore of subgroups? Is the function of folklore to perpetuate the status quo or to subvert it? The seminar will introduce students to a variety of critical tools and interpretive methods used by folklorists to tackle this radically other literature.

Seminar Requirements

The seminar is highly participatory. Students are expected to make regular short (5-10 min.) oral presentations; most weeks are structured to incorporate student presentations. Assignments invite students to develop an `expertise' in a small area - to choose and study, for example, one genre of folklore, or one story type, or one storyteller - and to present that expertise to the group. In addition, there will be regular group evaluation of the critical reading under discussion, again delegating students to cover and evaluate different readings for the group. There will be several short written homeworks, the first due by Week Four. A written report (c.5 pages) is due in Week Seven and may be based on one of the presentations. A final paper (c.12 pages) is due at the end of Reading Period.

Required Texts

Storytelling in Ireland, Seán Ó Súilleabháin (1973)
Folktales of Ireland, Seán O'Sullivan (1966)
Irish Folk Tales, ed. H. Glassie (1985)
The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story, Angela Bourke (2000)
The Study of Folklore, A. Dundes (1965)

Topics

Week One: Whose Folklore?: What is folklore? Who are the folk? How does folklore function in our lives, and what does it mean?
Week Two: The Functions of Folklore: What is the function of folk literature? An exploration of the function, or range of functions, of a particular tale, or genre, or storytelling event, for the storyteller and his community.
Week Three: Genres of Irish Folk Literature: An introduction to the main genres of Irish folk literature: fables, tales of magic, religious tales, jokes and anecdotes, fairy legends, songs, charms, nonsense tales, rhymes and riddles.
Week Four: Ireland and the International Context: How does Irish storytelling tradition fit into the European context? An introduction to the history of folklore collecting and folktale scholarship in Europe; tale type indexes and how to use them. A demonstration and evaluation of the historical geographic method of folktale study.
Week Five: Storyteller and Storytelling Community in Ireland: An introduction to the Gaelic storyteller and singer versus the English-language storyteller / singer. Students will look at the repertoires and lives of Irish tradition bearers from a range of backgrounds.
Week Six: Oral Stylistics: What Makes Oral Literature Oral?: Oral performance and oral transmission. Versions and tellings: variation across time, space, gender and storytelling occasion. How to tell a tale: Formula, motif and theme in Irish hero tales.
Week Seven: Psychological Interpretations of Folklore: The Folktale as narrative of personal development; Structural analysis and psychology; analysis and interpretation of selected folktales.
Week Eight: This World and the Otherworld: Folk legend versus folktale. Fairy legend and belief: Who are the fairies? Who believes in fairies?
Week Nine: SPRING RECESS
Week Ten: The Function of Fairy Legends: Fairy belief as tool for dealing with reality. The moral, message, or social use of fairy legends. The Clonmel murder case: the burning of Bridget Cleary.
Week Eleven: Coding and Gender in Folklore: Do men and women tell different stories? Do men and women tell (and hear) the same stories differently? What can we tell from the differences between male and female storytellers' repertoires and performance styles? Can stories have a gender? The theory of coding: the hidden agendas and subversive messages of women's folklore.
Week Twelve: Folklore of Marginalized Groups: Travellers' folklore and folklore about travellers. The folklore of subgroups: the `us' and `them'. Is there a traveller repertoire? Function of storytelling; life and art.
Week Thirteen: The Third Function of Folklore: How Conservative Is Folklore?: Subversive, didactic, bawdy and irreverent tales. An exploration of subversive elements in a range of genres, including jokes, anecdotes, fables, tall tales, and tales of magic.
Week Fourteen: Céilí: So what is folklore all about? And what does it mean to us? Folklore for the people: Tell a tale or sing a song; bring your tin whistle; put on your tap-dancing shoes; tell a joke....