Francesca Diana, a part-time lecturer in UCC's Italian Department, is behind a revival of interest in one of Ireland's foremost 19th-century champions of his native folklore, Thomas Crofton Croker.
Ms Diana, an art critic, teacher and poet, based in Padua, northern Italy (when she's not teaching in Cork), got interested in the subject in the 1970s.
When studying then in London she befriended the owner of an antiquarian bookshop in Muswell Hill. There she bought Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, a book published anonymously in 1825.
Years later when she bought a copy of a book of fairy-tales collected by W.B. Yeats, she found he had attributed the fairy legends publication to one Thomas Crofton Croker. To her delight, she discovered she had bought a first edition in the London bookshop.
Croker came from scholarly Anglo-Irish stock. Like his kin, he took a special interest in 19thcentury Irish folklore.
Croker travelled southern Ireland collecting stories between 1812 and 1815.
Ms Diana found that, unlike the Brothers Grimm, he changed nothing but gave the tales just as they were related.
This year Collins Press will publish a facsimile edition of Croker's book with an introductory essay by the Italian scholar, who regards Ireland as her first spiritual home.
Tales of the banshee and the ancient tradition of laments and keening, especially at wakes, fascinate her.
She has translated Croker's volume to Italian and says Irish culture in her homeland is currently winning huge attention.