"I often heard it said that anyone that would die during the Twelve Days of Christmas would go straight to Heaven."
This traditional belief was recorded by Jim Delaney, full-time collector with the Irish Folklore Commission, and later with the Department of Irish Folklore in University College Dublin, in January 1966. The narrator in question was Patsy Johnson of Ballinlassie, near Moate, Co Westmeath, from whom Jim recorded a great deal of material in the course of many recording sessions throughout the 1960s. The belief about the Twelve Days is one with which he would have been very familiar, from his work with Patsy Johnson and others, and it has its own special significance in the light of Jim's unexpected death.
James G. Delaney (Seamus O Dushlaine) was one of the most important figures in the field of oral history studies in Ireland. He was a scholar of significance in his own right, with his study of the 19th century folklorist and book-man, Patrick Kennedy, remaining today as the principal published work on this influential figure in Ireland's recent literary history. Jim was immensely well-read, in several languages, and a fluent speaker of Irish with a detailed knowledge of the language.
Jim was born in Wexford in April 1916. He came from a long and proud line of seafarers, a legacy which he described in great detail in a number of valuable articles published in the Wexford journal, The Past. Jim's own path in life led not out to sea, however, but rather in the opposite direction, as he eventually settled in Co Roscommon near Athlone, almost within sight of the Hill of Berries, said in local tradition to be the exact centre of Ireland. Although Wexford always remained in Jim's blood, he wrote also about his adopted home-place with a great deal of fondness and with a profound knowledge of the area. His route from Wexford to Athlone lay via Dublin, where he taught for a period having completed his primary degree in University College Dublin, and subsequently to the town of Longford.
Here, he met and married Mary Ni Bhradaigh, and it was around this period that he became involved in the work of the Irish Folklore Commission, under the directorship of Seamus O Duilearga. O Duilearga persuaded Jim to join the ranks of the Commission's full-time collectors of oral tradition, which he did in 1954.
He was to spend the rest of his working life collecting and preserving the oral history and literature, the songs and stories, the proverbs and language, the customs and beliefs of the people of Wexford and of his adopted area. This he did with a degree of commitment and with a thoroughness which was remarkable, and his work stands as a lasting monument to him and to the people he worked with.
It is worth commenting that these people were of a kind who are often neglected by conventional history, and whose names usually do not appear in the official historical record. In this, Jim's temperament and personality were particularly suitable for the task in hand. He always worked with a deeply felt respect for his narrators and, by similar token, never patronised.
Throughout his long career, he worked throughout the midlands, particularly in counties Longford, Roscommon, Cavan, Leitrim, Offaly, Westmeath, Galway, Tipperary, Laois and Carlow. In doing so, he provided a great service to these often unsung parts of Ireland by demonstrating the existence of rich veins of tradition and folklore in all of the areas in which he worked. In total, his contributions to the archives of the Department of Irish Folklore (which took over the Commission's functions in 1971) amount to an enormous 20,000 pages, and stand as a remarkable testament to a remarkable man. He also took many valuable photographs over the years and was responsible for making many unique sound recordings of storytellers, singers and narrators. In the many articles he published throughout his life, he touched on just a small fraction of the sum total of his collecting achievements. Other writers, too, made use of Jim's material, including the late David Thomson in his legendary Woodbrook.
Jim was also instrumental in preserving for the future many artefacts and aspects of folk-life which would otherwise certainly have disappeared without trace. He worked closely with the staff of the National Museum in this, and the collections which will shortly be on display in the new museum complex in Castlebar would certainly be very much poorer if it weren't for him. By way of example, we have only to think of the extraordinary cliath thulca, or reed raft of the Shannon, which Jim arranged to have made for the museum, thus preserving a type of craft and construction method which probably go back to the time of the Flood itself.
A teacher by profession, Jim's wife, May, was an invaluable support to him throughout their life together, and helped in his work in all kinds of ways until her death some years ago, at too young an age.
Some years ago, Jim published an article about storytellers he had known, many of whom had by then passed away. He finished the article with a quote and with an Irish blessing, both of which could not be more fitting in the present context:
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace,
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
Go gcoiri na haingil leaba sna flaithis dhuit, a Jim dhil, agus go dtuga siad suaimhneas siorai do d'anam uasal aoibhinn.
B.Ni F.