The fantastic, the exuberant, the mischievous (you suspect at times), the rich, the wonderful, the original . . . Here is a book that embodies all these worlds, and more. It is, of course, the great sweep of Irish folklore, within the covers of Bealoideas 1996-1997. There is, for example so much of Connemara in an article by Rionach ui Ogain about the collaboration between Seamus Ennis of the then Irish Folklore Commission and Colm O Caodhain of Glinsce near Carna.
Colm worked hard all his life, in his own townland and in Glasgow where, he said, he came back at night to his lodgings and "my legs were so tired that I had to catch hold of the bottom of my trousers to try to lift my legs going up the stairs." So Seamus took down what Colm said and sang. There were breaks. Writes Seamus: "I often went to sea for a day's fishing with him. We would bring two cases of buttermilk and new potatoes and a pot with a hole in it to light a turf fire where there would be a draught, and we would pull mackerel out of the sea and clean it and put it down on the turf to roast."
Interesting sidelight. When Colm got up early in the morning to go scallop fishing, his mother would never awaken him or anyone who was going to sea - for fear that she might be sending them out to be drowned. "It seems to me a nice custom," wrote Seamus.
Colm, singer as well as storyteller and local historian, had a bad tooth. "The more I was in pain, the more people laughed at me . . . I didn't know if I should have a go at them or leave them be." He did have the tooth pulled and on the way home began to worry. Because he used to hear old people "talking, do you understand, about a tooth that would have music in it." That evening he stood on every hill, wall and height to see if Seamus was coming, to test himself on his musical instrument to see if he had lost the tooth that had music in it or not. "But bydad, and a thousand thanks to God" he found he hadn't lost the tooth that had the music in it.
"We are the wiser", writes the author of the article, for this happy collaboration between collector and subject. It was just 50 years ago. More from this treasure trove on another day: on the Irish wren tales and traditions, on the Palatines and other topics. Y