Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/291

 FOLKLORE AND HISTORY IN IRELAND.

BY D. H. MOUTRAY READ.

[Read before the Society, June 19th, 191 8.)

If Ireland was but an island in the South Pacific, it is safe to assert that it would be the happy hunting ground of the ethnographer, anthropologist, and folklorist. Having the fortune to be one of the islands of the British Archaepelago it is therefore supposed to be known, and, consequently, to a large extent is an undiscovered region. So greatly was this the case that my previous paper on Irish folklore came to be written because it had been asserted that there were practically no Calendar Customs in Ireland. Some work has been done since then, with the result that Miss Burne, now editor-in-chief of the new " Brand," after looking through the collected matter for May, commented that the Irish Calendar Customs for that month were more fresh, more alive, and more complete, than from any other part of the kingdom.

But if much has been done, far more remains for the doing, and the matter with which the bulk of my paper deals to-day is one that has many gaps to fill, as may be judged by the fact that on looking through the Calendar Customs "slips" I could find practically none but my own work that touched at all on the subject.

Taking Ireland, then, as in many respects a folklorically undiscovered country, let us try to apply to its study some of the maxims laid down by Dr. Marret in his last presidential address. To get the folklore of a country into focus something more is needed than a pile of orderly MS.