In Dorothy Noyes’ article, “Tradition: Three Traditions,” I was struck as I read by the duality of the word above and the connotations it carries. Tradition is a two-sided coin that indicates “separation as well as continuity” and this cleaving of folklore, be that material culture or oral tradition, I found to be crucial to my reading throughout the other texts (239). The word “cleave” of course mirrors Noyes’ third interpretation of tradition in that it refers to both a cutting apart (separation) and cutting together (continuity). This cleaving is evident in nearly every nationalist movement that harnessed the nature of folklore and tradition in order to pursue the faux uniformity of nation-building and the creation of such identities for their subjects to perform. The Grimms in what would become Germany, the Gaelic League in Ireland, and the Krohns in Finland all recognized the utility of folklore and tradition in their ability to divide and reconstitute regarding Ireland and Finland and to construct in terms of Germany’s regions. In Ireland especially, the intent to create a state based strongly upon its own merits of tradition, that of oral culture, belief systems, and other practices, and to cleave itself from England; this draws on the thoughts of Herder that Noyes’ recognizes “as a dynamic process of individual assimilation, and more broadly the vital life force of the organism, the nation” (236). The folk then are at once a part of their heritage and tradition as well as the call for progress and modernization. Traditionality and modernity coexist at once temporally and physically as in material culture, like knitting or sewing or basket-making, in narrative, as legends are repurposed like The Lament of Art O’ Leary as Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s new novel A Ghost in the Throat, in music and dance, like Sean Nós and Irish (Gaeilge) trad, and the examples might go on.
William Thoms coins the term “folklore” upon the publication of his letter in 1847. As I read this particular text, I wanted to understand it in the context of the Great Hunger, An Gorta Mór, in Ireland. The year this letter was published is known as Black ’47 and was arguably the harshest year of the famine and resulted in an increase in emigration, illness, and destitution. Thoms remarks that it was necessary to save English folklore at a time while the island to the west suffered the loss of their own traditions, people, and language. Later in Ireland, Séamus Ó Duilearga, the professor of the Irish Folklore program at University College Dublin, would remark on the “burning urge to save” folklore and folklife materials as they were available to his crew of collectors active within the Irish Folklore Commission. The salvage folklore enacted on Ó Duilearga’s watch, while used to bolster an infant Irish state, also stood to value the Irish people for their knowledge and craft, material, oral and otherwise. Thoms may be ignorant of the colonial sentiment that backs his English term. Irish folklorists position themselves in a place where they might use the term Béaloideas and denote the control over their own language, culture, and tradition. Reflecting upon these materials in conjunction with my knowledge of Irish history and its own folklore commissions and archives, I come away from these readings considering the multiplicity of the Irish today and in those of the past, for there were those who did not possess Irish Gaelic themselves and whose identity was Irish. What of those who immigrate to Ireland today to escape persecution as refugees? What of their folklore and traditions? How will their knowledge and narratives be preserved? What of the children born into Direct Provision centers in Ireland? What of the Travelling community on the margins of towns and cities? What of the housing crisis in Dublin, Cork, and Galway? How will in time folklorists collect the traditions of Ireland today and who will be doing the telling?
Word Witch 