Famine Folklore

Clare County Library obtained microfilm copies of the original manuscripts submitted by schools in county Clare under the “Scheme for the collection and preservation of Folklore and Oral Tradition”. The Irish Folklore Commission was established in April 1935 for the purpose of collecting, preserving and cataloguing what could be found of traditional Irish lore and later make it available for research-workers. It was therefore decided that the help of the senior pupils and teachers in the primary schools should be sought. The children collected local traditions outside of school hours from their parents and grandparents which they wrote down. This information was recorded in special school copybooks and is still preserved in the Irish Folklore Commission.

All information dealing with the Famine contained in the schools folklore manuscripts for county Clare was transcribed from microfilm and digitised by CLASP trainees, namely, Fiona Reddan and Fionn Malone. We had hoped to publish this information - originally collected in Clare by Clare children - on the library website. Unfortunately we were unable to do so due to copyright restrictions enforced by the Department of Folklore, UCD.

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