Folk life archive
/Collections/Archives/Folk_life_archiveDIG012149(72)2)
As part of the museum's commitment to increasing access to archival material, a dedicated project has been established to introduce the Folk Life Archive online.
This includes working with students in the Folklore Program of the Department of English at Houston University, Texas who are helping to digitise parts of the collection.
The first step in this project is to give access to a selection of folk tales that Museum introduces the wealth and range of oral tradition in Northern Ireland. These stories represent the counties of Armagh, Antrim, Derry/Londonderry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone, together with Belfast and Rathlin Island. They also reflect aspects of oral history, ghost lore, tales of the fairies and long episodic stories (märchen) that have appealed to the imaginations of countless generations. These tales have been collected during a period beginning in the 1940s and continuing until 2006. The earliest material is chosen from the McPolin Collection, made by Dr Francis McPolin in the environs of Hilltown in the Mourne Mountains, mainly during the 1940s. Some stories are drawn from archival notebooks donated to the museum during the 1960s, some from oral recordings made during fieldwork on behalf of the museum that began during the 1970s. This programme of field recording still continues today.
Useful link:
- Click here to view an example of one of folk tales held in this archive (PDF 108KB)
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