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From Fireside Stories to Bounded Texts

The Flower/Ó Direáin Collection is an important primary source of linguistic and folklore material in Irish. Collected in 1933 by renowned scholar Robin Flower from Aran Islands storyteller Darach Ó Direáin, the collection is preserved in Robin Flower’s Nachlass in the National Folklore Collection, Dublin.

My presentation explores the interdisciplinary process involved in transforming manuscript-form archive material into a more readily accessible text for both an academic and general readership. I examine the detailed editing process and linguistic analysis involved in producing a folklore text that aims to uncover and retain the dialectal characteristics of the storyteller. A further examination of the construction process of this collection, in terms of positioned roles and discursive histories, reveals the multiple voices and socio-historical discourses that constitute a folklore text from the West of Ireland.

Dr Marion Ní Mhaoláin has a PhD in Modern Irish and Anthropology from Maynooth University and taught Irish for many years in that university. She has also spent time as a linguist with an aboriginal community in Western Australia and is currently working in the Department of Speech and Language Therapy, NUI Galway, on a project about assessment of narrative in children attending Gaeltacht and non-Gaeltacht Irish-medium schools.

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