#  Irish Gaelic Folklore Material 

 



 ##  

  expand\_more  

 
  

 

A diverse range of materials at Harvard attest to the university's long-standing connections to Irish folklore studies. In the early twentieth century, Fred Norris Robinson (1871-1966) arranged for Harvard to acquire a substantial number of Irish manuscripts, quite a few of which are of interest to Irish folkloristics ("Irish manuscripts in Houghton Library"); Robinson also appears to have been the owner of a slim Gaelic folktale manuscript which surfaced only recently ("‘Ridire an Chlóca Uaithne’"). Harvard library’s Celtic audio collection holds a couple of sound recordings from the 1970s ("Joe Heaney at Harvard", "Donegal Fieldwork Collection").

## **Irish Manuscripts in Houghton Library**

- Houghton Library MS Ir 18 (URL) contains four traditional stories that appear to be taken from Munster oral tradition.
- Houghton Library MS Ir 34 contains collections of Irish proverbs.
- Houghton Library MS Ir 35 contains Irish songs with notes by Douglas Hyde.
- Houghton Library MSS Ir 3, 7, 10, 14, 19, 23 are wholly or in part devoted to Ossianic poetry.

### **"Ridire an Chlóca Uaithne" "The Knight of the Green Cloak" Robinson Folktale MS**

The slim manuscript notebook contains a single Gaelic folktale, a version of the international wondertale "The Maiden Without Hands" (ATU 706). Douglas Hyde published a slightly different text in Béaloideas 4 (1933, 168-72), which was, according to Hyde, taken from the recitation of an Irish immigrant in Worcester, Mass. The manuscript may have been written by Hyde’s collaborator; there are many minor but revealing differences between the manuscript and the text published by Hyde.

- [Manuscript](/file_url/147)
- [Edition and Translation](/file_url/148)

### **Joe Heaney Collection**

SortHollis

Joe Heaney at Harvard: Irish songs and stories [field work collection]

URL:

<http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/011293334/catalog>

Series:

Celtic Dept. audio collection, Harvard Library Depository (acquisition #3609)

Format:

Compact disc, digitized from original reel-to-reel audio tape

Reels:

2

Contents:

Songs in Gaelic and English and stories in English performed by Irish singer Joe Heaney (Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, 1919-1984) at Harvard on 2/8/1975

Collector:

Recorded for the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures





### **Donegal Fieldwork collection**

SortHollis

NA

Series:

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard

Format:

Reel-to-reel audio tape; in process of being streamed

Reels:

2

Contents:

Gaelic folklore material collected in August 1974 from Rannafast, co. Donegal, Ireland; also a small number of Welsh-language items collected in June and July 1974 in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, Wales