Schools’ Folklore Scheme 1937-38

Clare County Library's Local Studies Centre is a reference library and research centre dedicated to the collection of material on any aspect of County Clare. Located at the Manse, beside the de Valera Library in Ennis, it is open to the public free of charge. One of the many interesting collections held here is the Schools’ Folklore Collection of County Clare. Widely used by researchers and students, it contains essays written by school children during the 1930s. The work was submitted by 188 National Schools in County Clare. It stands as one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken in the field of folklore collecting. The Schools’ Collection Scheme was voluntary but such was the response from schools around the country that it amassed about half a million manuscript pages of folklore. During the school year 1937-38, fifth and sixth class pupils in the twenty six counties were invited, as part of their school-work, to participate in the collection of folklore in their own communities. An explanatory booklet entitled ‘Irish Folklore and Tradition’ containing fifty-five subject headings, along with suggestions and guidelines, was given to the principal of each Primary School. Some of the subject headings included were The Community; Folk Medicine; Historical Tradition; Religious Tradition; Sports and Pastimes; Nature; Settlement and Dwelling; Mythological Tradition and Popular Oral Tradition. The Foreword to the booklet states that ‘the collection of the oral tradition of the Irish people is a work of national importance.’ The senior pupils – who were between the ages of eleven and fourteen years– were exempted from their usual weekly essay so as to allow time for written work on their folklore projects. The collecting from family and neighbours was done after school hours and the children wrote down the lore as told to them by the people around them. This collecting was undertaken ‘at a time when television was away in the future and the seanachie was still part of the furniture of the Co. Clare fireside.’ Each school was allocated a large standard notebook entitled ‘Bealoideas’ (Folklore), and either the teacher or pupils with good handwriting copied the best of the material from the school copybooks into the official notebook. The original manuscripts of the Schools Collection are housed in the Department of Irish Folklore at U.C.D., Dublin. The Local Studies Centre in Ennis has microfilm copies of the original manuscripts amounting to approximately 16,000 pages.