Dáithí Ó hÓgáin's book on folklore has everything from dead grannies on roof racks to Lugh of the Long Arm, writes Rosita Boland.
'Politicians," academic and folklorist Dáithí Ó hÓgáin says sagely, "are often rich sources of historical lore."
Ó hÓgáin, who is associate professor of Irish folklore at University College Dublin, and has worked there for 35 years, has just published The Lore of Ireland, a weighty encyclopaedia of myths, legends and romance. The first page has a reference to Abán, a sixth-century saint from Leinster who performed miracles from childhood - one of his first miracles involved bringing back to life a calf that had been killed by a wolf. The last entry is about wonder tales, some of which are classic quest stories, and told in different versions in many cultures.
But as Ó hÓgáin points out, not all our folklore is lodged in the past, nor is it finite - it continues to regenerate itself. He cites politicians as an example. "The public often pick up humorous stories about politicians, which might in a genial or sarcastic way illustrate perceived aspects of their personalities."
He defines a legend as "a story which is told as if it was true. Of course, there are legends about people who are still alive, but telling them might create legal difficulty. They might think they're being held up to ridicule - politicians, sportsmen, captains of industry, journalists and academics."
Ó hÓgáin is not particularly keen to give contemporary examples, but by his own definition it would be fair to say that Garret FitzGerald's mismatching socks and Charlie Haughey's Charvet shirts have entered the milder realms of contemporary Irish folklore. He has deliberately not included examples of folklore in his book that relate to living people.
There are, however, several references in the book to deceased politicians, for example, Daniel O'Connell. One of the legends that Ó hÓgáin cites in his book as one that has become part of Irish folklore refers to O'Connell's abilities as a lawyer.
When O'Connell was a child there was a tricky legal case in progress locally in Co Kerry. Ó hÓgáin writes: "The case involved a man who was suing another for the loss of an eye, whereas the eye had in fact been lost accidentally through being caught with a fish-hook. This had happened when the plaintiff was being saved from drowning by the other man, who had thrown a fishing line to him. The judge was unable to decide on the case, but he chanced to hear some children acting out the courtroom drama as they played. O'Connell was acting the part of the judge, and he ruled that the plaintiff should be put back into the water, and if he could save himself without the help of the fishing line, then he should be allowed damages against the other man."
The judge ruled accordingly, and charges were dropped. Fact or fiction? Who knows? Whichever it is, it's now become part of the folklore surrounding O'Connell - and also suggests that Ireland's "compo culture" has long been with us.
As Ó hÓgáin shows in this book, the term "Irish folklore" is an expansive one. The book is referenced alphabetically. Unfortunately, the index is very scrappy, which is adequate if you are happy to dip in and out at random, but unsatisfactory if you are searching for a specific reference within folklore or folk custom.
THE LORE OF Ireland contains folklore and traditional narratives, but not references of that lore in specific works of literature. "That would take another book," says Ó hÓgáin. However, The Lore of Ireland covers everything from myth to legends, romance stories to wonder tales, folk customs and even urban myths, or, as Ó hÓgáin calls them, "modern legends".
In here you'll find the classic story of the granny who dies when the family is on holiday abroad. Not wanting to deal with the local formalities, the family wrap her up and put her on the roof rack of their camper van, and proceed homewards. While eating in a restaurant along the way, the camper van is stolen, along with the dead granny - which presumably is rather more than the thieves have bargained for.
So what constitutes classic Irish folklore? Perhaps the story we all heard in school, that of the Children of Lir? No, it's not. "The Children of Lir is a continental legend which came into Ireland in medieval times," explains Ó hÓgáin. "No culture exists in isolation. What does it mean to be Irish? That's a tautological question. I think we waste a lot of energy and emotions discussing that - the question of what it means to be Irish."
IT'S ALSO POSSIBLE to see, even from dipping in and out of The Lore of Ireland, how un-self-consciously sexist a lot of folklore is. One of the stories under the category "humorous tales" in the encyclopaedia goes thus:
"A man has an extremely foolish wife and in desperation decides to leave her. As he departs the house, she begs to be allowed to follow him, and he tells her to 'pull the door after her' and come. She obeys him literally, pulling the door from its hinges and carrying it on her back. When night time comes, they climb a tree and use the door to sleep on. It so happens that a band of robbers gather under that tree to divide their loot, and the foolish woman is so frightened that she cannot remain still above them. Eventually the door slips and bangs all the robbers on the head, inciting them out, so that all their treasure falls to the man, giving him reason to be grateful to his wife."
Broadly speaking, Ó hÓgáin defines folklore in general as "information preserved by word of mouth". So if a legend is a story that's told as if it is true, what is a myth? "There's a huge amount of confusion in this area," he admits. "One of the principal aims of writing this book is to clarify the issue of genre. Myth is notoriously difficult to define - an old story with deep meaning, which is a survival of religious thought and which may often have been connected to a ritual in its origin."
An example of this is Lugh of the Long Arm, originally a Celtic deity. The long arm of his name referred not to the actual length of his arm, but to the fact that his weapons, when shot, had a long range.
Ó hÓgáin first got interested in folklore as a child in his home town of Bruff, Co Limerick. "For us, folklore was the inherited tradition. It was all around us. We didn't call it 'folklore'." He points out that conversation has always been the basis for stories being passed on.
"A committee doesn't invent stories. Sociologically, when the population is sparse, the onus of speaking falls more heavily on each individual. The person then becomes more grandiloquent. Irish people have a tendency to ornament their narrative, and I think visitors to Ireland often notice how anecdotal our conversation is. And how a lot of stories come into our talk. It's not just spontaneous conversation; we tell stories as part of conversation. Anecdotes come down in conversation. Folklore would be an anecdote that would be preserved; folklore is a story told at a second remove, preserved and transmitted again."
So this is how stories get passed on, many of them changing subtly each time in the retelling, rather like Chinese whispers. It also accounts for the many different versions of the same story, whether it's a myth about Cúchulainn, or the story of the dead granny on the roof rack of the camper van. Everyone has the capacity to be a storyteller.
"Everyone is an artist in their own way," agrees Ó hÓgáin. "We notice now that often the people who preserve folklore best are people who have the least formal education. Perhaps it's because they have more room in their memory for things."
The Lore of Ireland; An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance by Dáithí Ó hÓgáin is published by Collins Press