The first programme looks or listens for the the hearbeat of life - music, through the bicycle diaries of Séamus Ennis. The 23 year old cyclist from Finglas traversing the country collecting music, song and story for the Folklore Commission during the War years was a fit young man, in every sense of the word, by all accounts. He was known to have cycled from Dublin to Carna in a single day. The handsome young piper cut quite a dash among the young women of Conamara, Clare, Donegal and Muscraí at house dances and céilithe. Renowned for his unfailing ability to embrace the authentic, Séamus Ennis would go on to become the greatest piper of his generation. And if that wasn't enough, the body of music and song collected by him, has, like the man himself, become something of a national treasure. His field notes and diaries are works of art, a living source from which generations of musicians yet unborn will continue to draw inspiration as they, in their turn, journey to the well for water.
n the second programme of this new series 'Ó Bhéal go Bbéal' we look at the relationship between people, stories and the landscape we inhabit. We look at the legendary heroes that lived and passed through the majestic Cooley Mountains and surrounding countryside. One of the most important stories in Irish Mythology 'THE TÁIN' or ' Cattle raid of Cooley' happened on these mountains. Like any element of folklore we may never be able to prove it, but we can say for definite that this area of Co. Louth has a rich heritage of poetry, songs and stories. Climber and Cooley enthusiast Dermot Somers takes to the mountains to show us where he believes some of the Táin story occurred. Singer and writer Pádragín Ní Uallacháin pays homage to the rich musical tradition that existed in the area that has influenced and inspired her work as an artist. But this area is not just known for its myths and legends. In 2001 the area was left devastated over night by the outbreak of foot and mouth on the peninsula - according to local farmer, Henry Marron, the animal lore of generations was wiped out overnight We take to the beautiful mountains and valleys of Cooley to celebrate the multifaceted folklore of this rich landscape.
In 1937 the Irish Folklore Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, initiated a revolutionary scheme in which schoolchildren were encouraged to collect and document folklore and local history. Over a period of eighteen months some 100,000 children in 5,000 primary schools in the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State were encouraged to collect folklore material in their home districts. The topics about which the children were instructed to research and write included local history and monuments, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, songs, customs and beliefs, games and pastimes, traditional work practices and crafts, etc. The children collected this material mainly from their parents and grandparents and other older members of the local community or school district. Their work was committed to copybooks which were then collected by the commission. Now known as the Schools' Manuscript Collection, the scheme resulted in more than half a million manuscript pages of valuable material. Co. Cork was in particular heavily involved in the scheme and none more so than the national schools in the Muscraí Gaeltacht. Now in their mid eighties, four former students remember vividly their time spent collecting the folklore from their grandparents, they recount the days of their youth, their hopes and dreams and how their lives finally turned out. They are shown their copybooks for the first time since 1938 with some surprising results. Cristóir Ó Tuama originally from Balleyvourney, Co. Cork remembers sitting down at night beside his grandmothers bed and painstakingly writing down her stories, prayers and proverbs. Stories that had been passed down through the generations. Crstóir's grandmother refused to talk about the famine because she had vivid memories of the collective shame and trauma that people in the locality had felt when she was a young girl. Cristóir's classmate Donal O Rio