Category: folklore
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Blessed Solstice.
The sun was shining until almost 11 pm in Dublin, leading the way to a nearly full moon. Excited to finally share this city with my love. ♥️
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Material Culture: Wrack/Seaweed Harvest & Seabird Fowling
Seaweed harvesting and seabird fowling were significant economic and food provision strategies along the coasts and small islands of Ireland and Scotland into the 20th century, which have been disrupted for various reasons. Coastal farmers relied primarily on the sea for survival due to limited arable land, which is supplemented…
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Material Culture: Transhumance – Booley & Shieling
Transhumance “is the seasonal movement of people and livestock from one environmental context to another” and buaile[ing] or the shieling system are forms of “seasonal pastoralism” common in Gaelic countries into the 20th century as a vernacular response to the landscape that in turn informed lifeways and material culture (Costello…
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Material Culture: Sod & Thatch
Turf or sod were used for seasonal housing, like transhumance shelters or semi-permanent housing for landless labourers, who worked communal lands in exchange for rent Ó Reilly 2011). These structures, which often lacked foundations, did not hold up like stone homes but ‘ethnography indicates a highly developed understanding of natural…
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Material Culture: West Room, Shrine & Foundation Sacrifices
A common feature in Irish vernacular architecture is the west room, a parlour in the west of the house, opposite the hearth. This room, which was not often utilised, contained well-honed furniture, religious items, representations of deceased and emigrated relations and pieces symbolising important rites of passage (Arensberg 1959). This…
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Fairy Belief for Approaching Difficult Aspects of Irish Society
TW: vague references to domestic abuse, sexual assault, infant death, death in childbirth and torture.
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Functions of Holy Well Belief and Practice
Holy wells are water sources associated with past or present religious devotion. They may be simple springs or have complex landscapes, including a shelter, a rag tree, an adjacent mass rock, and/or various other natural or man-made features, which serve as stations for ritual interaction. These features and the wells…
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Bealtaine Fire Festival at Hill of Uisneach – Night
As the Cailleach passes the torch to Éiru and one fire becomes all fires…
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Bealtaine Fire Festival at Hill of Uisneach – Day
such a beautiful, calming and inspiring place and time.
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Blessed Bealtaine
May Eve Lore from dúchas.ie NFC 220: 246 On May Eve some people put up a quicken berry branch on the gates and doors to keep the fairies away. More old people wouldn’t like to give a drop of milk away on May Day. They say it would be unlucky.…
Bridging Appalachia 