Some Stray Folklore Notes

This article uses ideas developed in the philosophy of science to examine two concepts of culture used in contemporary folkloristics. One of them appears mainly in the context of archival work, while the other occurs chiefly in discussions on themes such as identity politics and ethnic minorities. The main difference between the two concepts is that one is used when formulating ‘substantial theories’ related to ‘kinds’, whereas the other is a bone of contention in ongoing debates on the level of ‘grand theories’. Theoretical tools developed in earlier cultural research are taken into use in contemporary cultural movements, and this affects theoretical debates on the level of grand theories.     

The Heroic Outlaw in Irish Folklore and Popular Literature

As a symbolic figure in Irish folklore and popular literature, the outlaw embodies folk morality in conflict with the self-interest and inequity of the state. In the aftermath of British colonisation, the Irish outlaw is represented as more than a criminal. He provides a hero through whom ordinary Irishmen and women can vicariously enjoy brief victories, and imagine their collective dignity in the midst of political defeat and its consequences. Legends, ballads and chapbooks portraying the outlaw are the products of hard-pressed people representing themselves to themselves, reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses, and contemplating issues of morality and justice.     

Memory and Legend: Recollections of Penal Times in Irish Folklore

Stories of priests being hunted down and murdered at Mass Rocks by priest-catchers and soldiers during the Penal era in Ireland persist to the present day. Using a tripartite taxonomy of memory, this article explores the reasons why these images continue to dominate and reflect the persecuted nature of Catholicism.     

民俗词语刍议

民俗词语是用来指称民俗仪式及其相关事象的词语。对民俗词语进行调查和研究,近期引起了学者的注意。笔者拟在前贤研究的基础上,以自己家乡安徽宿松方言中有关婚嫁和丧葬的民俗词语为例,谈谈个人对这方面的认识。     

Approaching a folklore archive: the Irish Folklore Commission and the memory of the Great Famine

Using the Irish Folklore Commission's centenary survey of local accounts of the Great Famine (1845–50), this article posits a tripartite taxonomy of collective memory: the “global,” the “popular” and the “local.” Global memory was structured by meta‐narratives, the explanatory accounts of the Famine derived from the Catholic Church and nationalist political organisations. Local memory dealt with named individuals and places. The intermediate level of popular memory drew on both the local and the global (although the Church's interpretation of the famine had proved more acceptable among the rural, landowning farmers who made up the majority of the Commission's informants), but also on folk narrative tradition to create a coherent system of representation in which motifs were replicated over a large area (and over time).