Seanchai Storytelling

A seanchai was the keeper of seanchas - lore, genealogy, local history, place-name explanation - as distinct from a sgealai, who told the long hero tales. Both worked at the fireside in a house where neighbours gathered, and the repertoire was enormous: some collected storytellers had hundreds of tales in memory, told in sessions running for hours. The tradition was collapsing by the early twentieth century, and the Irish Folklore Commission, founded in 1935, sent collectors with recording equipment into the Irish-speaking districts to take down what remained. The result, the National Folklore Collection at UCD, is among the largest oral archives in the world - millions of pages, including the Schools Collection of 1937 and 1938, where children across the country wrote down what their grandparents told them, now digitised and searchable online. Live storytelling continues at festivals and in some pubs, and Cape Clear holds one in September.

What you actually see

• The distinction - seanchai for lore and genealogy, sgealai for hero tales.
• The Folklore Collection - millions of pages recorded from the 1930s onward.
• The Schools Collection - children's transcriptions from 1937 and 1938, now online.
• The live tradition - festivals and sessions, including Cape Clear in September.

When to go

Any time; storytelling festivals cluster in autumn and winter, which is the traditional season. The Schools Collection is searchable online at any hour.

Honest expectations

The fireside tradition in its original form is gone - what exists is festival performance and the archive. Much of the archive is in Irish. Live events are irregular and thinly advertised outside their localities.

Nearby

The National Folklore Collection is at UCD in Dublin; Cape Clear's festival is off West Cork.