Reading from the past

JJ O’SHEA will be visiting 12 national schools around the county in the coming weeks for a heritage programme, to air on Clare FM.
Children will read manuscripts written by children of the 1930s on local folklore and customs. The documents they will read go back to a project carried out by the Folklore Commission in 1938.
“The Folklore Commission, as it was then, asked children from all over Ireland to speak to their parents, grandparents and elderly neighbours to gather all the local folklore in the area. Things like local stories, place names, local traditions, important festivals, local songs, everything of that nature. They were asked to write it all down just as they heard them so this all resulted in what’s called the Schools Manuscript Collection. All the manuscripts are available on microfilm,” said JJ.
“What I’m going to be doing is looking at the essays written in 12 different schools in Clare. The children will read from samples of the essays written by their forerunners in the schools in the ’30s. After reading, they will chat casually about the different themes and about the differences in their lives now compared to the children then.”
The schools in question are in Ennis, Shannon, Lahinch, Ennistymon, Clarecastle, Ballynacally, Sixmilebridge, Tulla, Broadford, Doolin, Moveen and Querrin.
JJ won a national award last year for a programme based on a similar idea, with pupils from a school in East Kerry reading from the manuscripts.
He says children enjoy taking part in the programme.
“It’s a way of engaging the children with their heritage in a way that makes it fun for them and of course they like the opportunity to be on the radio too. I’ll be going to Clare in the autumn term and I’ll be researching all of the essays. Over the course of the term, I’ll be going to all of the schools and recording with the children. I don’t have broadcast dates as yet, but I’d imagine it’d stretch across both sides of Christmas.”
The manuscripts evoke a very different Ireland and a lot of the customs mentioned don’t happen any more.
“Festival days, things like St Brigid’s Day and May Day, these were big, big events. Going to the Holy Well on May Day was a big event. A lot of these traditions have died out and things like matchmaking are gone.
“They talked of hedge schools as well, now the hedge schools wouldn’t have been in existence in the thirties, but the children’s elderly neighbours would have spoken in their youth to people who would have attended them. There was that link all the way back. In the ’30s, if the children were speaking to someone who was in their seventies or eighties, they would have been born in the middle of the 19th century. Those people would have known others who had memories from the late 1700s on.”