Podcasts about folklore fragments

Welcome February 2022! This month we're thinking about Imbolc and St Brigid's Day, Anglo Saxon Aecerbots and much more, plus your usual sun and moon times.

Jonny Dillon is from Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland. He works as an archivist at the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, is a research editor for the Collection's online platform Dúchas.ie, produces and hosts the Collection's podcast Blúiríní Béaloidis (Folklore Fragments) and is Honorary Treasurer to the Folklore of Ireland Society. He releases instrumental acoustic guitar music under his own name, and produces records of electronic music on analogue synthesisers and drum machines under the pseudonym of 'Automatic Tasty'." In this episode, we discuss so many things including how Walt Disney visited the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin before he made Darby O'Gill and the Little People https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052722/ we discuss the Banshee, the Irish underworld, sweat lodges, the integration of science, the sacred and mythology, the changes in Irish culture, philosophy, conflict, psychedelics, fairy forts, music, Irish language and much more...... Links to pursue    Short videos Fairy Forts: A great insight into Fairy Forts in Ireland. This place is not far from where I grew up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyuXi_jsPvg This video is entertaining and highly recommended.   Owneygat Cave Ireland https://youtu.be/ZB0vottAVWw   In Honour of Tradition - Jonny Dillon The past may be forgotten but it does not die, for the voice of the past is present, and speaks to us today. In the disordered confusion of the modern age this voice is often lost to us, but those who are still and who strain to listen, will hear it as it echoes to us through Time, for the voice of Tradition is never silent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBI97Z0iud4   Additional audio material we discussed Uberboyo YouTube channel with a series of lectures on Aion https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvohnwo84dIluwLTzNB9xncnfg5SiadB0   The Almanac of Ireland Podcast https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32164-the-almanac-of-ireland/   Folklore Fragments podcast on fairy forts: In fields, valleys, and quiet places the country over can be found countless earthwork mounds, cairns, tumuli, and other signs of early human habitation in Ireland. These sites often garnered supernatural associations in the folk tradition, is commonly understood as the abodes of 'Na Daoine Maithe' (The Good People) or fairies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2OjysP7ids   A Week in Darkness: The Purest Medicine, Aubrey Marcus Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewq7r1s535c   People we discussed René Descartes 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650 was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes   Heraclitus: A Greek philosopher who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded a distinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/   Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co http://www.gordonwasson.com/   Books The Matter with Things ~ Iain McGilchrist Volume I and II here https://channelmcgilchrist.com/the-matter-with-things/   The Banshee The Irish Supernatural Death-messenger https://www.bookdepository.com/Banshee-Patricia-Lysaght/9780862784904   Irish Wake Amusementshttps://www.amazon.com/Irish-Wake-Amusements-Sean-Suilleabhain/dp/1856351734   Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age https://www.amazon.com.au/Nihilism-Root-Revolution-Modern-Age/dp/1887904069   Finite and Infinite Games https://www.amazon.com.au/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713>   The Crisis of the Modern World https://www.amazon.com.au/Crisis-Modern-World-Rene-Guenon/dp/0900588241>   The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-reign-of-quantity-and-the-signs-of-the-times-rene-guenon/book/9780900588686.html>   Places or items we discussed Newgrange is a Stone Age (Neolithic) monument in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, it is the jewel in the crown of Ireland's Ancient East. Newgrange was constructed about 5,200 years ago (3,200 B.C.) which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. https://www.newgrange.com/   Axial Age (also Axis Age) is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in the sense of a “pivotal age”, characterizing the period of ancient history from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. https://slife.org/axial-age/   Irish Sweathouses are small, rare, beehive-shaped, corbelled structures of fieldstones, rarely more than 2 metres in external height and diameter, with very small "creep" entrances which may have been blocked by clothing, or by temporary doors of peat-turves, or whatever came to hand. Most of those which survive could not have accommodated more than three or four sweaters. They resemble the small 'caves', built into banks, in which many Irish natives were reported to live in the seventeenth century http://irishmegaliths.org.uk/sweathouses.htm   Contact Jonny and follow his work The Folklore of Ireland Society https://www.ucd.ie/irishfolklore/en/folkloresociety/ and at https://www.duchas.ie/en nationalfolklorecollection on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nationalfolklorecollection/   Bluiríní Béaloidis is the podcast from The National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, and is a platform to explore Irish and wider European folk tradition across an array of subject areas and topics. Host Jonny Dillon hopes this tour through the folklore furrow will appeal to those who wish to learn about the richness and depth of their traditional cultural inheritance; that knowledge and understanding of our past might inform our present and guide our future. https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au  for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides. Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au   or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au    

This episode I chat with Jonny Dillon, an archivist at the Irish National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin. We discuss the history of the Folklore Collection, his podcast, Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments, and the deep need for folk tradition in modern life. The Irish National Folklore Collection is one of the largest folklore collections in Europe, and has just this month been ascribed to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast The National Folklore Collection: https://www.ucd.ie/irishfolklore/en/ Music: Intro: "Forest March" by Sylvia Woods "Amhráin na Trá Báine" by Fiachra O'Regan "Aisling Gheal" by Fiachra O'Regan "An Leanbh Sí" by Fiachra O'Regan Image: An Irish family outside thatched cottage: Eason Photographic Collection, National Library of Ireland

The arrival of the harvest was for our forebears a time of great celebration, for it marked the point at which the lean months of June and 'Hungry July' (when the year's stores were traditionally at their lowest), gave way to a period of profusion and plenty. In this month's edition of Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments, your hosts Jonny Dillon and Claire Doohan take to the fields to consider the harvest in tradition, discussing hilltop celebrations, naked horse-swimming races and the spirit of the crops itself, which appears all over Europe, in the form of a female nature spirit known broadly as the 'Corn Mother', as well as being symbolically represented by several animals. Join us then, as we ring in the harvest season, that we might enjoy and partake of its fruits and give thanks to the earth from which they have sprung; the earth to which we return harvest after harvest, generation after generation, unceasingly, and without end. * * * * * Visit duchas.ie (the project to digitise the holdings of the National Folklore Collection) to explore material relating to the harvest in traditon. Harvest: http://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=harvest&t=CbesStory Sheaf Customs: http://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=sheaf&t=CbesStory An introductory address by Jonny Dillon of the Folklore of Ireland Society, to open 'Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair'; a night of music, song, storytelling and dance pertaining to the harvest in Irish tradition, which was held in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral, on the night of Friday the 29th of September 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JlOHTiVoww The closing set to 'Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair' - a night of traditional music, song, dance and storytelling from Irish tradition, all of which pertained to the theme of the harvest, and which was held in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral on the night of Friday the 29th of September 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99pRom_8IcU Harvest Knot Images: https://www.google.ie/search?q=Harvest+Knot&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit16LVn6zVAhUEBsAKHU9FBz8Q_AUICigB&biw=1504&bih=899 Last Sheaf Images: https://www.google.ie/search?client=safari&rls=en&biw=1504&bih=899&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Last+Sheaf&oq=Last+Sheaf&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i24k1.24868.26426.0.26555.10.10.0.0.0.0.149.657.9j1.10.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.10.656...0j0i10k1j0i10i24k1.IDmKFxUZSmI The image used for this podcast shows the process of reaping and binding (as carried out by two particularly diligent young ladies!) in Co. Louth, 1946.

Since the earliest times, Man has sought to come to terms with the unknown powers and forces that act upon life and wellbeing. It is natural therefore, that our forebears looked to the natural world, and to the heavens, for interpretable signs and symbols by which they could increase well being and banish misfortune. The Moon has long been our old companion, and has gazed down silently upon all that has passed here on earth since time immemorial. Similarly, in our looking beyond ourselves to the heavens, we have long looked to the Moon for guidance and blessing. It will come as no surprise then, that there should exist so great a body of folk belief and custom in Irish (and broader European) tradition regarding this luminary, some of which is explored in this episode of Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments by Claire Doohan and Jonny Dillon. From the idea that the moon is a place of habitation for banished spirits, to its influence on human affairs, in this edition of Blúiríní Béaloidis we look to the heavens and bid 'greeting to you new moon, kindly jewel of guidance!' For further information on this topic, visit duchas.ie, the project to digitise the National Folklore Collection. The Moon (English) - http://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=MOON An Ghealach (Gaeilge) - http://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=ghealach&t=CbesStory

The first of May is marked in Ireland (and across Europe more broadly), as a day on which the summer is welcomed in; where garlands of flowers decorate the houses, in which young women of the locality bring cattle up to higher summer pastures to graze, in which the community re-asserts its boundaries, and the family unit aims to garner for itself prosperity and good luck for the coming summer. In this edition of Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments, hosts Claire Doohan and Jonny Dillon discuss some of the traditions and customs popularly observed at this time; from hiring fairs and Booleying, to shapeshifting witches and May altars. For now, rough winter has gone, and flowers cover the world - therefore we bid you welcome, noble summer! This episode can be downloaded by clicking the '...' icon above.