'Dead Clay and Living Clay': Máirtín Ó Cadhain's criticisms of the work of the Irish Folklore Commission

Abstract

In Ireland the creation of one of the world’s largest collections of oral traditions by the Irish Folklore Commission (1935−70) was intimately bound up with the declining fortunes of the Irish language as a spoken vernacular and the young independent Irish state’s efforts to revive that language. This paper deals not with the Trojan achievements of the Commission, but with certain criticisms of its work levelled against it by someone with impeccable Irish-language credentials and someone who was also steeped in the Irish-language oral tradition since childhood; namely the creative writer and intellectual Máirtín Ó Cadhain. In this paper I will outline some of Ó Cadhain’s criticisms of the work of the Irish Folklore Commission as well as place them in context.