Steve Roud is a Librarian, folklore scholar and creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains upwards of 750,000 entries to around 45,000 English language folk songs, as found in books, recordings, manuscripts and other sources the world over. His index, and ‘Roud Numbers’ (a numbering system employed to identify the same song across many different titles) are widely acclaimed for the scope, breadth, depth and impact. Steve worked as a local studies Librarian in the London Borough of Croydon, and also served as Honorary Librarian for the Folklore Society for eighteen years. He has published books on calendar custom, popular tradition, folk belief, London lore, children’s games, and folk drama. In 2004, he was the winner of the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. In 2009, he was one of five people to be awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This award recognises "those who have made unique or outstanding contributions to the art or science of folk dance, music or song, and/or those who have given exceptional support in furthering the aims of the Society”. For four years now, Steve has been visiting the NFC, parsing through our manuscript and book, broadside and pamphlet collections for entries to add to his index. He is an incredibly gifted, meticulous and generous scholar, who is always glad to share his expertise with us, particularly in discussion around the inherent problems in the description, cataloguing and indexing of folklore materials. It was an honour, and a great pleasure to host Steve at the NFC recently, and during his visit (for our collective benefit) I subjected him to a 75 minute interview, in which we discussed his index, the problems inherent in describing folk song, approaches to the cataloguing of folklore, conducting research in folklore archives, and the problems inherent in the digitisation of folklore records and some scholarly critique of the NFC’s online platform Dúchas.ie.
As a health warning for this episode - listeners (or viewers!) hoping to listen to scores of lovely ballads will be sorely disappointed, as our discussion essentially consists of nerding out about folklore indexes for over an hour.
Steve’s Folk Song Index can be found here, at the website of the Vaughan William’s Memorial Library: https://www.efdss.org/vwml-catalogues-and-indexes/vwml-help/roud-indexes-help
For a wonderful talk of Steve’s at the Library of Congress, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVTMoN4Arvo
My thanks especially to Veronica, Andrew and Dominic in UCD Communications, for their support of the podcast, and for filming this episode!
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Steve Roud is a Librarian, folklore scholar and creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains upwards of 750,000 entries to around 45,000 English language folk songs, as found in books, recordings, manuscripts and other sources the world over. His index, and ‘Roud Numbers’ (a numbering system employed to identify the same song across many different titles) are widely acclaimed for the scope, breadth, depth and impact. Steve worked as a local studies Librarian in the London Borough of Croydon, and also served as Honorary Librarian for the Folklore Society for eighteen years. He has published books on calendar custom, popular tradition, folk belief, London lore, children’s games, and folk drama. In 2004, he was the winner of the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. In 2009, he was one of five people to be awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This award recognises "those who have made unique or outstanding contributions to the art or science of folk dance, music or song, and/or those who have given exceptional support in furthering the aims of the Society”. For four years now, Steve has been visiting the NFC, parsing through our manuscript and book, broadside and pamphlet collections for entries to add to his index. He is an incredibly gifted, meticulous and generous scholar, who is always glad to share his expertise with us, particularly in discussion around the inherent problems in the description, cataloguing and indexing of folklore materials. It was an honour, and a great pleasure to host Steve at the NFC recently, and during his visit (for our collective benefit) I subjected him to a 75 minute interview, in which we discussed his index, the problems inherent in describing folk song, approaches to the cataloguing of folklore, conducting research in folklore archives, and the problems inherent in the digitisation of folklore records and some scholarly critique of the NFC’s online platform Dúchas.ie.
As a health warning for this episode - listeners (or viewers!) hoping to listen to scores of lovely ballads will be sorely disappointed, as our discussion essentially consists of nerding out about folklore indexes for over an hour.
Steve’s Folk Song Index can be found here, at the website of the Vaughan William’s Memorial Library: https://www.efdss.org/vwml-catalogues-and-indexes/vwml-help/roud-indexes-help
For a wonderful talk of Steve’s at the Library of Congress, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVTMoN4Arvo
My thanks especially to Veronica, Andrew and Dominic in UCD Communications, for their support of the podcast, and for filming this episode!
Blúiríní Béaloidis 37: Peig Sayers (with Dr. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne & Dr. Pádraig Ó Héalaí)
Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast
1 hour 1 minute 15 seconds
3 years ago
Blúiríní Béaloidis 37: Peig Sayers (with Dr. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne & Dr. Pádraig Ó Héalaí)
"Long as the day is, night comes, and alas, the night is coming for me too... Someone else will have pastime out of my work when I'm gone on the way of truth. A person here and a person there will say, maybe, 'Who was that Peig Sayers?' but poor Peig will be the length of their shout from them. This green bench where she used to do the studying will be a domicile for the birds of the wilderness, and the little house where she used to eat and drink, it's unlikely there'll be a trace of it there."
For this episode of Blúiríní, instead of focusing on one aspect of tradition, we for the first time dedicate our explorations to one individual; Mairéad ‘Peig’ Sayers who, by her artistry and mastery as a storyteller in the oral tradition, skilfully managed to express the wisdom of the many in the wit of the few, and yet whose printed autobiographies (as Irene Lucchitti notes in an article in Folklore and Modern Irish writing) ‘experienced a decline in reputation, suffering critical disdain and schoolyard ridicule in equal measure’. Now, nearly sixty-five years after her death, we hope to provide a platform through which her tales might find a new audience, one which, it is hoped, may find in her a source of inspiration and insight.
For episode 37 of Blúiríní, I was honoured to have been joined by Dr. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Dr. Pádraig Ó Héalaí, in the beautiful surrounds of the Museum of Literature Ireland and for the first time in front of a live studio audience - something which was a great pleasure for me personally! Thanks to my guests Éilís and Pádraig, to our friends at MoLI for taking such good care of us on the night and especially to all who came along in person and made the evening so pleasant!
This podcast also marks the launch of Thar Bealach Isteach / Into the Island, a nine month collaborative exhibition between MoLI and the NFC, which looks at Peig Sayers and the Blasket Island storytelling tradition. See moli.ie for details.
Blúiríní Béaloidis 37 is online now, I hope you'll join Pádraig, Éilís and I as we ask 'who was that Peig Sayers'?
Blúiríní Béaloidis Folklore Podcast
Steve Roud is a Librarian, folklore scholar and creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains upwards of 750,000 entries to around 45,000 English language folk songs, as found in books, recordings, manuscripts and other sources the world over. His index, and ‘Roud Numbers’ (a numbering system employed to identify the same song across many different titles) are widely acclaimed for the scope, breadth, depth and impact. Steve worked as a local studies Librarian in the London Borough of Croydon, and also served as Honorary Librarian for the Folklore Society for eighteen years. He has published books on calendar custom, popular tradition, folk belief, London lore, children’s games, and folk drama. In 2004, he was the winner of the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. In 2009, he was one of five people to be awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This award recognises "those who have made unique or outstanding contributions to the art or science of folk dance, music or song, and/or those who have given exceptional support in furthering the aims of the Society”. For four years now, Steve has been visiting the NFC, parsing through our manuscript and book, broadside and pamphlet collections for entries to add to his index. He is an incredibly gifted, meticulous and generous scholar, who is always glad to share his expertise with us, particularly in discussion around the inherent problems in the description, cataloguing and indexing of folklore materials. It was an honour, and a great pleasure to host Steve at the NFC recently, and during his visit (for our collective benefit) I subjected him to a 75 minute interview, in which we discussed his index, the problems inherent in describing folk song, approaches to the cataloguing of folklore, conducting research in folklore archives, and the problems inherent in the digitisation of folklore records and some scholarly critique of the NFC’s online platform Dúchas.ie.
As a health warning for this episode - listeners (or viewers!) hoping to listen to scores of lovely ballads will be sorely disappointed, as our discussion essentially consists of nerding out about folklore indexes for over an hour.
Steve’s Folk Song Index can be found here, at the website of the Vaughan William’s Memorial Library: https://www.efdss.org/vwml-catalogues-and-indexes/vwml-help/roud-indexes-help
For a wonderful talk of Steve’s at the Library of Congress, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVTMoN4Arvo
My thanks especially to Veronica, Andrew and Dominic in UCD Communications, for their support of the podcast, and for filming this episode!
