ABSTRACT
One of the more exciting developments in the study of early modern Ireland over the last twenty years has been a turn toward (or perhaps a return to) interdisciplinarity. History, literature, archaeology, and historical geography have converged to deepen our understanding of the transformative period from 1500 to 1700. Yet for all this, scholars of early modern Ireland, with a couple of notable exceptions, remain hesitant to engage on any deep level with folklore, or the oral and written tales and proverbs, superstitions and riddles, material artifacts and culture which provide clues into an otherwise elusive past. 2 This lacuna is disappointing, given the pioneering studies of Guy Beiner, who not only advocated for the use of folklore in Irish history, but provided a sophisticated methodology for doing so. It is true that early modern scholars might pay heed to the folkloric by quoting from a few quaint and colorful tales, though they do so only in a supplementary way, as illustrative (or as Gramsci once put it, ‘picturesque’) matter; folklore in general may be thought important for social history or popular culture studies, though it goes ignored with regard to political, literary, or other ‘elite’ expressions which can very much be informed by popular oral traditions, however indirectly. 3 Meanwhile, the highly sophisticated and theoretically rich field of folkloristics tends to be neglected altogether—sometimes to historians’ embarrassment. Peter Burke once famously recalled an episode from an academic conference in the 1970s, in which the great historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie offered what he thought was a new approach to folktales. Unfortunately, Le Roy Ladurie was ‘gently’, though devastatingly, informed by a Scandinavian scholar in the audience that the ‘new approach’ was ‘effectively a revival of the methods of the Finnish historical-geographical school’, which had been in existence for decades. 4
