RT Generic
T1 Folklore Schools Games
A1 National Folklore Collection
A1 Furey, Áine
NO Scope and Content: The project seeks to build on the earlier work of the Irish Folklore Commission in collecting the Schools’ Survey in 1937-38. As this project was necessarily far smaller in scope, it was decided to focus on the collection of folklore, and specifically games, from school children in seven schools within the greater Dublin area. The method of recording the material duplicated that of the 1937-38 survey, in that school children handwrote the information in copybooks. The mediation was different; while the original Schools’ Survey was mediated directly through each teacher, for this project Áine Furey visited each school participating in the survey to explain folklore in general, and this project in particular, to each participating class. Intervening advances in technology also enabled this project to make audio recordings of each school and so preserve, in a very accessible way, the children’s descriptions and enactments of the games they play. Once teachers and schools had consented to participate in the survey, Áine Furey visited each school. She showed the children examples of the 1937-38 Schools’ Collection from UCD’s National Folklore Collection (where possible she used a manuscript or copy relevant to that particular school). She discussed games in detail and also covered other aspects of folklore. Each child was given their own blank copybook and a week within which to write about games they played (as well as other folklore issues if they wished). All the copybooks were collected after a week and the children discussed the work they had collected and were then recorded (using an Edirol recorder) describing, singing or playing the games about which they had written. The research collection for this project makes available a sample of relevant material from the 1937-38 Schools’ Survey as well as the audio recordings and some digitised images from the copybooks collected.
AN uri:info:fedora/ivrla:33426
UL http://hdl.handle.net/:10151/EAD_0000049_IF
LK //digital.ucd.ie/?getObject=ivrla:33426
SL UCD Library, University College Dublin
LL Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland