The Seanchaidhe: Irish storytellers past and present

The continuity of Irish storytelling creates narrative bridges from the past through the present to the future…The legacy of the Irish storytelling tradition is inextricably linked to the Irish language. The gradual loss of that language and the subsequent loss of its native language storytellers have changed the tradition forever. Nonetheless, the tradition of storytelling is still living, even as tellers, their tales, venues and audiences change. (Warren 2008, n.p.)

The Irish Seanchaidhe (singular, Sean-chai), “bearers of old lore” and custodians of an indigenous non-literary tradition, have had a distinctive and integral role in Irish socio-cultural history, and despite the assaults on and compromises to its linguistic and textual traditions, the Seanchaidhe still exist today.

Poet Eavan Boland reflects:

…you only have to read Daniel Corkery’s Hidden Ireland (1925) to know that long after the bards were abandoned by history, they are remembered and quoted in Ireland. The drama of…