Friday 2 October 2015

Duchas.ie adds Limerick stories and a new text search

http://www.duchas.ie/en
The National Folklore Collection's free website, Duchas.ie, has had a couple of important updates.

Firstly, it has added manuscripts written by pupils at schools in County Limerick.

Part of the Schools Collection, the new material comprises stories collected from 145 Limerick schools under a project run across the 26 counties of the Irish Free State in 1937–39. The pupils collected stories – topics included folk legends, weather lore, local history, proverbs, pastimes, trades and crafts – from their local communities, and recorded the names of their informants, often grandparents or older members of their family or neighbours.

The digitisation project now has stories online from 11 counties: Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick, Mayo, Sligo, Tipperary, and Waterford.

The team is currently working on adding County Kilkenny's collection.

A second update has seen the introduction of a 'text search' facility. This allows you to search for stories including a particular name or word. So, if you want to find out about hens, mermaids, thatch, St Patrick... the text search will return a list of stories, including many that have been transcribed from Gaeilge.