Along the winding road that leads to the port town of Dingle, Ireland, a man named John sits on a bank overlooking a swirl of sea. The waves roar in anticipation of the tale he is about to tell. But first, a tune for us on his tin whistle. The wind, brisk and unrelenting, attempts to alter his melody. He leans in to finish his song, then sets his instrument to the side and begins the story of a boy who struggled in school, longing to be out in the world.
Along with the rolling hills that surround us, I listen as the whistling wind, like time itself, threatens to whisk his tale away into a realm of forgotten stories.
Memories pour from John—I realize he is the boy in the story—and his days come to life. His stories drift between the supernatural realm of the banshee and the fairies, to his daily reality playing songs among the surf, the nature of Ireland shaping his world. He’s gathered an audience now, his cadence and enthusiasm building a new world around us.
He ends his tale with a bit of wisdom that he says continues to guide him well: “Listen to other folks, but take only the good bits for yourself. Leave the rest.”
I never did catch more than his first name, but John’s stories remain with me years after that blustery day.
*****
Long have Irish myths and legends been carried by storytellers. The perseverance of the Irish people in maintaining their language, history, and values created a world of oral tradition filled with both mythical adventures and practical wisdom. Past listeners eagerly awaited an escape into the world of a folktale, a welcome distraction from the chores of farm life or the lingering darkness of winter nights.
Today, technology threatens to steal the reverence for traditional storytelling in Ireland, with tellers competing against video screens for the minds of audiences. Yet the craft persists, reconnecting audiences to age-old tales twisted to fit a modern world. Folklore is precious, storyteller Liz Weir describes from the Glens of Antrim, in Northern Ireland. There is a firmness evident in her soft voice.
“But I don’t think folklore is something that stays static,” she continues. “Stories change as people change. I am always putting parts of myself into stories.”
Accompanying Weir to our Zoom interview is her cat, Ginger Baker, named for the English drummer. As he swishes his tail back and forth, Weir describes that she was a shy girl who had to learn to tell stories. “Although everyone has stories to tell, not everyone knows how to tell them. That’s why I do so much training, trying to give people confidence.” As I mention the other professional Irish storytellers I’ve met, she nods, punctuating each passing name with remarks about their talent or an anecdote about how they connected through workshops she facilitates in the verdant Glens of Antrim.
It appears there’s a web of Irish storytellers that I stepped right into, linked through performances, training, and devotion to their culture. Weir points me along the thread leading to Jack Lynch, a Dublin-based scéalaí (“storyteller” in Gaelic).
On my computer screen, I watch Lynch as he turns around the room, looking at the fireplace and the door, but both only exist in the realm of his tale. He picks up a ball, invisible to the audience, until his descriptions begin to paint it gold. As Lynch himself says, tellers must learn to wear their stories like jackets, to get comfortable in them.
Lynch leans back in his wooden chair and sips his tea. He notes that Irish storytelling stretches back to the seanchaithe (shan-uh-kee), masters in the art of remembrance. “They [began as] custodians of local genealogy. They stored the meaning of place names and were skilled tellers of folklore, ancient myths, legends, and wonder tales.”
Seanchaithe were highly respected, originally serving the heads of Gaelic ruling families by reciting their ancestral trees from memory amid a dispute. During the English destruction of Celtic culture in the sixteenth century, Gaelic chiefs surrendered to the crown, and the knowledge of these individuals became obsolete.
Lynch continues, explaining how the seanchaithe became “immensely learned local historians and storytellers, knitted into and recognized in their local communities.” True seanchaithe remain few and far between, but storytellers pick up where they leave off.
Tellers took to the road, becoming traveling entertainers. In exchange for bed and board, they would ward away the creeping darkness with the light of their tales.
“Our form of entertainment was always our imaginations,” explains singer and storyteller Helena Byrne, her dark hair contrasting her bright voice and lively expression. “Ireland was always a very poor country. Sitting at the fireside, inviting neighbors and friends over, sharing stories and singing songs—that was our Netflix.”
Still in her thirties, Byrne is young for a storyteller yet truly understands the importance of building identity and connection through story.
Traveling tellers also carried news, operating as vessels of gossip and current events. People walked miles to the houses where they would perform, listening under rushlights and above steaming cups of tea. These gatherings have now faded, along with the wandering lifestyle. Homes have been exchanged for pubs and schools, while storytellers are now for hire, traveling between scheduled performances and receiving payment for their work.
Modern storytellers continuously adapt to an ever-developing world saturated with visual media. “You have modernization bringing us in [a direction of lesser contact], while people are realizing, for their wellbeing, that we need storytelling,” Byrne describes.
True storytelling is a time-honored art, and, after meeting these storytellers, I now realize it is not a dying one. They ensure that old lifeways live on through new voices, involving both their elders and the youth in their practice.
Every storyteller starts as a listener, and good listeners find good stories. In their search, they often call on Irish elders. “You have to have a very particular kind of listening— a loving kind of listening,” Lynch says. Storytellers become a presence in the lives of older generations by repeatedly visiting, and their repertoire becomes a collection of voices that immortalize events, beliefs, and traditions.
In collecting local lore, Byrne is often surprised by what residents in elderly care facilities share. When she asked a group about growing up in Dun Laoghaire, a coastal town in County Dublin, she expected stories of the lovely dance halls, where husband and wife would meet. “But what they mainly talked about was the fact that their local stores were gone. Their fishmonger, their vegetable shop, where they would go every day, have a little conversation and get all the gossip.” Small talk in Ireland is a form of story and connection that cannot be underestimated. In the exchange of brief stories, of dealings with the weather or with neighbors, these conversations become an acknowledgment of shared experience.
“In Ireland, we don’t tend to talk deeply about ourselves,” Weir explains. “We like the belief in magic and fairies instead. I am trying to get people to work with folktales because they can go under doors and through keyholes. They can make messages very subtly.”
Colin Urwin, a storyteller and songwriter who trained with Weir in her workshops, translates his experiences of the world into folktales and lyrics.
Urwin builds original stories that possess the same atmosphere and wonder as classic tales. Along with other storytellers, who mold stories from their own experiences, he is creating a new generation of folktales that speak to new ways of living. A good example is his tune “Way the Lockdown Goes,” chronicling life in the pandemic. Simultaneously, he keeps his repertoire grounded in the historical landscape of his native Glens of Antrim. “There is a story under every stone,” he says, grinning. “It relates to every crinkle in the landscape, every hill, every river. Everything is covered by these stories.” During performances at modern events, ancient folklore mingles among modern narratives.
The storytellers know the importance of their audiences. The most powerful moments for Byrne are looking into people’s eyes while she tells her stories. “There is no fourth wall. I can see their facial expressions changing with the story.”
Reading the mood of the room, Urwin may alter the conclusion of his stories to hand audiences a happy ending when they need one. Lynch may choose stories to tell according to the places that his listeners grew up, hoping to deliver them back to their childhoods. Byrne prefers never to explain the psychology behind a tale, finding the real impact lies in a lingering mystique.
“I never know what I am going to do before I go on stage,” Urwin shares. “I might have half an idea, but I like to keep my options open. I like to see the whites of their eyes, as it were.”
“That is what folklore allows: the performer recognizes what the audience needs, you bond, you have these shared traditions. People love feeling like they belong,” Kelly Fitzgerald explains. As head of University College Dublin’s School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore, she studies the function of Irish folktales. Modern storytellers seem to harness the subversive qualities of their stories, she explains, using their craft to promote understanding and question the values of our increasingly technological society.
“How pompous it is that humans believe science has given us all the answers!” Fitzgerald exclaims, her American accent tinged with the lilt of the Irish brogue. She stresses, “If you see other things as being important, you are seen as being off in fairyland, not taken seriously. We must recognize [that] creativity, the imagination [are] core to the human existence.” Encouraged by my furious nodding, she continues: “The internet is all new and flashy, but I still see the same old tales being told again and again.”
Irish folklore, especially surrounding the Otherworld, exists uneasily in an era eager to discredit its mystery. “Our ancestors did not have the benefit of Google or David Attenborough,” Urwin notes. “They had to make sense of these mountains, forests, seas. They had to make sense of tragedies.” Yet with explanations for most of these phenomena in the modern day, we continually turn to stories for comfort and wonder.
Urwin chuckles when I ask if he believes in the fairies. But he explains that the creatures born by the folklore of his ancestors are still very real for some of the Irish population. Ladies still come up to him after a gig and whisper that they saw one of the “wee folk” when they were just a girl. People frequently tell Weir they heard the chilling wail of the banshee.
“We have these amazing legends of Cu Chulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhaill, these warriors, but there is an understanding that they are fictional,” Byrne says. “Our folklore, it is very difficult to say whether it is fact or fiction.” It is no matter if the fairies are real or not; either way, they are respected. Even those who claim the Otherworld to be false will not touch a fairy tree for fear of a head of white hair—or worse—upon disturbing it.
The days of roaming Ireland with a pocket full of folktales are surely gone. But the stories themselves are every bit as alive as they once were, evolving as they move through generations into novels, movies, and animations like The Secret of Kells. The people of Ireland sustain them, knowing that storytelling shapes worldviews, identities, and communities alike.
Lynch, reflecting on the value of his profession in connecting with audiences, summarizes it well: “Stories aren’t a magic potion for healing, but you want people to know that they are recognized.”
The same technology undermining traditional storytelling is also helping ensure its future. Many tellers embrace the worldwide connections that online events foster. Devices like the StoryDome even allow for an immersive storytelling experience by projecting environments, animations, and film around the audience.
Several organizations exist to connect tellers around the nation, including the Storytellers of Ireland (Aos Scéal Éireann), co-founded by Lynch in 2003. But where the future of storytelling truly lies is in the younger generations. Young people are interested in storytelling when they have access to it, which Weir’s work with the Armstrong Storytelling Trust and Yarnspinners ensures. Through intergenerational mixing at monthly gatherings, emerging storytellers take the opportunity to practice their craft. Building on the foundations of the old stories and lifeways, younger tellers lean into new ways of communication through animations and songs.
Perhaps there is a storyteller in everyone, just as everyone has a story. “We’re hardwired for stories. It’s how we see the world,” Urwin says. “I always go to schools, and no one thinks they are a storyteller. But I tell them, you are all storytellers.” We turn our lives into stories; it is just a matter of having the courage to find your voice.
Ballyeamon Barn, the hostel Weir runs, gathers storytellers from every corner of the world. “I had a dream there would be places in Ireland where people would get together and tell stories, and it has pretty much come true. In the bad old days, people of every political culture or religious background were coming together for stories.”
Now, every Saturday night, folks gather for music, song, poetry, and storytelling. Some are internationally known storytellers. “Others are like the wee man down the road, who is eighty-nine and plays the banjo-mandolin,” Weir says. “People of every skill level and background are welcomed. Everyone is accepting.”
Out of gatherings like these, the inevitable emerges, not explicitly created but undoubtedly there: a community.
Addie Foley is a writing intern at the Center of Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a student at Bennington College. Her love for folklore and mythology, and for Ireland, drove her to seek out those doing the work to keep this important tradition alive. She hopes to communicate the crucial role that storytelling and folklore have in the modern world, helping us remember the past to inform our future.
