Dr. Heinrich Becker in the Claddagh recording Seán Ó Flathartaigh on an ediphone borrowed from Liam Mac Coisdeala, 1939.
“tá an scéal sin fior, más scéal taibhsí féin é, tharla sé…”
Make your way through the stories in the navigation panel to the left. These were collected by folklorist, Dr. Heinrich Becker, on the Aran Islands and around Conamara in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In these pages you will find photos and images from various archives, examples of tales as transcribed, and occasionally translated, by Becker himself, clips of early video footage taken on Aran, tales transcribed by the curator directly from Becker’s archive, and other archival materials many of which are available here for the first time online. Tales transcribed directly from Becker’s archive are transcribed as closely to their originals as possible, with standardisations and corrections only made where they might be useful to understanding the text. In all instances, an effort has been made to supply the original Irish language text, as well as to include Becker’s personal phonetic transcriptions of the Irish.