Description
Book SynopsisGrowing up on a secluded smuggling route along the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic, Packy Jim McGrath regularly heard the news, songs, and stories of men and women who stopped to pass the time. In his early years, he was all ears - now it is his turn to talk. His stories reveal an worldview that is both idiosyncratic and shared, and offer a window into Irish vernacular culture.
Trade ReviewSkillfully presents and analyzes stories naturally emerging from conversation and expressing a worldview that is both communal and formed by unique life experience. ... Highly recommended."" -
Choice""Draws on interviews with Packy Jim McGrath, a Donegal storyteller who grew up on a smuggling route on the border of the Republic and Northern Ireland."" -
Chronicle of Higher Education""Octogenarian bachelor Packy Jim emerges here as both typical and singular, a barometer of continuity and change. McGrath's resilience, dignity, and strong sense of self manifest clearly in his stories, which locate him both in the technological consumerist future and in the primordial self-sufficient past. Ray Cashman's sharp and sympathetic observation delivers a classic ethnography that stakes a major claim for folkloristic studies as cutting-edge humanities research."" - Lillis Laoire,National University of IrelandGalway
""A brilliant testament to the ethnographer's art, the deeply rooted wisdom of an 'ordinary' person, and the complex ways in which folklore figures in everyday life along the Irish border."" - James P. Leary, author of
Folksongs of Another AmericaTable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface: Packy Jim Is Your Man
- A Note on Language
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- Introduction: Using Tradition, Constructing a Self
- 1 Person and Place, Life and Times
- 2 Authority and Rules
- 3 Power and Politics
- 4 Place, History, and Morality
- 5 Place, the Supernatural, and Cosmology
- 6 Belief and Skepticism
- 7 Community in a World of Limited Good
- 8 Worldview
- Afterword: Real Folklore
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- Acknowledgments
- Appendix: Transcription Style
- Notes on the Recitations, Songs, and Traditional Stories
- Notes on the Chapters
- References
- International Motif Index
- Migratory Legend Type Index
- Subject Index
