MORE on the material on the Duchas.ie Website

Until the duchas.ie website made the bound collection available online a few years ago, the pieces from Bere Island could only be viewed in microfilm format at UCC and the Cork County Library, and in hard copies made from them in 20xx and held at the Bere Island Heritage Centre. {Helen R. to provide a sentence on how the recent-day pupils at Scoil Mhichíl Naofa built on/updated that 1937 material. } The duchas.ie website allows visitors to search for and view each handwritten contribution, as well as the side-by-side text versions transcribed (typed) by the 'Meitheal' of Community Transcription volunteers.

MORE ON THE SCHOOLS' FOLKLORE COLLECTION

The following are the opening words in a booklet ''Irish Folklore and Tradition'' prepared by the Irish Folklore Commission, and issued by an Roinn Oideachais ''for the information of Managers and Teachers of National Schools'' at the beginning of the 1937-1938 school year.

''The collection of the oral traditions of the Irish people is a work of national importance. It is but fitting that in our Primary Schools the senior pupils should be invited to participate in the task of rescuing from oblivion the traditions which, in spite of the vicissitudes of the historic Irish nation, have, century in, century out, been preserved with loving care by their ancestors. The task is an urgent one for in our time most of this important national oral heritage will have passed away for ever.
In every rural school in Ireland the children will [É] collect from their parents and friends these traditions, and with the friendly help and encouragement of the teachers there is no doubt that a huge body of very valuable information will be recorded from every part of the country.''

The booklet provided a list of topics but left some latitude. The pupils interviewed their parents, grandparents and neighbours, and wrote up the information they collected as school compositions.

The Department asked the teachers to choose the best compositions from the pupils' copybooks and to have them transcribed by selected pupils into the official Manuscript Books. These notebooks were forwarded to the Commission, and after the war they were bound into indexed volumes and catalogued.

In all, over a year and some, approximately 740,000 pages (288,000 pages in the pupils' original exercise books; 451,000 pages in bound volumes) of folklore and local tradition were compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools. The collection is now generally referred to as 'Bailiúchán na Scol' or 'The Schools' Collection'.

There are 1,128 volumes, numbered and bound, in the Collection. A title page prefaces material from each school, giving the name of the school, the parish, the barony, the county and the teacher. A further collection of approximately 40,000 of the children's original copybooks are stored at the National Folklore Collection in Dublin.

Volume 0277 contains the contributions from Ballinakila (65 handwritten pages), Lawrence Cove Boys (35 pages) and Lawrence Cove Girls (151 pages) National Schools.

Volume 0278 contains the contributions from pupils in the Convent School, Castletownbere , including a few from Bere Island. I made a separate file of these -- thanks to Síle Harrington for this lead!. She tells us "it was a 'secondary top' regarded as primary but allowed to teach the secondary curriculum, up to inter cert. Girls from Berehaven went on there after primary school."

For the last 85 years, apart from these hardcopy volumes located at the Folklore Commission, the contents could only be consulted through microfilm versions of portions, located in county libraries, and of the whole, in UCC and St Patrick's Training College, Drumcondra.

For more information on the Schools' Collection, see this story* and an update of it, as well as the several other articles under the heading 'Works based entirely on the Schools' Collection' in this link. [* The remarks on the Schools Project by the poet Patrick Kavanagh, quoted on page 15 are of interest! ] .