Food Sciences & Geography & Geology Buildings

You might not think that either of these buildings would house my folklore class, but they do.  On Tuesdays I have Aspects of Irish Folklore in the Geography and Geology Building and on Thursdays in the Food Sciences Building.  Overall, I think this has turned out to be my favorite class.  I feel like I've learned a lot about traditional Irish culture from holidays like Samhain (the traditional New Years that helped inspire modern day celebrations of Halloween) to life cycle rituals like wakes and weddings to traditional beliefs like fairies (or the wee people).

Food Sciences Building

The Thursday professor's lectures are always a bit jumbled and don't always make the most sense, but I always find them interesting.  He lectures about the more ritual aspect of folklore in terms of ceremonies, festivals, and other practices.  My favorite lectures have to be about Samhain and the banshees (banshee literally translates to woman from the other wold in Irish).

Geography and Geology Building

The Tuesday professor generally lectures about folklore in the form of oral stories.  There has been a big effort to preserve the stories so a lot have now been written down.  I am definitely most intrigued by the fairy legends.  Fairies were often used to explain untimely deaths.  If someone died young (especially a child or a woman in childbirth) they were said to have been taken (by the fairies) and replaced with a sickly changling, which is actually the being that died.  It was thought best not to call the fairies fairies as speaking directly of them would bring their attention, this is why there are many names for the fairies including wee folk and hill folk.  Here is one short fairy legend:

That was a child that disappeared in fog long ago.  He had disappeared in fog and they started a search and spent a day and a night looking for him.  And at the same time, the child that was in the house-another child, as you might say, it seemed to them-that came in, a stranger.  He was sort of vicious and cantankerous and so on.  

But they found the child that had disappeared in the fog and as they were returning home, they declared they would burn the 'difficult' child in the fire.  Oh, he had reached the age of reason-he was nine or ten years of age, that child-he wasn't really a child.  But they said they would burn him at the back of the fire.

The made a huge fire and when they were going to catch hold of him, he disappeared out the door in the shape of a cat.  He was never seen again.

That's the way I heard it, now.