Dúchas: Ireland's Folklore Archive

What it is

Dúchas is the online home of Ireland's National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin. It currently holds 786,691 manuscript pages, 13,899 photographs and 329 hours of audio. The site runs in English and Irish, and the material itself is in both languages, with plenty in English.

Why we picked it

The Schools' Collection is the heart of it. In the 1930s, Irish schoolchildren filled copybooks with what they heard at home: stories, superstitions, folk cures for warts, recipes, tales of holy wells and old wedding customs. The copybooks are scanned whole, handwriting and ink blots included, and volunteers are transcribing them. There are thousands of schools, and each one sits on a map.

The archive keeps growing, too. Recent additions include 500 landscape photographs and 300 acetate discs of songs and oral narrative recorded between 1947 and 1955. There's a Weekly Pick and a folktale index for browsing by story type.

Where to start

• Go to Places and click on any village on the map to see what local children recorded.
• Read a few Schools' Collection copybooks; the English ones are easy going.
• Browse the Photographic Collection for everyday life, crafts and landscapes of the last century.
• Play something from the Audio Collection: mid-century songs and stories.
• If you catch the bug, join Meitheal Dúchas.ie and help transcribe manuscripts.

Who it's for

Folklore and fairy-tale fans, people learning Irish, writers looking for plots, genealogists curious about a family's home place, and anyone heading to Ireland who wants more than cliffs and pubs.

Quick answers

What language is the material in? English and Irish. The site interface switches between the two.

What is the Schools' Collection? Folklore gathered by Irish schoolchildren in the 1930s, shown as scanned copybooks with transcriptions.

Can I contribute? Yes. Meitheal Dúchas.ie lets volunteers transcribe items from the collection.