Overview

The humble organic materials of straw, hay and rushes were utilised throughout the centuries in Ireland for a myriad of uses. The heyday of their use as objects were the 18th and 19th centuries, when travellers to Ireland often wrote disparaging and derogatory accounts of what they saw – saddles of straw, sleeping on rushes, restricting animals with tethers and spancels of bark and animal hair, and wearing crudely-made straw and rush hats. Yet the people who produced and utilised these objects were both ingenious and thrifty, making use of what they could find at no cost and using their learned skills to make objects which we now see as having not only function, but also beauty. Anne O’Dowd’s powerful and lavishly illustrated work looks at the historical context of the making of a wide range of useful and ceremonial objects, and the folklore of belief and custom connected with the materials and practices. The thousand or so objects made from straw, hay and rushes in the National Museum of Ireland’s Irish Folklife Collection are the foundation of the study. The book is beautifully illustrated with colour and black and white images, and presents a fascinating insight into Irish crafts and rituals and their ancient origins.

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9781788550222

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Reviews

'[A] marvellous book, this great harvest of a book, a book to relish and treasure and return to again and again.' --Vincent Woods, Poet and Playwright Straw, Hay & Rushes in Irish Folk Tradition was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for books on Irish culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies in 2016: 'This beautiful book offers a significant and lasting contribution to the field of Irish Studies ... a tour-de-force of folklore scholarship.' 'A magnificent book in which love, loyalty, hard work and excellent scholarship are interwoven as perfectly as the straw used in artefacts created by Irish country people ... This volume itself is an object of stunning beauty and will delight everyone ... [O'Dowd] has made a lasting contribution to the sum of our knowledge about our country and the skills of its people.' --Dr Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, The Irish Times 'There is much to delight in the book ... the depth and detail of well-referenced information, gleaned from a range of sources remarkable for its breadth, depth and evidential value, makes this into a reference work that will serve for a long time to come.' --Dr Cliona O'Carroll, Bealoideas, The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, 84, 2016

Author Information

Anne O’Dowd recently retired from the National Museum of Ireland, where she was a Curator for more than thirty years. She continues to write on Irish folk life and also works on landscape design projects.

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