Heart and Soul: Irish myths and fairy tales
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many mythological creatures and traditions we know, love, and more importantly fear, owe their origins to Celtic folklore. Borrowed to create epic franchises such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the countless adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Walt Disney’s Peter Pan, this programme casts new light on the subject. Seanchaí (shan-a-key) were/are traditional Irish storytellers and the custodians of history for centuries in Ireland. They can recite ancient lore and tales of wisdom whenever it was needed and could be considered as something of the Google of ancient times. The Irish people have created a unique and beautifully poetic oral literature.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sport, but not as you know it. |
| 0:03.0 | Nothing is ever quite as expected. |
| 0:05.0 | Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.0 | If the story is wriggly, contentious, or hard to tame, I'll cover. |
| 0:13.0 | Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:16.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me, Danny O'Connor. In this episode of Heart and Soul, which explores |
| 0:26.3 | personal approaches to spirituality from around the world, we're going to be talking to |
| 0:32.2 | some traditional Irish storytellers about tales of |
| 0:36.2 | fairies, myths and folklore. Poverty was such a widespread problem in Ireland that people had to find ways to overcome terrible, terrible problems. |
| 0:52.0 | They created supernatural explanations to make sense of their world and if that meant |
| 0:59.0 | and in a ban she to talk about somebody coming in accompanying somebody from this life to the next, |
| 1:06.6 | or if it meant creating the fairfolk to explain why their crops had failed or to explain why someone was suffering from something that they couldn't explain. |
| 1:20.0 | Shannocki, as they're referred to here have been the custodians of history for centuries. |
| 1:28.0 | They can be considered as something of a Google of ancient times. My name is Denise Weir. I live in Lauren, County Antrim. I spent my time now and I'm |
| 1:40.2 | retired telling stories and teaching craft and I very much like blending those together. |
| 1:45.6 | It was very much an oral tradition. |
| 1:51.2 | People didn't have a written language and yes they were able to carve it |
| 1:56.1 | it down to stone but they couldn't be carried around the countryside. You know you had people going from |
| 2:01.4 | village to village to town to town to king to king whatever way you want to do it and they carried the myths with them and yes it started off as gossip to tell you what was going on in the next bit down. But then they evolved into being somewhat more and they grew and they got bigger and that's what's created so much of our myths is a simple story that's got elaborated. |
| 2:24.8 | Madeline McCulli from Dairy, author of Dairy Folk Tales, haunted Dairy, |
| 2:30.2 | Haunted Dairy, haunted Derry, haunted Derry, |
| 2:31.4 | haunted Denny Gull and |
... |
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