Voices from the Past [60min]

Colm Toibin, acclaimed Irish novelist, investigates a remarkable race against time to save Ireland's age-old storytelling tradition. As a generation of oral storytellers were dying out in early 20th-century Ireland, a small band of dedicated collectors decided their stories and lore should not die with them. Taking to Ireland's highways and byways, they persuaded thousands of tellers, singers and musicians to be recorded. The result today is the Irish National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin, one of the largest repositories of oral stories and traditions in the world. Colm explores its riches and its legacy.