Irish Customs and Beliefs

By Kevin Danaher

Irish Customs and Beliefs' is a beautiful series of gentle stories which explore the beliefs and customs of the old Irish. 'Irish Customs and Beliefs' is a collection of stories exploring the gentler, more superstitious lives of the old Irish. Kevin Danaher tells of the wandering Irish, highwaymen, summer pastures and the typical ‘whiteboys’. He tells of lost and hidden treasures, beliefs associated with birds, insects, animals, plants, bushes, trees and stones. We hear about dwarfs and fabulous water monsters, ghosts and witches, castles and drowned cities. ‘Dr Danaher's books are such that anyone, young or old, be he an enthusiast for folklife or not, can pick them up and derive pleasure and profit from reading them’ Ulster Folklife

Kevin Danaher was educated at Mungret College, University College Dublin and at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig. He lectured on Irish Folklore at University College Dublin. His published work includes 'In Ireland Long Ago', 'Folktales of the Irish Countryside' and 'The Year in Ireland'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2004
• ISBN: 9781856359047

Kevin Danaher

Kevin Danaher was born in Athea County Limerick in 1915 and educated at University College Dublin and the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. After service as a captain in the Irish army during the Emergency, he became a full-time ethnologist with the Irish Folklore Commission (later the Department of Irish Folklore in University College Dublin). He was as fine a writer as he was a folklorist and his many works include The Year in Ireland (1972) and Irish Country Households (1975, reissued 1999). His research provided the basis for the Folk Park at Bunratty, county Limerick.