13.08.2025
This time last year we took a break, a reading week to peruse Áine Ní Dhíoraí’s 1985 book Na Cruacha, Scéalta agus Seanchas. As a native of Donegal, Ní Dhioraí’s specialised research interests are connected with the local landscape, its stories and folklore. For the book, Ní Dhioraí collected from a number of informants including Anna Nic an Luain, a celebrated traditional Irish-language storyteller and singer from Cruach Thiobraide in the Blue Stack Mountains. Ní Dhioraí describes her as follows,
She had a faithful and never forgetting memory. We of the present day have destroyed ours by reading and writing so much that we cannot understand anyone who has it. Anna has supplied the collectors of the Irish Folklore Commission with the texts of more than two hundred old and new folk-songs, caoins, poems and ballads, all from memory, some of them containing more than twenty stanzas. She has told more than fifty long stories and these take sometimes a full night. I worked with her for over eighteen months and she never repeated anything twice during that time. Her richness, welling up from unbelievably ancient sources is not yet at an end.
Below is an extract about a fairy wake collected from Anna Nic an Luain in 1977. A first person account of journeying along the road outside of Glenties in south west Donegal, through the Bluestack Mountains when the sound of keening, crying brings her to a sudden stop, a moment of disorientation in the landscape…
….Ag teacht aniar dúinn os coinne Chruach an Airgid mhothaigh mise an caoineadh a ba thruacánta a mhothaigh mé ariamh. Sheas mé go tobann agus d'éist mé agus nuair a sheas mé stad sé.
Shiúil mé liom agus d'fhiafraigh an cailín eile díom an bhfacaigh mé dadaidh.
' Ní fhacas ', arsa mise, 'ach chualaigh mé rud inteacht.
An gcualaigh tusa dadaidh? ' arsa mise.
‘Nior chualaigh' ,arsa sise, 'caidé a chualaigh tusa?'
'Chuala mé caoineadh, agus caoineadh truacánta! 'arsa mise.
Sin a raibh de sin. Shiúil muid linn agus ní theachaigh muid céad slat gur mhothaigh mise an rud céanna.
Stad sé ar ais agus nior mhothaigh sise é ach oiread. Bhí muid ag dul ó ghiota go giota agus ní raibh giota slat ar bith a raibh muid ag dul nach raibh mise ag éisteacht leis an chaoineadh. Sa deireadh tháinig muid aniar ar amharc an bhaile agus leis sin féin chuaigh an caoineadh thart fá fhad bata dúinn agus bhí mise ag éisteacht leis go dteachaigh sé suas taobh na Cruaiche Goirme agus i rith an ama níor chualaigh an bhean a bhí liom é…
8.12. Tórramh Sí
RBÉ 1033, 187-90. S. Ó H. a bhailigh ó Anna Nic an Luain, Cruach Thiobraid, ar an 15.1.48. Tá leagan den scéal seo i gló ag Ó hEochaidh,S., Ní Néill, M., O Catháin, S., Síscéalta ó Thír Chonaill (B.Á.C. 1977).
