Join the Folklore Society of Ireland at MoLI for a lecture from folklorist and author Dr. Mícheál Briody. Dr. Briody will discuss his research on ‘Ón áird thuaidh tig an chabhair !/ “From the North help comes”!’ : Séamas Ó Duilearga and Reidar Th. Christiansen’s correspondence and friendship of four decades, vis à vis his relationship* with Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, Åke Campbell and Martti Haavio.’
Mícheál Briody is a graduate of University College Dublin (Irish and Irish Folklore) and the University of Helsinki (Folkloristics). He is the author of The Irish Folklore Commission 1935−1970: History, ideology, methodology (Helsinki 2007) and co-author with Máirín Nic Eoin of Cumadóireacht Uí Chadhain (Dublin 2020). He has published numerous articles on the historiography of folklore collecting, Irish storytelling tradition, the life and fate of the controversial priest and professor of Irish, Fr Michael O’Hickey/An tAthair Mícheál Ó hIceadha, the history of early Conradh na Gaeilge/Gaelic League, the Irish language inheritance of his native county Waterford, and the writings (published and unpublished) of the creative and polemic writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain. His main research at present involves a reassessment of the Irish keening/lament tradition as well as research into this tradition. He has also edited two volumes of his late father’s memoirs, The Road to Avondale (2009) and In the Service of the State (2012) and is at present completing the editing for publication of his late friend, Séamas Mac Philib’s thesis ‘The Irish landlord System in Folk Tradition ─ Impact and Image’ (Department of Irish Folklore, UCD 1990). Mícheál Briody was a lecturer at the Language Centre of the University of Helsinki for almost forty years and has lived in Finland since 1979. He retired in 2020.
