Between 1937 and 1939, the Irish Folklore Commission set up a scheme in which over 100,000 schoolchildren collected local lore and history from older generations in their locality. Most of the topics are to do with local history, folktales, legends, proverbs, songs, customs and beliefs, games and pastimes, crafts and local monuments. These stories were collated by the local National School teachers in 5,000 schools across all 26 counties in what was then the Irish Free State. This material forms part of one of the largest Folklore Collections in the world, which is in the care of University College Dublin. The Schools Collection is now being digitized by Dúchas.ie and is being rolled out online. Although not all of it has been transcribed, it is searchable by place, family name, school, topic. Many of the entries are in Irish. (I hope that these can be translated in due course so that overseas researchers may reach the wealth of information on the heritage, culture and way of life in the parishes of their ancestors.)
I spend many hours idly browsing through this collection and recently was totally astonished to discover some members of our own family. Our uncle had gathered folklore and his informants were none other than his parents, our maternal grandparents!
This was their story on Local Marriage Customs

The original entry in the Dúchas.ie collection
Most marriages take place from Christmas to the beginning of Lent, which time is called Shrove. June was thought a lucky month for marrying in, and May, July and August were thought unlucky. Friday, Saturday and the 28th December were thought to be unlucky days.
I have included your blog in INTERESTING BLOGS on Friday Fossicking at
http://thatmomentintime-crissouli.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/friday-fossicking-13th-jan-2017.html
Thank you, Chris
Thank you so much! You are very kind!
Fantastic resource, and well done to those that promoted and organised it. So much history has been lost through not being written down. I must have a little trawl through to see if anything of interest comes up concerning my family.
The entire folklore collection will be digitised in time. This is just the schools collection and makes for fascinating reading! You will enjoy trawling through and hopefully may discover family as informants or as collectors. Thanks for dropping by!
Pingback: There are raisins (reasons) for everything and currants for bread. | A SILVER VOICE FROM IRELAND
Pingback: Remembering our mother on the centenary of her birth | A SILVER VOICE FROM IRELAND