Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Patrick Kennedy (folklorist)

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Occupation
  
bookseller

Spouse
  
Maria (nee Kelly?)

Language
  
English

Name
  
Patrick Kennedy


Nationality
  
Ireland

Role
  
Folklorist

Genre
  
folklore, local lore

Resting place
  
Glasnevin Cemetery

Patrick Kennedy (folklorist)

Notable works
  
Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts (1866)

Died
  
1873, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Books
  
The Banks of the Boro: A Chronic, The fireside stories of, Legends of Irish Witches a, Toy Shadows, Irish fireside folktales

Architects of change patrick kennedy maria shriver


Patrick Kennedy (early 1801 – 29 March 1873) was a folklorist from Co. Wexford, Ireland. A bookseller by trade, he is known for his collections of Irish (Leinster) folktales. The tales are told in rusticated English of the Irish peasantry who had established roots in The Pale, the anglicized part of Ireland. He is "widely credited with preserving irish idioms in the turn of phrase, sentence structure, Irish words".

Contents

Patrick kennedy reveals family history of mental illness and addiction


Life

Kennedy was born in the early part of 1801 in Kilmyshal beyond the outskirts of Bunclody, County Wexford, Ireland, in a financially well-off family of peasant stock. Mount Leinster, which loomed tall over his hometown served as a backdrop of his first book. His schooling at Cloughbawn was interrupted in 1819 when he filled a teacher's post vacated by a friend. In 1820 or 21, he left for Dublin and enrolled in a teacher-training program at the Kildare Place Society (officially called the "Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor of Ireland"), and in 1822 or 1823, was appointed as a teacher there.

He abandoned the teaching profession at some time uncertain, and established a lending-library and bookseller shop on Anglesea Street (not a full stretch of street but the corner of Cope Street) in Dublin. Edward Dowden remembered the proprietor "with round, bald head, grizzled beard, and a smile and twinkle over all his face."

Alfred Webb's A Compendium of Irish Biography (1878) writes that his home often played host to the "Hibernian Temperance Association,", though possibly this is a result of confusion with Dr. Patrick Kennedy, Bishop of Killaloe, associated with Father Mathew's temperance movement.

Literary career

Some of his stories which he sent to Sheridan Le Fanu in 1862, appeared as "Leinster Folk Lore" in the Dublin University Magazine from 1861 till 1869. This was followed by pieces such as "Legends of Mount Leinster," published in the Irish Quarterly Review. Later a full collection was published by Macmillan and Company in 1866 as Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (1866). The first included tale is "Jack and His Comrades," later reprinted by Joseph Jacobs.

The collected stories were interleaved with a considerable amount of his own narrative: his "stories link by running commentary and characterized by often ponderous moralizing"

Patrick Kennedy was one of the pioneers in uncovering Irish folkloric material, with a lasting impact on William Butler Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement.

References

Patrick Kennedy (folklorist) Wikipedia