What do you think?
Rate this book
The Stars of Ballymenone
In the time of the Troubles, when there were bombs in the night and soldiers on the road, Henry Glassie journeyed to the Irish borderland to learn how country people endure. He settled into the farming community of Ballymenone, beside Lough Erne in the County Fermanagh. He asked questions, and he listened. For a decade he heard and recorded the stories and songs in which they outlined their culture, recounted their history, and pictured their world--a world which, in their view, was one of love and defeat and uncertainty, demanding faith, bravery, and wit.
In his award-winning Passing the Time in Ballymenone, Henry Glassie set out to write a comprehensive ethnography of the community. Now, after decades of work in Asia, in Turkey and Bangladesh, in India and Japan, Glassie has returned to Ireland, using his skills as an observer, a listener, a writer, in an effort to understand how poor people in rural places suffer and laugh and carry on while history happens. Glassie's task in The Stars of Ballymenone is to set the scene, to sketch the backdrop and clear the stage, so that Hugh Nolan and Michael Boyle, Peter Flanagan, Ellen Cutler, and their neighbors can tell their own tale.
The Stars of Ballymenone is an integrated analysis of the complete repertory of verbal art from a community where storytelling and singing of quality remained a part of daily life. The book includes a CD so the voices of Ballymenone can be heard at last.
In his award-winning Passing the Time in Ballymenone, Henry Glassie set out to write a comprehensive ethnography of the community. Now, after decades of work in Asia, in Turkey and Bangladesh, in India and Japan, Glassie has returned to Ireland, using his skills as an observer, a listener, a writer, in an effort to understand how poor people in rural places suffer and laugh and carry on while history happens. Glassie's task in The Stars of Ballymenone is to set the scene, to sketch the backdrop and clear the stage, so that Hugh Nolan and Michael Boyle, Peter Flanagan, Ellen Cutler, and their neighbors can tell their own tale.
The Stars of Ballymenone is an integrated analysis of the complete repertory of verbal art from a community where storytelling and singing of quality remained a part of daily life. The book includes a CD so the voices of Ballymenone can be heard at last.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2006
4 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 8, 2020
This is a book that I think you can't 'review,' because the people of this area of south Fermanagh come alive in it, and I'd feel I was reviewing the people. Henry Glassie went to Ballymenone (Baile mbun an abhann as near as anyone can tell) in the 1970s and lived there while he studied the people's oral culture. This is a follow-on to a book I haven't read yet, but in this one he focuses on the small handful of people he calls the 'stars' of their place, the ones who know the songs and stories and history. These people were all dead by 1980 so they really were of a bygone era. It's a little shocking to see that when he returns to the place in the early 2000s, the houses of all the people he knew were either falling down, or razed.
Glassie seems to really understand and properly respect these people. He doesn't write like an academic, so he doesn't burden you with unintelligible language about proto-myths common to European cultures, or any academic jargon - he just tells you who these people are and what they had to tell him. In the process he gives a clear and textured picture of an Ireland that is past and gone, but whose echoes still shape the facts and myths of the country today.
The notes make up about 1/4 of the book - I skimmed through them, but read one where he says there is debate among folklorists as to whether friendship with your 'subjects' mars your objectivity. He counters that friendship with his subjects elicits orders of magnitude more and better information to form a full picture, whereas objectivity keeps the outsider at a distance and prevents real understanding of the people. Reading his book, it is impossible to argue with this conclusion.
The book is fat but it didn't seem too long by any means.
Glassie seems to really understand and properly respect these people. He doesn't write like an academic, so he doesn't burden you with unintelligible language about proto-myths common to European cultures, or any academic jargon - he just tells you who these people are and what they had to tell him. In the process he gives a clear and textured picture of an Ireland that is past and gone, but whose echoes still shape the facts and myths of the country today.
The notes make up about 1/4 of the book - I skimmed through them, but read one where he says there is debate among folklorists as to whether friendship with your 'subjects' mars your objectivity. He counters that friendship with his subjects elicits orders of magnitude more and better information to form a full picture, whereas objectivity keeps the outsider at a distance and prevents real understanding of the people. Reading his book, it is impossible to argue with this conclusion.
The book is fat but it didn't seem too long by any means.
November 14, 2008
Henry Glassie has the enviable job of collecting folklore in small Irish towns. This book is part memoir of his time among the residents of Ballymenone, and part primer in Irish folklore. The book comes with a cd with his personal recordings of the storytelling and musical talents of several residents. In some places it loses itself a little, but for the most part it's a beautiful book.
Read for English 577.03: Irish Folklore
Read for English 577.03: Irish Folklore
June 10, 2023
As a first-year folklore student at Indiana University Bloomington, I met Henry Glassie before I fully knew who he was, let alone read this book. It was a lightly overwhelming experience, as he asked me about myself & how I'd ended up there, & I slowly realized he was a man who had worked with & studied many of the people & media that had inspired my fascination with the elusive concept of "folklore" in the first place. I was supposed to be on my way to a meeting halfway across campus at the time. Needless to say, I was late to that meeting.
Stars was, in many ways, a perfect book to read that first year: a rumination, after some thirty years or so, on Glassie's field work in Ireland & a lengthy, accomplished career in folklore. The work paints vivid, lively pictures of these "Stars," characters whose actions & words were the talk of the town, & whose knowledge of the stories & history served as Glassie's guide, constituting what he calls the "Epic of Common Life." Through the stories, we catch a glimpse, not just of the people, Hugh Nolan, Ellen Cutler, Peter & Joe Flanagan, & the rest, but of their worldviews: the need for neighborliness through the toil of everyday life (despite political & religious differences), the inevitability & fruitlessness of violent struggle, not to mention Nolan's view of history as something perceived best in terms of space, a non-exclusionary metric, rather than time, where it's easy to lose context & leave out all but one perspective. In other words, to Nolan's (& thus Glassie's) view, the larger the scope of a historical narrative, the less true it is.
A deeply personal book, we come to care for each Star as Glassie describes them, & his relationships with them. & when they die, we mourn with him. He breathes life into Ballymenone from its introduction with the flow of the Arney River (the description of which reminds one of Joyce's riverrun into Dublin that opens Finnegans Wake), through the stories & people that constitute its Epic, before tying it all together with a reflection on an evening at a bar in Swanlibar, where the Troubles were on the mind, but discussed only through the revival of a song long-thought to be forgotten, unifying those present in a story of nonviolent resistance. This, Glassie says, is folklore.
The book is written in an approachable manner, & one doesn't need an existing background in folklore to understand it. It's also not as long as you expect it to be.
Stars was, in many ways, a perfect book to read that first year: a rumination, after some thirty years or so, on Glassie's field work in Ireland & a lengthy, accomplished career in folklore. The work paints vivid, lively pictures of these "Stars," characters whose actions & words were the talk of the town, & whose knowledge of the stories & history served as Glassie's guide, constituting what he calls the "Epic of Common Life." Through the stories, we catch a glimpse, not just of the people, Hugh Nolan, Ellen Cutler, Peter & Joe Flanagan, & the rest, but of their worldviews: the need for neighborliness through the toil of everyday life (despite political & religious differences), the inevitability & fruitlessness of violent struggle, not to mention Nolan's view of history as something perceived best in terms of space, a non-exclusionary metric, rather than time, where it's easy to lose context & leave out all but one perspective. In other words, to Nolan's (& thus Glassie's) view, the larger the scope of a historical narrative, the less true it is.
A deeply personal book, we come to care for each Star as Glassie describes them, & his relationships with them. & when they die, we mourn with him. He breathes life into Ballymenone from its introduction with the flow of the Arney River (the description of which reminds one of Joyce's riverrun into Dublin that opens Finnegans Wake), through the stories & people that constitute its Epic, before tying it all together with a reflection on an evening at a bar in Swanlibar, where the Troubles were on the mind, but discussed only through the revival of a song long-thought to be forgotten, unifying those present in a story of nonviolent resistance. This, Glassie says, is folklore.
The book is written in an approachable manner, & one doesn't need an existing background in folklore to understand it. It's also not as long as you expect it to be.
January 23, 2021
Not a book for the casual reader interested in Irish story-telling, history or even travel, but for romantics, poets and academics. DNF halfway through because it meandered through the same lovely, lilting, lyrical material (or what seemed like the same material) again and again, every which way but Sunday. Like singing the same beloved Irish melodies at every Irish bar in the world.
September 5, 2024
Glassie is a star himself in the field of Folklore. What's not to like? Few can capture the magic of a folk community, presenting the nuances of interplay between performers and audience the way he can without coming across as hyper analytical. There is no academic sterility to his writing, just an appreciation of the artfulness of each tradition bearer.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews