Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 24, No. 4 Michael Moloney
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Ursinus College Digital Commons @ Ursinus College Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection Summer 1975 Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 24, No. 4 Michael Moloney Friedrich Krebs Louis Winkler Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Cultural History Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Folklore Commons, Genealogy Commons, German Language and Literature Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, History of Religion Commons, Linguistics Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits oy u. Recommended Citation Moloney, Michael; Krebs, Friedrich; and Winkler, Louis, "Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 24, No. 4" (1975). Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine. 64. https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/64 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection at Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Contributors to this Issue MICHAEL MOLONEY, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a native of Limerick, Ireland. At present he is a doctoral student in the Folklore and Folklife Program at the Univer sity of Pennsylvania. His article in this issue will be of assistance to al l those researchers attempting to understand the traditional cultural patterns of the Irish and Scotch Irish emigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the United States from the Colonial Period to the present. DR. FRIEDRICH KREBS, Speyer, West Germany, is archivist emeritus at the Palatine State Archives in Speyer. Over the years, through a series of articles on Southwest German emigration, he has helped American ge nealogists and social historians to understand the Atlantic emigration of the 18th Century and its backgrounds in Europe. His article in this issue presents details on 141 emigrants who left villages in the Neckar Valley from 1726 to 1766. DR. LOUIS WINKLER, State College, Pennsy lvania, is professor of astronomy at the Pennsylvania State University. In his article in this issue, sponsored in part by a grant from the American Philosophical Society, he offers an analysis of the current almanacs which are in circulation in the Pennsylvania German culture . The article is one of a series on the astronomical knowledge and astrological beliefs of the Pennsylvania Germans. EDITOR: SUMMER 1975, Vol. XXIV, No. 4 Dr. Don Yoder ASS ISTA T EDITOR: Dr. William Parsons EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Dr. Mac E. Barrick LeRoy Gensler Dr. H enry Glassie Contents Dr. John A. Hostetler D avid J. Hufford Dr. Phil Jack Dr. Hilda A. Kring Dr. Maurice A. Mook Dr. Earl F. Robacker Dr. Alta Schrock 2 Irish Folklife Studies - A Present-Day Appraisal MICHAEL MOLONEY FOLK FESTIVAL DIRECTOR: Mark R. Eaby, Jr. FOLK FESTIVAL PUBLIC RELATIONS: Peg Zecher SUBSCRIPTIONS: 15 Palatine Emigration Materials from the Neckar Doris E. Stief Valley, 1726 - 1766 FRIEDRICH KREBS PENNSYLVANIA FOLKLIFE, Summer 1975, Vol. 24, No.4, pub lished five times a year by the 'Penn sylvania Folklife Society, Inc., Lan caster, Pennsylvania. $1.50 for single copies; Autumn, Winter, 45 Pennsylvania German Astronomy and Astrology, XI: Spring and Summer. $1.00 for Folk Contemporary Almanacs Festival Supplement. Year! y sub LOUIS WINKLER scription $7.00. MSS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: The Editor will be glad to consider MSS and photographs sent with a COVER: view to publication. When unsuit able, and if accompanied by return Photograph of Irish Tinker, itinerant craftsman and repairer of household items. Courtesy of National Museum of postage, every care will be exercised Ireland. toward their return, although no responsibility for their safety is as sumed. Editorial correspondence: Dr. Don Yoder, Logan Hall, Box 13, University of Pennsylvania, Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 39: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19174. Cider and Wine Production Folk Festival correspondence: (Inside back cover) College Blvd. and Vine, Kutztown, Pennsylvania 19530. Folk Festival public relations: Peg Zecher, 717 N. Swarthmore Ave., Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081. Contribu tors to this Issue Subscription, business correspondence: (Inside front cover) Box 1053, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Contents copyrighted. Entered as second class matter at Lancaster, Pa. Irish F olklife Studies A Present-Day Appraisal By MICHAEL MALONEY T his paper propases to. give an intraductian to. the sciences and to see human thought and action as the p resent state af schalarship in falklife studies in Ire moving forces ~ nd the onl y final cause af history".' land- bath Narth and Sauth- and to. examine the Any account af the development af fo lk li fe studies areas af falk culture study which might be cansidered in I reland must be set against the backgrou nd of our well-researched as well as thase where the wark to. pali tical and cultural life in the past half century.' date has been sketchy. T he pra bl ems in the study af Partition has to a large extent split our working per Irish falklife are af caurse vast and af a different sonnel and, even though there has been much co arder than American falklife studies in that aur tradi aperation between the North and South, there exists tianal heritage stretches back in an unbraken cantin the problem of different institutions, different funding uum to. 6000 B. C. when the fi rs t settlers entered narth sources and essentiall y different a reas af interest. As east Ireland. E. Estyn Evans defin es heritage "in bra ad will be shown in this paper, most of the work in the terms as the unwritten segment af human histary folk-cul tural sphere in the Republic of Ireland tends camprising man's physical, mental, sacial and cultural to be focused an oral tradition rather than material inheritance fram a prehistaric past, his oral traditians, cul ture, while I would suggest that the apposite situa beliefs, languages, arts and crafts.''' This would cer tion is the case in Northern I reland. There are, haw tainly seem appropriate to. I reland's heritage. Further ever, signs that this division is breaking down as the more, he suggests a three-way appro.ach to the study of wealth of m aterial in the Irish Folklore Commission regional persanality fram the paint of view of habitat, is being used by folklife scholars. Examples of this heritage, and history-an a pproach which is novel in will be given later in the paper. relation to the fragmentary work done in the past by I propose to divide the paper into sections, each historians and geographers.' In fact, Irish historians dealing with particul ar aspects of artifacts and tradi have practically completely ignared environmental tional culture. This is obviously far from being an studies in their preoccupation with elites, parliamentary ideal method of grouping topics which cantinually procedures, a nd political persanalities. E. E. Evans overlap and interact in any folk culture, but in the also makes the point that " the cl assic Christian tra di interests of order rather than chaos, it seems effi cacious tion which is our academic heritage tended to isolate to do so. The cl assification is by no means meant to man from Nature, to separate the humanities from the be definitive and is merely a working model. On the matter of scope, some thorny problems arise, lE o Estyn Evans, The Personality of Ireland (Cambridge, 197 3), p . 3. the discussion on which would exhaust m any volumes . 'Ibid. Classie suggests that a "folk thing" is traditional and non-popular; m aterial folk culture is composed of obj ects produced out of a non-popular tradition in proximity to. popular culture: H e also states, "The best student of falk culture is both fi eld worker ami theorist, and a modern study of material cul ture might include the detailed description and ordering of fi eld- 'Ibid., Chapter IV. '''Fo1klife Studies in Northern Ireland," J .F.!., II, 355. ' Henry Class ie, Pat tern in the M aterial Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia, 19.6 8 ), p. 6. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS I.F.C. Irish Folklore Commission Ulster hill farm, near Cushendall, County Antrim, showing l of F.I. Journal of the Folklore I nstitute lR.S.A.I. Journal of the R oyal S ociety of A ntiquarians the way in which the dwelling and outhouses in rural Ulster in Ireland farms are often built at right angles to the slope of the U .F. Ulster Folklil e ground. Ulster Folk Museum photograph. U.l Archeo. Ulster Journal of Archeo logy 2 data, the historic-geographic connections of types, con struction and uscs, as well ·as functional and psycholog ical consid erations."· Wikman also states, "The divid ing line between material and non-material objects Ulster hill farm from endall, structed at the Ulster Folk Museum in 1965. The dwelling seems no longer relevant. Man's bodily and mental has been rebuilt in the developed two-story form it assumed functions are to be considered together not only from around 1900. Following the Land Acts at the end of the a substantial point of view but also in methodological 19th Century by which many tenant farmers acquired questions. A 'material' ethnology (viz., ethnography) ownership of their holdings, the dwelling house was raised and a 'spiritual' folklore are only empty phrases with from its original single-story form and had a slate roof applied in place of the original thatch. The detached (upper) out a scientific basis .. the design of an artifact may suite of outhouses has had its original thatched roof rein be symbolical, magico-religious, ethical or aesthetical, stated.