In this Public Lecture to Cork Astronomy Club, Seán Mac an tSíthigh outlines his research on the manuscripts of the Irish Folklore Commission, collected between the 1930s and 1960s. Amongst the wealth of detail in this resource, there are snippets of lore that reference the night sky, echoes of an all but lost cultural heritage that disappeared under centuries of dominance of the Greco-Roman tradition in Western culture.

This lecture is available on Cork Astronomy Club’s YouTube Channel: Celestial Echoes: the Night Sky in Irish Folklore.

Image courtesy of TG4.

Seán Mac an tSíthigh is an award-winning video journalist with RTÉ and TG4. “I film, edit and tell stories.” He sources, films and edits his own news stories for RTÉ’s Six One and 9 News bulletins, as well as Nuacht RTÉ and Nuacht TG4, covering regional, national and international news. He also produces documentaries and films focused on the cultural and historical heritage of Ireland.

He is a native of Kerry, but completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees at University College Cork (UCC), where he studied aspects of folklore, in particular the placenames of Dún Urlann, at the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula, Kerry. He has authored many books and articles on aspects of Irish folklore and the history of Kerry, including a concertina book on the folk tale of the Bodach, featuring illustrations by Bob Ó Cathail, and published by Ponc Press.

He is currently researching the night sky in folklore, and the 19th century Kerry monks.