‘Timeless Wisdom: What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves’
An essential tool for students of Irish society, folklore and proverbs, ‘Timeless Wisdom: What Irish Proverbs Tell Us about Ourselves’, is a unique exploration of the psychology of Irish proverbs or seanfhocail.
Written by Aidan Moran, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology Research Laboratory in the School of Psychology at UCD, and Dr Michael O’Connell, Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at UCD, this scholarly work took over two years to research.
"One way we can use Irish proverbs to try and understand our collective psyche better is to compare them with those from other countries”, says Professor Moran, “and there certainly seems to be more about death and fatalism in our stock of proverbs in contrast to the self-help messages in the US, which tend to be very positive.”
Prof Moran says this might be explained by our past as feudal peasants. “You worked the lands and paid rent to your landlord, so what was the point of working harder, when that would just mean you paid the landlord even more rent? This anti-self improvement mentality can be found in phrases like 'It's not what you know, it's who you know' - a kind of resignation that, no matter what you do, your destiny is pre-determined."
Prof Moran and Dr O’Connell admit that they were surprised at the persistently negative attitude to women in Irish proverbs. “I looked at proverbs from Italy, Poland, Russia, England and the misogyny definitely seemed to be stronger in Ireland than elsewhere”, says Dr O’Connell. “One possible explanation for this is the powerlessness of males in Gaelic society until relatively recently. They rented, rather than owned land, and they had little say in the way society was run. There might have been a bit of 'frustration displacement' in which the anger they felt at their lot in life was taken out on women.”
As regards their relevance today, Dr O'Connell feels that people have less faith now in proverbs, probably because they have less need for them. "Proverbs were used as a primary source of information, but this is not the case any more, mainly because there are so many other sources available to us".
‘Timeless Wisdom: What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves’ is published by UCD Press. Paperback, 208 pp. illustrated, €20
Click here to buy the book from UCD Press
