Henry Glassie
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Wednesday, 21 May 2025 at 1.30 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BAIRBRE NÍ FHLOINN, School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore on 21 May 2025 on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Arts, honoris causa on HENRY HAYWOOD GLASSIE III
A Uachtaráin, a mhuintir na hOllscoile agus a dhaoine uaisle,
It is with great pleasure that we gather here today to celebrate the work of Professor Henry Glassie, and it's a great privilege for me to give this address in his honour. Ócáid an-speisialta í agus fáiltíonn muid ó chroí roimh an ngradam seo. Indeed, it's a source of particular satisfaction for me to see Professor Glassie’s remarkable achievements acknowledged and honoured by the University in which I spent my own working life. It should also be said at the outset that today's award is due in large part to the tireless efforts of poet and playwright, Vincent Woods, formerly also of UCD and a close friend of Professor Glassie and his wife, Pravina, for many years, and I'm really speaking on behalf of both of us here today.
In a piece Professor Glassie wrote some years ago about Emyr Estyn Evans, the pioneering geographer-historian and ethnologist, he described Estyn Evans as 'one in a tiny aristocracy of the mind who created the intellectual world we inhabit and whose writings will inspire scholars yet unborn.' The same can truly be said of Professor Glassie and his work, and I hope he will forgive me for borrowing his elegant accolade and turning it back on himself. It was so apt that I couldn't resist it.
Professor Glassie’s work has not only reshaped the field of folklore studies but also deepened our collective understanding of the cultural fabric that unites and defines us as human beings. He is a tireless advocate for the importance of folklore in understanding the human experience and in the creation of a more democratic history. In his work on the folklore of Ireland, his contribution has been exceptional. Having lived in Ballymenone, Co. Fermanagh, for almost a decade from the early 1970s, he published a number of books inspired by the people of that place and their neighbours, including All Silver and No Brass: an Irish Christmas Mumming, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: culture and history of an Ulster community, and The Stars of Ballymenone. These publications are landmark works which have become classic texts for students of folklore in Ireland and abroad, along with many other items on Professor Glassie’s very long list of publications. More than that, however, these books are a celebration of the human spirit and a call to preserve the cultural heritage that binds communities together. And as this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of Professor Glassie's first major study of Irish folklore, All Silver and No Brass, it is particularly appropriate for UCD to honour him at this time. It is also only fitting for UCD to acknowledge and celebrate the work of Professor Glassie, given his long-standing links with the University, and especially with the National Folklore Collection and its predecessors, as indicated by Professor Glassie himself in a number of his publications where he specifically makes mention of my former colleagues in the Department of Irish Folklore, Bo Almqvist, Séamas Ó Catháin, Kevin Danaher, Seán Ó Súilleabháin, Ríonach uí Ógáin, Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh, Patricia Lysaght and Michael J. Murphy.
Throughout his canon of work, Professor Glassie brings the many and varied strands of Folklore together – from material culture to oral literature and from social tradition to otherworldly elements – in a way that makes perfect sense. In my own experience, I remember how delighted I was when I discovered his writings on the advent of modernity and the concept of privacy in relation to the differing forms of Irish vernacular architecture. All of a sudden, everything simply fell into place for me. He has a knack of doing that ...
Most importantly, a profound sense of humanity lies at the centre of all Professor Glassie's work, the deep respect he has for the people he writes about coming across loud and clear on every page. The stories he records are not merely data to be analyzed but the lived experiences of real people. 'Friends' as he says 'are worth more than books'. Never distant or dispassionate, his studies are rich in nuance, subtlety and sensitivity, but also with a lightness of touch and a sharp wit as the occasion might require.
It should be said too that Professor Glassie's work in Irish Folklore has been underpinned by a keen awareness and appreciation of the broader sweep of Irish culture, especially Irish literature. He has commented himself on this, and tells us 'I was not brought into Ireland by a sentimental, genealogical search. My ancestors, many of them, were Irish, but my identity is regional, not ethnic, and Ireland beckoned me through its excellence, in particular the excellence of its writers: W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Seán O' Casey, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett' and others. On this point, and as Vincent Woods has noted, the Co. Monaghan writer, Pat McCabe, has commented about The Stars of Ballymenone that 'In its small, gigantic scope [it] is the equal of Heaney and Faulkner.' It is also worth noting here that Professor Glassie's book All Silver and No Brass helped to inspire Vincent in the writing of his hugely successful and award-winning play, At the Black Pig's Dyke, a play that has carried mumming and part of the story of Ireland to many parts of the world.
With his breadth of vision, Professor Glassie has rendered invaluable service to our understanding of Irish popular tradition and vernacular culture, and he can truly be described as a towering figure in the study of Irish Folklore for more than half a century. Even in retirement, he remains to this day a staunch and committed friend to Ireland and to the people he worked with while carrying out his fieldwork here.
And yet, astonishingly, Professor Glassie's work in Ireland is only part of the story. He has also done extensive fieldwork, and published widely, on the vernacular traditions of Turkey, Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Japan and Nigeria, as well as his ground-breaking work in his own country, the United States. In many of these places, the value of his work has been acknowledged by awards and honours from a range of academic institutions, government ministries, and other bodies. Since the 1980s, he has been Professor at Indiana University in Bloomington in a number of subject areas, including Folklore. Professor Glassie’s achievements have received widespread acknowledgement outside of academia also, including his appointment by President Bill Clinton to the United States National Council on the Humanities. And this might be a good juncture at which to mention that the former American ambassador to Ireland, Claire Cronin, has asked that her warmest congratulations be conveyed to Professor Glassie on the occasion of this conferring. She couldn't be here today herself, but she sent us the following message:
Professor Henry Glassie has made a sterling contribution to the study of Irish popular culture and tradition, and to the subject area of Irish Studies as found in universities throughout the world. His work in Ireland embodies truths about human culture which are applicable universally and which resonate in places and communities far removed from Ireland and the area of Ballymenone. He represents American scholarship at its finest and his work demonstrates what that scholarship can achieve, in Ireland and elsewhere. For that, we offer him our sincere thanks and salute him today on this happy occasion.
At this point, I would like to quote Vincent Woods who was, as I mentioned earlier, central to bringing about the award of this degree to Professor Glassie today. Vincent has written as follows:
Professor Glassie is a citizen and scholar of the world, an outstanding figure in international folklore and ethnology. His books are a veritable library of the original, mixing photography, drawing and his own designs with exquisite prose and brilliantly structured narratives that unfold like works of literature. He has a rare gift of recognising and celebrating what appears small and local, acknowledging art and naming it anew.
On this last point, and before I finish, I would like to quote Professor Glassie again, drawing once more from his tribute to the work of Estyn Evans. There, he writes as follows:
Start here ... in this place, muddy beneath the feet, cloudy overhead, green upon the eye. Situating ourselves on particular earth, we prevent abstractions from carrying us away and tangling us in the filaments of our obsessions ... Behind the measurable, depictable face of things, lies the dynamic revealed by analysis, the dialectic of environmental and historical forces, blent by will, managed by human beings. The locale, its personality, is the yield of human enterprise, deserving understanding and, like any work of art, appreciation.
In the same piece, Professor Glassie makes an observation which is particularly pertinent to the times we live in, and which is, I think, worth quoting today for that reason. He writes:
Our differences should be held as precious and nurtured in education, for in providing us natural resistance to the mediocrity of the age, the diversity of our cultural inheritance holds an essential resource for adjustment to future change.
In conclusion, it can surely be said that Professor Glassie's contribution to the field of Folklore and Ethnology is immense and will most certainly increase in value as the years go by. Today, as we honour Professor Glassie, we celebrate not only his academic achievements but also his profound connection to Ireland and its people. In his writings, he has illuminated the depth and complexity of Irish folklore, ensuring that the voices of ordinary people, like those of Ballymenone, are heard and remembered. We owe him a debt of gratitude for his imagination, his world-view and his vision, and for the kindness and humanity which shines through all his work. Ár mbuíochas ó chroí leat as an éacht atá bainte amach agat, a Ollaimh Glassie. Nár laga Dia do láimh agus go maire tú an céad!
For his outstanding contribution to the study of Irish Folklore and Ethnology, University College Dublin is delighted to award this Honorary Doctorate to Professor Glassie.
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Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Artibus; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.