One day the post brings the treasured annual Bealoideas from the Department of Irish Folklore at University College, Dublin, and the next an invitation to a celebration of the centenary, on 26th May, of the birth of James Hamilton Delargy, one of the men of this century who have left - to his own generation and every generation since and far into the future - a legacy that must never be forgotten. Maire Mac Neill, author of that monumental and lively book The Festival of Lughnasa, pays her own tribute: "My debt to Seamus O Duilearga is boundless. He made a vanished world visible to me . . . To his vision and wholehearted dedication and to his genius for eliciting sympathy, enthusiasm and co-operation, Ireland owes the salvaging of her popular traditions and a new treasury of source materials complementary to other manuscript collections in Dublin."
Seamus O Duilearga or James Hamilton Delargy was born in Co Antrim, in Cushendall, and when his father died the mother moved the family to Dublin after a few years in Glenariffe. Delargy went from Castleknock to University College, Dublin, and worked as assistant to Dr Douglas Hyde, Professor of Modern Irish. A jump, then, to 1927, when the Folklore of Ireland Society was formed and the publication Bealoideas was launched as an annual of Irish folklore. Delargy edited it from 1928 to 1970. An old hand in The Irish Press, who lived near Delargy, always remembered the man's exuberance and good nature. He more than once invited the reporter around to meet scholars and folklorists from abroad. One such professor (from Iceland, he thought) brought with him for Delargy a substance called hardfiskur. It looked rather like the ling and other fish the people of Donegal dried on the rooftops in summer . . . But it had another use apart from the table: you chewed it during the day like chewing gum.
The same reporter was often kept up to date on Delargy's travels around Ireland, and on one occasion wrote that the famous folklorist would put his fishing rod in the back of the car as he went his way. "Please don't do that again," said Delargy (perhaps more forcibly than in those words), "or the Department of Finance will say I'm using official money to finance my trout fishing." He was a serious scholar and he was always fun, splendid company for people of all sorts. One of the great Irishmen of this century, and an inspiring leader of many gifted fellow-scholars. Y
The column which appeared in yesterday's editions was published in error.