Passing the Time: Folklore and History of an Ulster Community.
Author: GLASSIE, Henry.
Dublin: O’Brien Press, 1982. xx, 852 pages. Illustrated. Hardback.
A study of the small community of Ballymenone, Upper Lough Erne, County Fermanagh.
“Passing the Time is a vast, passionate, richly documented study of the folklife and cultural history of a community, and an inspired insight into the way of life of a people.
Glassie presents the community’s historical narratives, its stories and songs, describing and analysing its daily and yearly work routine. His book is the result of a patient and exhaustive seven year study of the common experience of a much misunderstood people living in the border counties of Ulster in Ireland.
At night in the open farmhouse kitchens neighbours gather to trade tea, talk and song. Before those soft turf fires the author began to learn the ways of the people. It is at the ceili that the community is formed and regenerated, where the storyteller is at work, and where the people draw widely from daily experience and deeply from their history.
Passing the Time is a big book, over 800 pages, with hundreds of photographs and fine drawings by Henry Glassie. It’s an important record, and a magnificent contribution to the study of Irish folklife. The book is at once an ethnography, a history, a cultural geography, an architectural history and a folklife archive.”
ISBN: 0862780152
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