Life
1905-1989
[Emyr Estyn]; b. Shrewsbury, educated Welshpool Country School and proceeded
on scholarship to the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he studied
under H. J. Fleure; BA 1925; lectureship at QUB, 1928, given task of building
a new department of geography; Chair of Geography, 1945-68, the first
such academic post in Ireland; chairman of Ancient Monuments Council;
co-fnd. Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, Co. Down, 1963; first
[honorary] appt. first Director of Institute of Irish Studies, 1970 [unconfirmed
var. 1968-1970]; President Institute of British Geographers, and of the
Archaeology and Geography sections of British Association for the Advancement
of Science; Victorian Medal of Royal Geographical Society and Merit Award
of Association of American Geographers; made extensive excavations at
the late Neolithic site at Lyles Hill in Co. Antrim; described traditional
life in Ireland as ‘a treasure-house of old ways unrivalled elsewhere
in western Europe’; associated with E. T. Green, Oliver Davies, and
Dame D. Parker in calling for the creation of the Ulster Folk and Transport
Museum (est. by Westminster, 1958); Personality of Ireland (1973), reflecting
invasionist ideas developed by Cyril Fox from the 1920s, distinguishing
lowland and highland zones as areas of relative penetrability (vide, Personality
of Britain, 1959) together with H. J. Fleure’s concept of an
Atlantic zone; engaged in controversy with Ruairdhrí de Valera
over direction of ‘court tomb’ people’s migration, holding
Scotland to be the origin of the pattern; identified the conflict between
native and newcomer as ‘the clash that struck the sparks of Irish
culture’ (The Common Ground); retired from QUB, 1970; first
director of Institute of Irish Studies. DUB OCIL FDA
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Works
Monographs, France: A Geographical Intoduction (London 1937);
Irish Heritage (Dundalk: W Tempest 1942); Mourne Country: Landscape
and Life in South Down, with drawings by the author (Dundalk: Dundalgan
Press [W. Tempest] Ltd. 1951; rev. edn. 1961; ep. 1967), 226pp. [ded.
to Robert Lloyd Praeger and “Richard Rowley”; infra];
Irish Folk Ways (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1957; 2nd edn.
1961) [infra]; Prehistoric and Early Christian
Ireland (1966); The Personality of Ireland, Habitat, Heritage and
History (London: Cambridge UP 1973, 1976; rev. edn. Belfast: Blackstaff
1981; 3rd ed., Lilliput 1992), 144pp. [with new bibliography]; , ‘The
Northern Heritage’, Aquarius, No. 4 (1971), pp.51-6; with
Brian S. Turner, Ireland’s Eye: The Photographs of Robert John
Welch (Blackstaff 1977), sel. with comm. [intro.] by Evans; The
Irishness of the Irish (Belfast: Irish Assoc. for Cult., Econ. &
Social Relations 1968), rep. as The Irishness of Ireland and Other
Writings, intro. Gwyneth Evans, afterword by John Campbell (Dublin:
Lilliput Press 1995), 256pp.; Ulster: The Common Ground [Lilliput
Pamphlets 12] (Mullingar 1984) [first written as a talk entitled ‘Understanding
Ourselves’, given at Benburb; rep. as ‘The Northern Heritage’
in Aquarius 1971]; Northern Ireland, with gazetteer by Hugh
Shearman (London: Collins 1951), 92pp. ill.; Last Essays in Irish and
European Culture (Dublin: Lilliput 1994), 280pp.; Hymning the Occident:
Ireland and Atlantic Europe: Selected Writings (Dublin: Lilliput
Press 1996), 288pp.
Reprint edns., Ireland and Atlantic Europe: Selected Writings (Lilliput Press 1996), 288pp.; foreword by Henry Glassie, with memoir by Gwyneth Evans and epilogue by John Campbell; includes bibliography; publishers notice [31 May 1996] notes his connection with Carl Sauer of Berkeley and Fernand Braudel of the Sorbonne in their respective work on Mexico and the Mediterannean; also notes the ‘sheer quality of his prose and poetic imager’.
Articles, ‘Belfast, The Site and the City’, in The Ulster Journal of Archaeology [3rd series] Vol. 7 (1944); ‘Ecology of Peasant Life in Western Europe’ [Wenner Gren Foundation Intern. Symposium] (NJ: Princeton 1955); ‘The Atlantic Ends of Europe’, in The Advancement of Science, 58 (1958); ‘Folklife Studies in Northern Ireland’, in Journal of Folklore Institute, 2 (1965); ‘Archaeology and Folklife’, in Béaloideas, No. 41 (1973), pp.127-39; ‘The Early Development of Folklife Studies in Northern Ireland, in A. Gailey, ed., The Use of Tradition, Essays Presented to G. B. Thompson (1988).
Bibliographical
details
Irish Folk Ways by E. Estyn Evans [Professor
of Geography, Queen’s University, Belfast] (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul 1957), 324pp. CONTENTS [2nd imp.], Preface [xiii]; Ireland:
The Outpost [1]; From Forest to Farmland [13]; Bally and Booley [27];
The Thatched House [.39]; Hearth and Home [59]; Pots and Pans [72]; Furniture
and Fittings [85]; Farmyards and Fences [100]; Kilns and Clochauns [114];
Plough and Spade [127]; Lazy-Beds [140]; Harvest [151]; Cars and Carts
[165]; Turf and Slane [181]; Home-Made Things [199]; Wrack and Wreck [218];
Boats and Fishing [233]; Fairs and Gatherings [253]; Fixed Festivals [267];
Weddings and Wakes [282]; Old Pishrogues [295]; Bibliography and Abbreviations
[307]; Index [313]. Photos by R. J. Welch and W. A. Green, et al. [91
ills.]
Mourne Country: Landscape and Life in South Down, with drawings by the author (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press [W. Tempest] Ltd. 1951). CONTENTS: Hills and the Sea; The MounTains; The Lowlands; In the Beginning; How the Mountains Took Shape; Drumlins and Eskers; The Wind and the Rain; High among he Heather; Birds, Beasts and Fishes; Giants’ Graves; Raths and Saints; Normans and Planters; Field and Farm; Boolies and Blaeberries; Wrack Harvest; Luggers and Long Lines; The Stone men; Pedlars and Smugglers; Home Crafts; House and Hearth; The Elder Faiths; The Call of the Mournes; 4 appendices on Inventory of Prehistoric Burial Sites; ballads of Mourne; Place-names; Walking and climbing in the Mournes; xvii plates; 93 ills.
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Criticism
R. Buchanan, ‘The Achievement of Estyn Evans’, in Gerald Dawe
& J. W. Foster, eds., The Poet’s Place: Ulster Literature
and Society (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1991), pp.146-56 [see also under Hewitt].
Virginia Crossman and Dymphna McLoughlin, ‘A Peculiar Eclipse, E. Estyn Evans and Irish Studies’, Irish Review, 15 (Spring 1994), p.79-96.
W. J. Smith and Kevin Whelan, eds., Common Ground, Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland (Cork UP 1988).
B. J. Graham and L. J. Proudfoot, ‘A Perspective on the Nature of Irish Historical Geography’, in An Historical Geography of Ireland (Cambridge UP 1993).
Brian Graham, ‘The Search for the Common Ground: Estyn Evan’s Ireland’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers [n.s.], Vol. 19, No. 2 (1994), pp.183-201.
G. B. Thompson, ‘Estyn Evans and the Development of the Ulster Folk Museum’, in D. McCourt & A[ndrew] Gailey, eds., Studies in Folklife presented to Emyr Estyn Evans (197?); ‘Tory Island, A Living Fossil’, review of The Tory Islanders: A People of the Celtic Fringe (Cambridge UP 1979).
Thomas Bartlett, et al., eds., Irish Studies: A General Introduction (1988).
Kevin Whelan, ‘The Basis of Regionalism’, in Prionsais Ó Drisceoil, ed., Culture in Ireland, Regions, Identity and Power [Proceedings of the Cultures of Ireland Group Conference, 27-29 Nov. 1992] (QUB: Inst. of Irish Studies 1993), pp.42-43, p.49.
John Robb, ‘Hegemonic Megaliths’, in Irish Studies Review, 7, 1 (April 1999), pp.6-11.
Matthew Stout, ‘Emyr Estyan Evans and Northern Ireland: the Archaeology and Geography of a New State’, in J. A. Atkinson, et al., eds., Nationalism and Archaeology (Cruithne Press 1996).
Terence Brown, Northern Voices (1975), 238.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish
Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: 581, F. S. Lyons,
‘The Burden of Our History’, a lecture, Belfast 1978, arguing
that the revisionist revolution has not been sufficiently thorough going
and needs to extend to economic, social, cultural, and history of ideas.
‘[W]hen we look beyond that [i.e., Kenneth Connell, pioneer in Irish
economic history, with Population of Ireland, 1756-1845 OUP 1950] - to
social history, cultural history, history of ideas - the poverty of what
we have to offer is deeply disturbing. It is not long since Prof. Estyn
Evans, in his Wiles Lectures, castigated Irish historians en masse for
their neglect, not only of these matters, but of the physical environment
within with our past has been lived. "It has been my contention ... that
historical studies would be enriched if they paid more attention to the
habitat and heritage and that closer co-operation with geography and anthropology
would be fruitful ... to this specialist in the history of restricted
periods it may well appear that the most powerful forces in history are
individual personality and free will ... On the larger view ... I believe
the personality of society is a powerful motive force and that its finds
expression in the cultural landscape." (Personality of Ireland: Habitat,
Heritage and History (Belfast: Blackstaff 1981, pp.87-88). Unfortunately
the case is much worse than Prof. Evans imagined ... &c.’ BIBL:
Gen. Bibl. cites Irish Folk Ways (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul 1957), under Folkore; and Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage
and History (Cambridge UP 1973), under Historical geography.
Lilliput Press (Cat. 1995) lists Hymning the Occident, The Irishness of Ireland and Other Writings, intro. Gwyneth Evans, afterword by John Campbell (Lilliput 1995), 256pp., and cites also France 91937); Irish Heritage (1942); Mourne Country (1951); Irish Folk Ways (1957); Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland (1967); The Personality of Ireland (1973; rev. 1992).
John Wilson Foster attributes elements in Heaney to reading of
Estyn Evans’s Irish Heritage (1942) and Irish Folk Ways
(1957); see Foster in The Critical Quarterly (Spring 1974),
pp.36-47; cited in Terence Brown, Northern Voices, 1975, p.175).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)