Mapping the Cultural Geography of Sam Henry's Irish Song Archive

本研究以山姆亨利爱尔兰歌曲档案馆为研究对象，旨在分析亨利的歌曲收藏所建构的地方感的意义，并探讨地方如何影响歌曲的收集。使用文化地理的方法，我将探讨有关文化/区域特性在爱尔兰内的一个伟大的社会，政治和人口变化的时间后，成立于1921年的北方爱尔兰的问题。这使得该项目及时，因为它反映了目前在英国脱欧的担忧和影响中对北方爱尔兰身份和“文化”的重新评估。这些歌曲和歌词传达了一种感觉，即在北方爱尔兰形成后的几年里，社区是如何理解他们所在的地区以及他们在其中的地位的。正因为如此，我相信北方爱尔兰在其基础上的文化基础与2021年作为一个国家的百年纪念之间存在着当代历史平行的潜力。 山姆亨利，在北方爱尔兰的科尔雷恩社区的积极成员，从1921年起担任新成立的北爱尔兰政府的养老金官员，也是北方宪法报纸的记者。他在报纸上开设了一个名为《人民之歌》的专栏，收集并出版了1920年至1939年期间爱尔兰北部人民所熟知、演奏和演唱的民歌。该收藏品包含超过15，000件文物，其中大约800件是歌曲，由堤道海岸和格伦斯自治市理事会管理。整个收藏品最近已经数字化到niarchive.org上。在过去的十年里，通过阿尔斯特各地的社区研讨会和展览计划，档案馆获得了显著的认可，这为我开始对档案馆的学术分析铺平了道路。这些歌曲涵盖了广泛的主题和地点，从当地的村庄和河流到今天流行文化中更广泛存在的民歌版本，通常有不同的歌词。因此，亨利发表的歌词可以揭示很多关于歌曲所处的地方，空间和社区的感觉。

Working with the Sam Henry Irish song archive, my research aims to map and analyse the significance of the sense of place that Henry's collection constructs and examine how local place impacts upon the gathering of song. Using a cultural geographical approach, I will explore issues related to cultural/regional identity within Ireland at a time of great social, political, and demographical change following the establishment of Northern Ireland in 1921. This makes the project timely as it mirrors the current re-evaluation of what constitutes Northern Irish identity and "culture" amid the concerns and implications of Brexit today. The songs and lyrics convey a sense of how communities understood their local areas, and their place within them in, in the years directly following Northern Ireland's formation. Due to this I believe there is potential for a contemporary historical parallel between the cultural underpinnings of Northern Ireland in its foundation, and its centenary as a state in 2021. Sam Henry, an active member of the Coleraine community in Northern Ireland, worked as a pensions officer for the newly-formed NI government from 1921 onwards and was also a journalist for the Northern Constitution newspaper. He ran a weekly newspaper column known as Songs of the People in which he gathered and published the folk songs known, played, and sung by people across the north of Ireland between 1920-1939. The collection contains over 15,000 artefacts, roughly 800 of which are songs, and is managed by the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council. The whole collection has recently been digitalised onto niarchive.org. Over the last ten years the archive has gained significant recognition through a programme of community workshops and exhibitions across Ulster, which has prepared the way for my academic analysis of the archive to begin. The songs cover a wide array of themes and locales, from local villages and rivers to versions of folk songs which exist more widely in popular culture today, often with varying lyrics. As such, the lyrics published by Henry can reveal a lot about the sense of place, space and community in which the songs were situated.