The People of Glenasmole
Meet some residents who form part of the tapestry of storytellers and stories in Glenasmole.
Members of the ICA (1991)
Women from the Irish Countrywomen's Asscoation published Bohernabreena: A Walk in Time, about the folklore and people living around the Bohernabreena Reservoir in Glenasmole.
John G. Lee (1906-1982)
Brother of Patty Lee.
Well-known for his poems about Glenasmole.
'Glenasmole' read by Frances O'Neill.
Maureen Bagnall, interviewed by Donncha O Dulaing, discusses extract from The History of Tallaght by Handcock on ‘Donncha’s Sunday’ (1989).
Voices of the Valley
The community of Glenasmole lives in a landscape shaped by stories and song. The valley's history is deeply rooted in the storytelling tradition, and the local people interact with the stories of their heritage throughout their daily lives. In this valley of storytellers, the people create the landscape as much as the landscape creates them. Locals of Glenasmole have drawn on different mediums of expression to reimagine the land and the stories that surround them.
Scroll up to discover some of the people of the valley, or scroll down to see how Glenasmole is remediated through different voices and mediums!
Remediating and Reimagining
Glenasmole's rich history and mythological past have a strong presence in the lives of its residents, and infuse their surroundings with eerie echoes of ancient communities and tales. Yet within this hauntological environment, how are landscape and identity understood by the community today?
Stories of the oral tradition have been obscured by the agency of time and uncertainty of memory, but the possibilities of imagination enter the gaps in knowledge that they create. Holly Rogers points out that fissures between worlds, thresholds and understanding can open up an invitation to create knowledge. Through transmedial storytelling and world-building, gaps in knowledge are addressed as one participates in the construction and completion of the story. Authorship is extended as people seek, create and explore new points of audition into a story through their own voices and creativity.
Through their remediations of history, myth and landscape, the people of Glenasmole have become transmedial storytellers. Drawing on both new media and traditional oral mediums of spoken word and song, Glenasmole's history is echoing with a chorus of new voices.
Discover some of these remediations below:
Rock to the Top
Organised and hosted by artist Ciarán Taylor, Rock to the Top was an immersive, community-building walking experience that invited the people of Glenasmole and South Dublin to participate in a multimedia retelling of 'Oisín i dTír na nÓg'. Running from June 2017 to June 2018, hundreds of participants traced Oisín's steps through the Dublin Mountains to Glenasmole as he had done to carry a large boulder to the peak. Together, the participants built a cairn with the boulders and rocks that they carried with them. As they travelled throughout the landscape, the group listened to each others' stories, reenacted the myth and played music together. Each stage of the journey was audiovisually documented so that the experience could be easily remembered and shared. This project provided an opportunity for people to immerse themselves into the myth and become active characters within it as they engaged with sound, music and landscape.
Transforming Traditions
Glenasmole's residents have transformed the storytelling tradition through the use of new and diverse mediums of expression and communication. The use of audiovisuality, multimedia, and digital technologies has enabled people to navigate their own points of audition into the stories and into the landscape. Each member of the community can reimagine their heritage and environment through a medium and expression that speaks to their own perspective and understanding. The use of digital media enables communication and engagement beyond the hills of the valley, and projects such as Rock to the Top extend the act of storytelling into a participatory and collaborative practice. In these ways, the nature of knowledge and communication as created through storytelling has been thoroughly altered; no longer are stories and history passed down linearly through a single authoritative voice and specific medium. The local histories and landscape of Glenasmole have been deauthorised, as narratives are fragmented and shaped by the creative voices of its residents. Through the use of multimedia, digital and audiovisual methods to expand the ways in which Glenasmole can be imagined, these storytellers have more control over how they relate to and construct their home and identity. The processes of these media hold the potential for the storyteller to become more self-reflexive and aware of the narratives that create our sense of the world around us. Yet through remediation, the people of Glenasmole tinge their environment and histories with individual experiences, perspectives and imagination, further blurring the distinctions between fact and fiction. The supposed boundaries between these types of knowledge become arbitrary, as all is blended in the formation of identity and understanding in the valley. The people continue to mythologize the land, stories and community that surround them, becoming part of the myths themselves. Everyone is a storyteller and everyone becomes part of the story.
Documenting the Story
Pressed flowers from Glenasmole, as recorded in Bohernabreena: A Walk in Time (1991)
What are the implications of audiovisual and digital mediums on the storytelling as an oral tradition? Do these new remediations impact on the authenticity or soul of the tradition? As many of the above examples show, the use of audiovisual and digital media in storytelling bring the process of knowledge creating and communicating into a more reflexive and documentary realm. As these different mediums are used, the story is often recorded and digitised as it is told. In the oral tradition, history, stories and knowledge were retained in folk memory. Stories were told in live performance, and were marked by and dissolved in that temporary moment. Does it seem paradoxical, or even destructive, to apply new digital mediums to the knowledge from a tradition defined by elusivity? New media have the power of freezing creative expressions and communications of knowledge in a particular time. In an interview for the documentary Dial-a-Seanchaí, Eddie Lenihan expressed that one of his primary goals as a traditional storyteller in the 21st century is the preservation of Ireland's ancient stories. Although he treasures the orality of the tradition, Lenihan also records the stories he encounters in books and audio recordings. Even when trying to remain faithful to traditions, it is the nature and necessity of them to change. Through digital mediums and new media, stories, memories, landscapes and people can continue to be engaged with and spread to an increasing number of storytellers and audiences.
Documenting creative projects at Glenasmole National School
Looking out my car window
Recording Glenasmole's farming practices in A Story of Farming in Tallaght
The paradoxes and implications of new media remediation parallel with my own experience and reflections on the process of recording aspects of local knowledge and culture for creative research. Like the digital storytellers of Glenasmole, I became part of the mythologising process as my documentation of the valley became a curated and creative narrative of knowledge which reflected my own research interests, perspective and decisions. I became part of the mythologising process as I inserted myself into the valley's landscape and story. Digital technologies are used not only in such documentations and remediations, but modern-day storytellers such as Eddie Lenihan draw on them to keep the tradition alive. There are perhaps less boundaries between the different modes of knowledge creation and communication than first appears. We are all storytellers, with a common goal to remember, share and experience over and over the stories of our lives, communities and landscapes.
A last breath, a final world...
The process of documenting the Glenasmole Valley was a deep learning experience in many ways and just as much an enriching one. My research was filled with questions to answer and information that needed further explanation, and I found myself navigating through and filling my own gaps in knowledge. Yet I was fortunate to have geographical and social connections to the valley, which opened up access to knowledge that could otherwise remain unknown to non-local visitors. I was directed to important sites with the help of families such as the Mahons and Joneses. I gained unique insights into local relationships with the valley, and heard new stories over cups of tea or at chance meetings along the road. While much of Glenasmole's history and landscape have become more visible through new mediums of creative expression and communication, there are many stories which remain hidden within the local community. Each resident holds their own collection of stories and knowledge, lying behind and often emerging in everyday conversation and communication. The people of Glenasmole are storytellers through and through.
