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Paper short abstract

Extracting the forgotten contributions of folklore collector, Kathleen Hurley, from the gender gaps in Ireland’s National Folklore Collection, required searching the boundaries of archival absences. This paper considers the potential of liminal fragments to challenge and to bridge archival absences.

Paper long abstract

In Irish folklore, women often dwell in or near liminal spaces, or through them, just out of sight. This is reflected in Ireland’s prodigious National Folklore Collection (NFC), where the role, contributions and lore of Irish women largely remain obscured, absent, or in the periphery. Founded in 1935 by the Irish Folklore Commission, the NFC archive conceals its scant female contributions with the enduring shroud of its androcentric origins and structures. Concealed primarily by disinterest and neglect, 3,000 pages of material gathered by an exceptional, female folklore collector, Kathleen Hurley, mouldered in the archive for nearly a century. Buried in misconceptions, misplacements, and misogyny, exhuming Kathleen Hurley’s material has required engaging not only with absences, but with traces, remnants, and clues. This paper considers preliminary outcomes from exploring the murky, messy liminal spaces at the fringes of archival absence in conducting the first comprehensive academic study of a female folk-lore collector for the Irish Folklore Commission. Investigating Kathleen Hurley’s contributions necessitated delving into and beyond both her overlooked and her missing material, into the fringes where entangled vestiges remain bound in inconsistences, restrictions, and errors, alongside uncontrolled and uncatalogued material. Too often, that which is found in the margins is deemed marginal in nature and significance. Through Kathleen Hurley’s inestimable contributions to the NFC, this paper aims to illuminate archival boundaries as a sources of revelatory liminal fragments that have the potential to challenge and to bridge archival absences.