Blúiríní Béaloidis 32 - Mushrooms In Tradition

With the coming of the cool wet weather of autumn, life begins to turn inward again . The fields lie fallow and bare, flowers wither, leaves decay, and all life seems to return to the earth. It's in this period of fading light, that strange and beautiful forms begin to arise from the undergrowth in the temperate regions all over Europe. In woodlands, fields, gardens and along roadsides, colourful fungi and mushrooms of all shapes and sizes quietly spring forth and flourish as if from nowhere, while all else appears in a state of decline.

A short entry in volume 1670 of the Main Manuscript Collection at the NFC contains information collected from around Ireland on the topic of mushrooms in folk tradition. The material contained in this volume, previously unpublished and explored in this podcast episode, explores traditional attitudes to mushrooms in Irish tradition and outlines their uses along with popular beliefs concerning them. Audio from the NFC sound archive also features, along with audio material from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the singing group Landless.

My thanks to archivist Danielle Castronovo at the Economic Botany Herbarium of Oakes Ames, Harvard University for her help in filling the gaps of some correspondence between R. Gordon Wasson and the Irish Folklore Commission. My thanks to archivist Maeve Gebreurs at the Irish Traditional Music Archive for forwarding Diane Hamilton's 1957 recording of Robert Cinnamond's rendition of the song 'Gathering Mushrooms'. Thanks likewise to Emmett Gill, archivist at Na Píobairí Uileann for pointing me in the direction of the collection of which this song is a part. Thanks too to Dónal Lunny, copyright holder, for permission to include this piece in the podcast.

A variety of sources are consulted and discussed throughout, some links below:

Prehistoric fungal representations in Tassili Algeria

https://www.britannica.com/place/Tassili-n-Ajjer

A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41242925

The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007153614800077

Dioscorides: De Materia Medica

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/materiamedica.html

Mushroom Artwork of Otto Marseus van Shrieck

https://bit.ly/3nEwy3n

Plutarch: Essays and Miscellanies

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3052/3052-h/3052-h.htm#link2HCH0065

The Hypothesis on the Presence of Entheogens in the

Eleusinian Mysteries

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327838578_The_hypothesis_on_the_presence_of_entheogens_in_the_Eleusinian_Mysteries

Mircea Eliade - Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691210667/shamanism

Nora Chadwick: Imbas Forosnai

http://searchingforimbas.blogspot.com/p/imbas-forosnai-by-nora-k-chadwick.html

An Irish Materia Medica: Tadhg Ó Cuinn

https://celt.ucc.ie//published/G600005/index.html

William Camden: Brittania

https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Camden/32

Seeking the Magic Mushroom: Life Magazine May 1957 (via MAPS.org)

https://bibliography.maps.org/bibliography/default/resource/15048

Tina and R. Gordon Wasson - Russia, Mushrooms and History (vols. 1, & 2) [PDF]

https://doorofperception.com/2015/04/r-gordon-wasson-seeking-the-magic-mushroom/

Audio featured from the Irish Traditional Music Archive:

https://itma.ie

Landless:

https://landless.bandcamp.com/

National Folklore Collection online portal:

https://dúchas.ie