The Folklore of Wexford and The May Bush in County Wexford are two small, colorful books, with a picture or two on every page, that detail the rich folklore of Wexford, Ireland, focusing on calendar customs. In The Folklore of Wexford, Michael Fortune draws from his roots in Ballygarrett and his home in Ballindaggin as inspiration to collect a variety of folklore in County Wexford through two decades of fieldwork on the region, shedding light on local traditions as they are remembered and practiced today. In terms of the positionality of the researcher, the author’s close connection to the region gives him great insight into lore that an outsider would never think to ask about, as well as a diverse community of informants who are neighbors and friends. The book takes an encyclopedic approach to local folklore, with sections that are only two to four pages in length and that follow generally the ritual calendar in Ireland. The style of the writing is more conversational than in most academic books. The May Bush in County Wexford goes into depth on the May Bush tradition that the authors, Fortune and his wife Aileen Lambert, helped to revive by spearheading a May Bush festival in 2017. They cite the value of social media in the revival and local schools for practicing the tradition, and the book shares photographs that recent practitioners emailed to them.
Fortune begins The Folklore of Wexford by going into detail about the place names and family names in Wexford, also highlighting the stories of a local saint, St. Colman, and his well. He explores calendar customs such as ringing in the new year. Fortune highlights the fact that traditions are not necessarily passed on from long ago, and that neighbors might not even know of the same tradition while it is being practiced in other parts of the world. An interesting example of this is the custom of banging pots and pans at the stroke of midnight on the New Year, something I’ve participated in as a child in New Jersey, but that also appears to be popular in County Wexford. I appreciate that while Fortune explores the folklore peculiar to Wexford, he is inclusive of a range of folklore performed in Wexford that is found in other regions as well. He draws parallels particularly to connections between the folklore of Ireland and that found in Newfoundland, such as an Irish language New Year’s Eve prayer performed in both countries, and a Candlemas tradition found in Newfoundland that is not commonly performed in Ireland anymore. Interestingly, Fortune draws on some of his research in Buenos Aires about a building that replicates a church in Wexford.
Fortune also does some archival digging to underscore his fieldwork, citing the Schools’ Collection, available on duchas.ie, to demonstrate that the idea that the sixth of January being called “Women’s Christmas” is a newer idea, being referred to as “Little Christmas” 282 times and only 5 times as “Women’s Christmas” in the late 1930s. The May Bush in County Wexford contains several pages of Schools’ Collection transcripts and the authors’ comments. What’s so unique and engrossing about these books are the QR codes sprinkled throughout the pages, where you are linked to Youtube videos of the fieldwork interviews with folklore practitioners. In the case of Little Christmas customs, this links you to videos where elders explain traditions like the family gathering at dusk to burn out the Christmas candles, with the last candle standing being a sign of longevity for its respective family member.
I learned from this book that St. Brigid’s crosses were not a tradition found locally in Wexford, but rather in distant counties like Donegal and Clare. Fortune learns in his interviews with elders that they have no memory of making the crosses. It appears that teachers leading their students in the craft in the 1960s spread their popularity, as did the appearance of the St. Brigid’s cross on an early RTÉ, Irish language television, logo. In Wexford there is a tradition of making rush dolls for St. Brigid’s Day, and the author provides instructions and a video demonstrating how to make one of your own.
In The May Bush in County Wexford, we learn of the use of egg shells on the May Bush, the May Pole, related May Day traditions in Europe, the May King and Queen processions, Easter customs, May altars and flowers, and beliefs about the fairies, luck, and May dew and how this relates to agricultural cycles. This book contains many sections that are interview transcriptions rather than essays on the topics, giving us a sense of the way locals describe their folklore and the types of questions the authors asked in their fieldwork. At the end of the book are about a dozen May songs, some traditional and some composed by the authors and their friends.
Overall, these books would be useful to a scholar embarking on research in the Wexford area or to someone interested in studying the Irish ritual calendar. These books shed light on the folklore of Wexford that can only be gained by years of careful listening to stories with everyday people who practice customs found locally, nationally, and internationally. These books provide information on lesser-known Irish calendar customs in Wexford and their practice in other places, particularly Newfoundland. I would recommend these books for an introductory Irish folklore class, but not for an advanced-level class because they do not contain any folklore theory or overarching argument. Anyone with a connection to Wexford will cherish these books. Personally, I am glad to have them just to enjoy the descriptions of less commonly known traditions paired with the colorful imagery and videos, almost like pocket-sized coffee table books.
[Review Length: 957 words • Review posted on November 14, 2025]