Éamon a Búrc

Who was Éamon a Búrc?

Éamon a Búrc was a tailor and Irish storyteller or seanchaí.

Born to an Irish-speaking family in Carna, County Galway, Ireland, Éamon a Búrc, was brought by his parents to Graceville, Minnesota in 1880. Their passage was paid for by Archbishop John Ireland, who wished to fill up the Minnesota prairie with Irish-American farm families. After a severe blizzard struck on 15 October 1880, the condition of the Connemara refugees became an international scandal. The a Búrc family was evicted from their claim and resettled in a Saint Paul, Minnesota shantytown which was dubbed the Connemara Patch. Éamon and his father went to work for the Great Northern Railway of James J. Hill. After losing a leg in a work related accident, Éamon returned to Ireland and went to work as a tailor at his home in the village of Aill na Brón, near his native Carna.

In the Fall of 1935, he was visited by Séamus Ó Duilearga and Liam Mac Coisdeala, representatives of the Irish Folklore Commission. They recorded his repertoire of legends and folk poetry on a collection of Ediphone cylinders. The recordings were later transcribed, filling more than 2,000 pages of manuscript.

The Encyclopaedia of Ireland states: "He was perhaps the finest storyteller collected from in the twentieth century. The longest folk-tale ever recorded in Ireland - taking three nights to tell and amounting to more than 30,000 words - was collected from him."