Edmund Lenihan

Life
1951- [Eddie Lenihan in story-books; Edmund in books for adults]; b. Co Kerry [var. Co. Clare]; ed. NUI Galway (MA in phonetics); collector and teller of Irish stories, ultimately holding the largest such tape-collection in private hands in Irelan;ding-school], Co. Limerick and latterly retired with epilepsy-type condition; presented 12-part RTÉ “Storyteller” series, 1986, followed by “Ten Minute Tales” in 1987-88; m. Mary, with whom six children; a son is completing a PhD on fairy tales at Reading; Lenihan cultivated a distinctive long grey weird in his seanachie role; he has told his stories internationally at venues including the Smithsonian in Washington.

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Works
Fiction [stories]
  • Long Ago by Shannonside (Cork: Mercier Press 1982, 2002) [tales of seanachie Jimmy Armstrong].
  • Irish Tales for Children (Cork: Mercier Press 1987).
  • Finn MacCumhail and the Baking Hags (Cork: Mercier Press 1993).
  • A Spooky Irish Tale for Children (Cork: Mercier Press 1997).
  • Gruesome Irish Tales for Children (Cork: Mercier Press 1997), 126pp.
  • Stories of Old for Children (Cork: Mercier Press 1998).
  • Humorous Tales for Children (Cork: Mercier 1998).
  • Rowdy Tales for Children (Cork: Mercier Press 2001).
  • Irish Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Cork: Mercier Press 2006), q.pp.;
  • Strange Tales for Children; &c.
Non-fiction (for adults)
  • In Search of Biddy Early (Cork: Mercier Press 1987).
  • In the Track of the West Clare Railway (Cork: Mercier Press1990).
  • Ferocious Irish Women (Cork: Mercier Press 1991) [reiss. as Defiant Irish Women - see note].
  • The Savage Pigs of Tulla (Cork: Mercier Press 2000), 160pp.
Poetry
  • A Loss of Face and Other Poems (Inchicronan Press 1983).
  • The Portrait Gatherer (Inchicronan Press 1984).
  • Even Iron Men Die (Inchicronan Press 1985).

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Criticism
Shirley Kelly, ‘Children Want Blood and Guts’, interview in Books Ireland (Dec. 2006), p.276.

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References
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin: gill & Macmillan 1994), extracts from ‘Alice Kyteler’ and ‘Aoibheall, the Banshee’, in Ferocious Irish Women (Mercier 1991)

[See Eddie Lenihan Story-Teller - online [accessed 07.09.2023.]

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Notes
All changed: Ferocious Irish Women (Mercier 1991) was reissued as Defiant Irish Women (Mercier 1993), with chapters on Aoibheall the banshee, Máire Rua McMahon, Lady Betty (the Roscommon hangwoman), Moll Shaughnessy-Spiorad na mBearnan and Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny.

Ferociously defiant: Lenihan’s book on Ferocious Irish Women (Mercier 1991) appeared with an introduction saying: "In our time when attention is being paid more to aspects of women as individuals and to their role in society than before, it may be appropriate to pause a moment and question the generally-held view that women in previous ages were voiceless, subservient creatures, merely part of that silent anonymous mass of humanity that has had precious few chronicles" and roll-calling the fame or notoreity of the "five ferocious women with distinct places in history, all examined in this book" - viz., "Aoibheall the banshee, protector of the O’Brien clan; Maire Rua McMahon, a virago, feared and avoided because of her exactions and depredations; Lady Betty, the Roscommon hangwoman, lovingly performing her grisly work; Moll Shaughnessy-Spio ra id na mBearnan - terrifying spectre to all foolish enough to pass the lonesome heights of Barna by night; and Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, tried and convicted of witchcraft".

An American printing came out with the same title at the original date (Ferocious Women, Irish Amer Books 1991, 128pp.) However, collection was later reissued as Defiant Irish Women (Mercier 2019) in the ‘updated version’ but without any alterations in the text or changes to the introduction. In the publisher’s notice for this newly-christened edition we are told that the book is ’beautifully written, in a way that reflects the time periods of the stories but still contemporary’ and that ’Lenihan’s respect for women shines brightly in his words.’[Amazon Books - online; accessed 07.09.2023.] 

Readers’ reviews reflect the idea that the stories are well-written and based on research which belies their character as stories for children - not for the faint-hearted, we hear in one place. [E.g., Irish Pagan School - online; accessed 07.09.2023.]

Claddagh Records gets to grips with the thorny question of the title of Lenihan’s book on legendary and historic Irish women with killer instinct in a CD collection called Six Terrible Women which comprises of seven tales (Petticoat Loose, the Dalcassian Banshee, Máire Rua (‘Red Mary’) McMahon, Biddy Early thwarts the Good People, Biddy Early - The Impossible Choice, Spioraid na mBearnan and The Lady in White), affirming ‘that the six women whose stories are recounted here are ‘terrible’ in the sense that, rightly or wrongly, many people were terrified of them. Whether they were good or bad in a moral sense I leave to those qualified to decide - or better still, to the individual listener! What is certain is that they were all remarkable in their own way and have been, accordingly, remembered down the generations.’ [Phaeton Records; spoken word; q.d.]

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