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Sat 03 Mar 2007Diary of a culture collectorThe travel journal of Séamus Ennis, legendary recorder of Irish stories and music, is a rich record of another era, writes Pól Ó MuiríThe convention that diaries are intimate manuscripts for the eyes of the author only has long since been abandoned. The contemporary diary should be salacious or controversial. Beans must be spilt; reputations (even of the diarist) must be shredded. Séamus Ennis's travel journal, Mise an Fear Ceoil (I am the music man) does no such thing; his is an altogether more quiet affair, describing his journeys (I won't say adventures) as a collector for the Irish Folklore Commission, founded in 1935. Ennis's speciality was music and song and he spent the years 1942-1946 as a full-time field operative, working in Galway, Donegal, Mayo, Clare and, for a short while, Cavan and Limerick. The diary is almost entirely in Irish, bar a few English entries about English-speaking areas.