Irish Folklore Drought Impacts Database (IFDID) v. 1.0

The Irish Folklore Drought Impacts Database (IFDID) collates information about Irish Droughts recorded in the digitised records of The School’s Collection of the Irish National Folklore Collection. The School’s Collection compiled folklore and local tradition collected by pupils in primary schools across what is now the Republic of Ireland between 1937 and 1939. The digitised images of the original copybook pages are available to search and view, freely online via www.duchas.ie. The School’s Collection was systematically searched to identify information about drought periods and each account was assessed and categorised using a modified version of the classification scheme employed by the European Drought Impact Inventory (EDII) (Stahl et al. 2012). 

Accounts range from the early 1800s to the end of 1938. Spatial details are provided on three different levels, in addition to Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics Level 2 (Nuts2) regions, county location, and if available, a more localised place name (e.g. town or city name) are also recorded. Each account is a rich, empirical source based on personal experiences or local oral tradition. These textual accounts are often temporally and geographically specific, and they provide detailed information about the personal, everyday impacts that sustained drought periods wrought on families, communities, livestock, crops, and the surrounding natural landscapes and wildlife. However, as with all sources based on individual or community recollection, care should be taken in any analysis to fully consider the impact of memory, the time between the event and the recording, and the perceived audience the informants believed they were speaking to. This new open access tool offers significant potential for multi-disciplinary investigation of drought periods across Ireland offering a unique window into the first-hand, lived experiences of drought impacts in the past and highlighting the mitigation strategies that were adopted. It can also be used as a companion to the newspaper derived Irish Droughts Impact Database (IDID) available via https://zenodo.org/records/7216126.