Michael J. Murphy (1913–1996) was one of Ireland’s most dedicated folklore collectors — a writer, playwright and republican socialist whose life’s work was rooted in the people and landscape of Slieve Gullion and South Armagh.
Life
Born in Liverpool to Irish parents, Murphy returned to his ancestral home of Dromintee in South Armagh as a child and never truly left. The rugged country around Slieve Gullion — its stories, its characters, its stubborn sense of itself — became the bedrock of everything he wrote and collected.
Murphy worked for the Irish Folklore Commission (now the National Folklore Collection, UCD) for decades, travelling the back roads of Ulster to record the oral traditions, superstitions, folk cures, songs and stories of ordinary people before they were lost. He had an extraordinary gift for gaining the trust of his informants — farmers, labourers, old women who remembered — and for capturing their voices on the page exactly as he found them.
His wife Alice was a constant and indispensable presence in his work, her contribution long overlooked but now recognised as essential to what he achieved.
Writer and Playwright
Murphy was not only a collector but a writer of fiction and drama. His play Men On The Wall drew on the social tensions of border life in South Armagh, and his short fiction is populated with the same world he documented in his field notebooks — sharp, funny, melancholy, alive with the vernacular of the place.
He was a notably progressive voice on the question of women’s lives and roles — unusual for his time and place — and his work is increasingly recognised for that quality.
The Folklore
Among the riches Murphy collected are pisthogues — the superstitions and folk beliefs of South Armagh — including the story of the Goat Men of South Armagh, a piece of local legend that has endured in the community’s memory. His notebooks record a world of cures, curses, seasonal customs and uncanny tales that might otherwise have vanished entirely.
Legacy
Murphy died in 1996. His archive — over 60 boxes of manuscripts, field notes, correspondence and recordings — was donated to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) by Cuimhneamh in 2025, where it is now preserved and accessible to researchers.
The Michael J. Murphy Winter School, held annually every November, continues to explore the themes he cared most about: social justice, folk history, and the living culture of South Armagh.
Cuimhneamh is dedicated to making Murphy’s digitised archive available to the widest possible audience. You can browse the digitised manuscripts or listen to the podcast series exploring his life and work.