A French military expedition under General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert (1767–1823) came ashore at Killala on the 22 August 1798 to assist Irish insurgents; the rest is history. In Remembering the Year of the French Guy Beiner argues that it is not just history, however, but folklore as well. Folklore is the main source and inspiration for this unorthodox and intriguing treatment of one of orthodox history's mainstays, war. In a sense the professionalization of folklore in Ireland, as both a discipline and a subject, lies behind this formidable research. The author relates (xi) how he found Aladdin's cave in the archives of the Irish Folklore Commission (1935–70), now held by the newly denominated Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore and the National Folklore Collection in University College Dublin. Inside lay the memories, anecdotes, and souvenirs of two centuries of Irish life, lovingly collected and annotated. Amply evincing the underexplored richness of this source, Beiner introduces places, people, monuments, songs, stories, poems, and place names in this impressive “topography of remembrance” (208). Drawing upon the much maligned data of folklore, the book largely succeeds in challenging “deep-rooted orthodoxies” (xi) and is a testimony to the value of the “narratives of common people” (9).

Although the author writes as a historian, the book challenges folklorist and historian alike with a healthy disrespect for dubious academic conventions. The discussion begins with a survey of the generic area of folklore or, more specifically perhaps, oral history. The much-disputed dichotomy between history and folklore is the most challenging aspect of the work. This divide is writ large across the story of Ireland in particular, and at times it expresses itself in remarkably imperceptible ways. Beiner introduces us here to other voices or alternative histories that interrupt both nationalist and imperialist canons. The complex question of memory is introduced in an informative and inquisitive discussion. That memory can range from the idiosyncratic to the collective is itself a critique of established notions of folklore. The subject of the book is “social memory,” but the idea is explored through the introduction of many other terms. Alternatives to social memory are collective or popular memory (26), public or cultural memory (27), communicative memory (27), social action (27), vernacular historiography (9), provincial folk history (10), popular historical discourse (13), oral history and tradition (18), folk history (30), mnemhistory or mythistory (31), historical folklore (48), “orally preserved social-historical tradition” (81), and folk commemoration (242). Although the diversity of terms can become a little dizzying at times—the phrase “a mnemohistory of Irish mythistory” illustrates this (31)—the book is recommended to anyone whose interests intersect with these key foci of all the disciplines of the humanities.

The author, a lecturer in modern history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, expresses some surprise at what he sees as the blatant academic ignorance about 1798. He compensates for this in surprising ways. The absolutely intriguing aspect about 1798 for me is the mingling of the French—with all their supposedly un-Irish ideas of secularism, rationalism, naturalism, and nationalism—and the Irish, often depicted in a simple and straightforward manner as mad peasants with pikes. The year 1798 awakens a French-inspired Irish Frankenstein running amuck but only because he was led astray by fine ideas he could never hope to understand. It is horrifically eloquent that following the decisive battle at Ballinamuck, the French, guilty only of intellectualism, are released and the Irish, ignorant and rebellious, are slaughtered. Like similar histories or “folklores,” that of 1798 is too much a history of brutal senseless action and too little a history of ideas and ideals. Too often the Irish are divested of agency, intent, and intelligence and invested with passivity, apathy, and ignorance. Both history and folklore, folklore more so, are the discursive labels of the victor, key words in the ascendancy of English language historiography and, by tenuous generic extension, of modernity, reason, and enlightenment. It is long overdue that they are placed in parentheses and reexamined for what they are, invidious curiosities of power. On the whole Beiner's work succeeds admirably in extrapolating itself from the straitjacket of orthodox Irish historiography. There is some evidence here, for example, that some people in the West resented and even resisted the arrival of the French (205).

Irish historiography in any language does not begin in 1922 and was not begun by T. W. Moody. The formal study of history within an indigenous educational system had not begun until the 1930s, coeval with the collection of folklore. Does this mean that Irish history is the same as folklore? Significantly, Dr. William Joseph Starkie (1860–1920) introduced Irish history as part of the study of the English language in 1900. It only became a distinct separate subject in 1908 (297). Although Beiner notes that Irish history was not taught in the classroom alone, he might have done more to tease out the tensions between orthodox definitions of the official and the unofficial. More reference might have been made to native learning, for example, to the general conditions of colonialism prevailing or to the postcolonial nature of professional folkloristics or historiography in early twentieth-century Ireland.

When the Victorian notion of folklore, understood as oral, illiterate, or peasant customs and habits, is introduced to a situation where a society is already culturally, politically, and linguistically marginalized, there is a real danger of doubling the distance between observer and observed. The underlying definitions of folk groups, folklore, orality, or genre could be more sophisticated at times as they oversimplify what the author himself describes as a complex discourse. Speaking of survivals (86) or speaking in the past tense of the “passing away of the revered seanchaí” are slightly disappointing or clichéd aspects to the folklore discussion (115). Irish English language historiography often sets itself against what it constructs as a mesmerizing mirage of Gaelic myth, story, and unreality. It casts itself as sober educator bringing a touch of reality to a people adrift in mythology. It cannot conceive of itself as being adrift in reality. Ethnography has long established that one person's periphery is another person's center. On a more cautious note what might appear as periphery may simply be an unobjectified or marginalized center. It could also be a different culture. More needs to be done to recenter vernacular discourse and set it against imagined centers. It could actually be the case that naming alternatives “folklore” can reperipheralize other discourses from the same old center.

Although many of his sources are in the Irish language, Beiner does not discuss the relevance of language in general to the work. In many cases the names of narrators are translated to English; the poets Richard Barrett and Michael Sweeney are given in English (87). Irish words are sometimes given in italics, sometimes in quotation marks, and sometimes misspelled. While many academic terms are given the esteem of intellectual prominence in the English language, the Irish term seanchas, derived from indigenous vernacular discourse, is rendered simply as folk history or “orally preserved social-historical tradition” (81). It is much more than this. Accepting that these are the meanings most relevant to Beiner's argument, there could be a more deliberate highlighting of vernacular meanings. The author sways between the use of the word “Gaelic,” more often used specifically of Scottish Gaelic, and the everyday English word in Ireland for the language: “Irish.” Gaelic literary tradition (86) is used along with Irish language poetry (89), for example. It is a general point of course that applies to us all, but there is a need for some consistency, some rules of thumb at least in approaches to the Irish language (or any other) and culture within English-language texts.

Nonetheless, Remembering the Year of the French follows an exemplary methodology throughout; overall, it is cautious, careful, and patient. The book is thoroughly researched and scholarly and is as familiar with sociologists Maurice Halbwachs and Emile Durkheim as it is with pikemen Gunner Magee and Robin Gill. The book's strength lies not in any detailed analysis of specific examples but in revealing many fascinating minute details. Little by little the indelible imprint of past events and people becomes visible like a watermark to the mind's eye. Combing painstakingly through folklore for neglected or ignored nuggets of history, it is a veritable archaeology of memory of 1798, an inventory of what is sometimes silent but unforgotten. Like the vernacular history he reveals, Beiner's work is full of empathy and sympathy for the human remains, memorials, and commemorations of past lives and the multiple ways in which they actually continue to live.