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Like the material in the Main Manuscripts Collection, the Schools' Manuscripts Collection is bound in volumes which are paginated and numbered. These run in a series from volume 1 to volume 1226.(3) In this respect, the Schools' Manuscripts Collection differs once again from the Main Manuscripts Collection in that its contents are arranged in sequence, county by county , and province by province, beginning with Connacht (and county Galway) and ending with Ulster (and county Donegal). This circumstance makes it quite easy to isolate and examine the folklore from, say, a single county , a single barony, a single parish or even a single school, as the material is further broken down under all of these headings. However, not every aspect of the Schools' Manuscripts Collection is so straightforward. Another of its distinguishing features creates some special problem and, for the folklore scholar, brings its own fascinating research possibilities. It is not in fact, a single unitary collection, but rather a body of material which is divided into two distinct parts -the above - mentioned bound and paginated material and a lesser. known, unbound, unpaginated and equally extensive corpus consisting of the original school copybooks in which the schoolchildren of 1937-1938 first penned their 'compositions'. Consequently, we might speak of 'The Schools' Manuscripts Collections' rather than 'The Schools' Manuscripts Collection', so radically different in some respects are these two bodies of material. The wording of a Department of Education circular (Circular 9/37), entitled Circular to Managers and Teachers of National Schools: Scheme for the Collection and Preservation of Folklore and Oral Traditions (= CMT 9/37), provides an explanation of how this circumstance arose in the first place:
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This is not its only hallmark for, unfortunately, the principle of
seeking to document the Irish tradition on an island-of-Ireland-basis,
did not prevail in the case of Schools' Scheme, and this circumstance
also sets it apart. Its sphere of operation did not extend beyond
the confines of this state and as a consequence, the Schools' Manuscripts
Collection contains no material from schools in the six counties of
Northern Ireland. Consequently, the historic province of Ulster is
represented by only three of its constituent counties, namely, Cavan,
Monaghan and Donegal.(2)
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