Eddie Lenihan

[13] This had come to international attention in 1999 when Lenihan had stood up to road builders in County Clare who had wanted to cut down a whitethorn tree commonly called the Latoon fairy bush.

(The whitethorn is considered in local Irish lore, and Celtic folklore in general, to be sacred to the Aos Sí – the fairy folk of Ireland.)

These individuals are (often elderly) members of the rural community who are steeped in a tradition of oral history.

His stories of the people, places and heroes of County Clare were incorporated into the 1982 book, Long Ago by Shannonside.

His importance in Lenihan's estimation was "...remarkable, then equally significant is the fact that one such man's death can deprive an area of a large part of its oral tradition at one blow".