1. 'Tell us a story' --

2. Colloquies of the ancients, and modern views or controversies --

3. Powerful and dangerous or humble and innocent : storytellers as seen by Gaels and Galls --

4. Echoes of past virtues, heard or imagined by antiquaries, surveyors and philologists --

5. Travellers and talkative guides --

6. Protofolklorists and imitators, nationalists and peasants, in the first half of the nineteenth century --

7. Nineteenth-century Irish novelists and traditional storytelling --

8. Irish country life, folklore and nationalism in the second half of the nineteenth century --

9. Noble peasants and mythical islanders, or 'tons of useless folklore'? --

10. Folklorists meet storytellers or those who remember them --

11. Irish traditional storytelling in the twentieth century : how much do we know --

12. Stories about storytelling, storytellers in stories --

13. 'That was all true enough' --

14. 'Now to conclude and finish'.