Kevin Danaher was born in Athea, County Limerick, in 1915, and educated at University College, Dublin and the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. After service as a captain in the Irish army during the Emergency, he became a full-time ethnologist with the Irish Folklore Commission (later the Department of Irish Folklore in University College Dublin). He was as fine a writer as he was a folklorist and his many works include The Year in Ireland (1972) and Irish Country Households (1985). His research provided the basis for the Folk Park at Bunratty County Clare.