Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"skilled teller of tales and legends," from Old Irish sen "old," from PIE root *sen- (see senile).
Wiktionary
n. (context Ireland English) storyteller
Usage examples of "shanachie".
Seumas MacManus is as truly a shanachie as the old story-tellers that yet tell the old tales about peat fires in Donegal.
Russell, if Sharp is not, in some fashion, a reincarnation of a shanachie that sang as contemporary in the wars of Gael and Gall.
It is because he is the reincarnation of the shanachie of the Dark Ages.
In other words, it is in the very manner of the shanachie of the Dark Ages, whether his work was recorded then as court poem or has been handed down by word of mouth among the folk.
He loved the stories that the shanachies, the traveling storytellers, recited of the leprechauns and the little folk, and he believed in the fairies, who lived on the mist-shrouded Crieve Mountain nearby.
He told him stories of Ireland, of shanachies and leprechauns and rainbows.
Of superstitious priests, storytelling shanachies, and pole-vaulting messengers.
Most disputes among the residents were solved by the intervention of shanachies or people like Clodagh who were respected as leaders and wise mentors.
Bunny thought he was much cleverer than the shanachie, who was obviously trying to catch him out.