I have a small question about the word seanchaí. Does it have a female form (if the story-teller is a woman)? Or is it the same for both genders?

The gender is the same for both sexes. The word remains in the masculine gender.

Grammatical gender has nothing to do with the sex of the person (or animal) being talked about. For example, "cailín" (girl) is grammatically masculine and "stáil" (stallion) is grammatically feminine. And unlike English, Irish doesn't try to create sex-linked occupational words as a rule (waiter/waitress, host/hostess, for example).

If you really wanted to emphasize that the storyteller was a woman, I suppose you could do what has been done in the past with words like "garda" and "altra" and stick "ban" in front of it, but that's a practice that's falling out of favor (largely because it never really made much sense).

Redwolf

I know that. I didn't mean grammatical gender, I meant if there was a specific form of the word for a female storyteller (yes, like waiter/waitress in English). Anyway, thanks for the explanation.

Here's one - Máirín Mhic Lochlainn (Aos Scéal Éireann - Giorraíonn beirt bóthar)

www.storytellersofireland.org/index.php/47443