Irish fairy and folk tales, ed (utgåvan 1918)

The works were all post-Christian. I was hoping for mythology but these were ghost and saint stories. ( )

It’s certainly of very diverse authorship, more like a radio station or something if that sort, than an ordinary book.

Some of the stories seem very moral, like “Teig O’Kane and the Corpse”, which seem more true than any merely realistic story about working as a newspaper boy or whatever.

Occasionally they make me wonder about where the magic turns into something more like mental illness, like “The Breweey of Eggshells”. I suppose that most people wouldn’t bother to think in this way because most modern fantasy stories are pretty secular, you know. “I got a great job working for the wizard king: now I can go on vacation!” In other words, you’re in information technology. But some stories are more like getting delusional, especially if you can’t figure out what in the name of God and Mary the story is trying to say.

Maybe the question is whether the fairies are “the good people” exclusively, or, you know, the baby-snatchers, sometimes, too. A fairy who assigns you tasks to work off your bad deeds is clearly doing good. (Jack Lewis liked to say that Aslan was “not a tame lion”.) A fairy that steals your child and lies about it is not really good, however.

The one shaman type book I read so far that I liked, Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman”, talks about how some animal spirits are noble and so on— your typical lion king— but others look at you like food. So maybe that’s the issue at work here.

But as troubling as that can be, the farther you go from nature and reality, the further you go into addiction, I think. That’s ultimately more important, I think, than certain nebulous ideas of culture. “This video game reminds me of the peasants from County Cork who were my ancestors.” “The countryside around Vivec City is much nicer than this suburban nonsense.”

So.... I don’t know. Sometimes I just look at things and I say, “That’s very different from my experience.”

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But I liked the one about the priest.

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It’s hard not to see the pagans as being like moral children: “Woman’s fraud, and Man’s force— O what marvelous power!”

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Some of them were very light; I feel if I were part of the culture they would be very entertaining. Not that they’re boring.

I used to think that people were stupid for just re-reading “Harry Potter”, you know.

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Although the treatment given to the devil is beautiful.

This is an interesting compendium of tales from Irish folklore. Yeats sorts the tales and songs by the type of creatures encountered in each tale: giants, solitary fairies, ghosts, and so on. Some stories are taken from other collections of folk tales, while others give the appearance of being recorded from a conversation with a local Irish person knowledgeable about that particular tale. Each section features an introduction by Yeats, and Irish-language words are footnoted with a definition when they are used in the text.

I had to read this book in two goes, because there are a lot of tales and on my first pass I ran out of steam. But the collection as a whole is well put together. I enjoyed finding parallels with the fairy tales of other cultures and finally meeting Fin M’Coul in the section about giants. This collection may be better for grownups or older children; younger ones may find it hard to maintain their attention. ( )

These stories are so rich in culture, and humor as well! I'm sure most children would thoroughly enjoy reading these folk tales, or having these folk tales read to them. The way the stories are set up allows for questions in between parts, questions such as "what would you do if there were fairies living on your land?" and "How would you feel if you were one of the fairies?" This allows for active listening, and consistent engagement with the story being told. Children are always eager to answer questions and guess what is going to happen next, so I always encourage that! I think these are great stories for doing so!

WB. Yeats has two books available legally and free at Project Gutenberg: "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry" http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33887
Pubbed 1888

"Irish Fairy Tales" http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31763
Pubbed 1892

These are two separate novels but Goodreads seems easily confused by this.