Irish Fairy Tales
1892
Long before Ireland was a nation, it was a country of stories. The old people believed this literally: fairies walked the hills, goblins haunted the bogs, and the boundary between the human world and the Otherworld was thin as morning mist. This collection gathers the tales that kept that belief alive, retold with the lyricism and shadow they deserve. Here are the Fianna, those legendary warrior-hunters of the Fenian Cycle, and their captain Fionn mac Uail, whose youth was forged in the druid's cave and whose wisdom came from tasting the Salmon of Knowledge. Here too are the pooka and the banshee, the heroes stolen by fairies and returned changed, the kings who bargain with powers they barely understand. Yeats collected these stories from peasants and storytellers who still spoke of the Good People with genuine wariness, and he preserved not just the plots but the feeling of a world where magic is not fantasy but memory. These are not sanitized nursery rhymes. They are the old tales, with all their danger and wonder intact, passed down through centuries of firelight and whispered warnings.
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“On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them.””
— Unknown
“Come away, O, human child! To the woods and waters wild, With a fairy hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.””
— Unknown
“it's a long lane that has no turning.””
— Unknown
“Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person amongst them, the lepra-caun”
— Unknown
“every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.””
— Unknown
“With us nothing has time to gather meaning, and too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.””
— Unknown
“I don't think the moral is good; and if any of you thuckeens go about imitating Anty in her laziness, you'll find it won't thrive with you as it did with her. She was beautiful beyond compare, which none of you are, and she had three powerful fairies to help her besides.””
— Unknown
“On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the fairies are at their gayest, and sometime steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides.””
— Unknown
“Red is the color of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.””
— Unknown
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Unknown. Irish Fairy Tales. Lex, lex-books.com/book/irish-fairy-tales-59d2c021-ced2-4421-b779-60ac3505bbdb.Unknown (1892). Irish Fairy Tales. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/irish-fairy-tales-59d2c021-ced2-4421-b779-60ac3505bbdbUnknown. Irish Fairy Tales. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/irish-fairy-tales-59d2c021-ced2-4421-b779-60ac3505bbdb.
