The Islands of Magic: Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores

Nine volcanic islands rise from the Atlantic, halfway between worlds, where the sea still remembers Atlantis. This is the Azores, a place where geysers spout from black rock and mountains have been known to vanish overnight, taking their legends with them. Elsie Spicer Eells gathered these tales in the early twentieth century, when the old storytellers were growing quiet and the Republic's schools were filling with printed books. Here are princesses and magical beings, kings and cunning peasants, all woven from the particular magic of these remote islands: the fog that clings to volcanic peaks, the hot springs that bubble like cauldrons, the sea that swallowed a continent whole. The author herself felt the spirit of these stories slipping away and worked to capture them before they dissolved completely. These aren't sanitized fairy tales. They carry the salt of the Atlantic, the heat of the islands' fires, and the melancholy of a culture watching its own traditions fade. For readers who want folklore as it was actually told, rough and real and haunted by what has been lost.