| Title | : | Irish Fairy and Folk Tales |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1435155939 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781435155930 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Leather Bound |
| Number of Pages | : | 134 |
| Publication | : | First published January 2, 2015 |
The stories in this volume feature a wide variety of fantastic beings, including ghosts, witches, fairies, and changelings, but several feature creatures that are virtually exclusive to Ireland: the banshee, the merrow, the pooka, and the leprechaun. Read these tales of frightening supernatural horrors, brave folk heroes, and everyday people clever enough to outwith the devil, and you'll agree that they could only take place on Irish soil.
Irish Fairy and Folk Tales Reviews
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This little book of Irish fairy and folk tales was a very entertaining read, and the Celtic artwork on the cover is beautiful.
Some of stories were funny, mad, violent, amusing, and moving. I highly recommend it. I do hope to see Ireland someday.
"The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad."-G.K.Chesterton
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -William Butler Yeats -
I think I spent as much time just looking at this book as I did reading it. The design is just gorgeous. The cover is dark green with all kinds of Celtic knotwork in both gold and silver. I especially like the big medallion in the middle of the back cover. The endpapers are a nice grassy green with a repeating knotwork design in a lighter color. The edges are gilded gold and the pages are thick and smooth. I do wish it had a grass-green ribbon bookmark, though I suppose it's just too small for one.
There are 13 works in the set. It begins and ends with a poem and the others are stories of varying length. Being a collection of short stories more or less, it was easy to set it down between and not come back to it for a while.
The Fairies 3 stars, the 7th
I feel like I didn't quite get it, but that's probably just poetry (and maybe a bit of a cultural gap). Nice vibe though.
The Priest's Supper 2 stars, the 7th
I don't get it. It was over at what I thought would be more the middle, and I just don't get why the fairies were afraid of the priest yet wanted him to answer their question, or why they took the fish but just for mischief.
The Changeling 2.5 stars, the 7th
Simple and straightforward.
The Lady of Gollerus 3.5 stars, the 7th
I very much enjoyed this one after being rather ambivalent about the others. I liked the story and the way it was told, and the way everyone talked and the look of the merrow. I'd like a watercolor painting of her from the beginning scene of the story.
Pat Diver's Ordeal 3 stars, the 9th
It was certainly an interesting story, but I don't get what the big men were or what exactly they were about or how they always knew where Pat was, and was the comment about stories at the end just a mechanism of storytelling or was the big man somehow connected to the old man and his wife?
The Pooka 2 stars, the 9th
I had trouble with the long sentence structures and thought there was a bit of a rush to tell events with much less insight to the characters. I also missed dialogue.
The Bunworth Banshee 3 stars, the 9th
I suppose I'm just missing the necessary cultural grounding. I don't feel this story had much of a point. It had a nice flow though and was easy to read.
The Fate of Frank M'Kenna 4 stars, the 9th
I liked this story very much. Again, it seemed a bit anticlimactic or wanting in some way, but it was very interesting and I suppose has more of a point or points than many others. I would like to know more about the hare.
The Witch of Rathdowney 3 stars, the 9th
A very strange but interesting tale.
The Priest's Soul 4 stars, the 9th
I liked this story all through, and especially at the end when I saw it was the origin of the butterfly. I had never heard such a story about the butterfly being connected to anything special like the soul.
The Three Wishes 3 stars, the 11th
A quite interesting tale, but not as exciting to read as its events would suggest. By far the longest story in this set.
A Legend of Knockmany 4 stars, the 12th
Very good. A much more interesting trickery than in "The Three Wishes" and very fun to read.
The Lepracaun, or, Fairy Shoemaker 3 stars, the 12th
Cute. -
Fairly endearing for what it was going for. It was an interesting look at some Irish tall tales, some of which I was familiar with and some of which I wasn't. Surprisingly (or perhaps it shouldn't be), it's pretty morbid stuff, and some of the moralizing has aged a bit poorly.
Still, it was a good and brief romp into a rich world of folklore. I couldn't help but feel, though, that this was less than the tip of the iceberg, and the next time I'll look for something more comprehensive. -
Honestly this was really fun to read!
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3.5 Not a bad collection by any means, but I think, when I picked this up, I expected more stories about the fairy folk than folk tales about priests and such. It probably goes without saying that my favorite stories involved fairies or giants then! I loved the poem, "The Fairies" by William Allingham, that opens the collection, as I did the stories "The Changling" by Lady Wilde (Oscar Wilde's mother), "The Pooka" by E.W., and "A Legend of Knockmany" by William Carleton. This is an overall good, short read! It's a beautifully designed book as well.
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What can I say? Gaelic culture is a fave of mine. Fairy and folk tales are so much fun to read.
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Very much disappointed with this book, though not actually with the writing itself. As with any collection, some stories were more interesting to me than others, and there were a variety of writing styles and perspectives presented here. But to have looked at the vast collection of fairy lore produced by the Irish and condense it to the collection is quite ridiculous. Because if the editors think this is the pinnacle of Irish fairy stories, they're insane. For being quite a small nation, the Irish and the Irish diaspora have produced an insane amount of literature, and fairies play a very big part in this folklore. The tales in this collection are not at all representative of the humor, wit, and uncanny recollection of Irish folktales. While these were fine enough stories (though some are terribly dull, unfortunately enough), that they have been bound together and promoted as something great is a disappointment--and more than a mere disappointment when one takes into consideration the amount of material available to produce just such a collection. The editors should have done better--or perhaps they just have bad taste.
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Rating a collection of stories is always hard for me, because there are some great ones, and others that are not really good, as is the case of this book. It's a collection of several Irish folktales from somewhere around 1800s. These stories are either full of spirits such as fairies and elves, or contain a lot of Christian content, where most characters are priests or have lost the way of God. I found them mostly entertaining, but the language makes it difficult to read, the words and expressions are very old and unfamiliar, and for someone like me, who is not a native English speaker, it takes a while to get used to it.
My favourite story definitely was 'The three wishes'. I thought it was funny, clever, and it had the perfect Irish touch. It's about a man who doesn't want to work or do anything but still be rich, and so he is given three wishes, which he apparently wastes on stupid things. But later on, he makes a deal with the devil for wealth, and those three previous wishes will come in handy to cheat the devil into keep giving him more money and wealth.
'A legend of Knockmany' was also really lovely, it felt really Celtic because its main character is a giant from Celtic folklore, and it's about how a woman cheats him into thinking her husband is so powerful that he would destroy him if he saw him. Which is far from the truth, as the husband is actually terrified of the giant.
There are others that definitely feel Irish, and some that could really just be about any other country and you wouldn't notice. It's a good read for a day or two. -
A fun read during March for someone who’s Irish. Definitely a little hard to read some of the time due to the dated language.
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My two favorites being “The Priest’s Soul” and “A Legend of Knockmany”
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This little, leather-bound edition of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales is a lot of fun, and an interesting conversation piece to have on the shelf or coffee table. Compiled of stories from older compilations of stories from the Irish tradition, the actual work contained herein isn't *spectacular, game-changing* literature by any stretch of the imagination. Most fairy-tales aren't. They are stories constructed to explain, in easy, human terms, the world around us. Many of the tales collected here deal with the creation of natural artifacts, the way in which the natural world behaves (but was not well understood at the time), and simple moral fables to teach children right from wrong, the golden rule, and that the mind can be as useful as might.
That said, as these are fairy and folk tales, and their interpretations and narratives likely changed over a number of years and tellers, it is easy to tell that these stories come from an oral tradition. They are all littered with asides and personal anecdotes which indicate a teller recreating a story with elements created specifically for a well-known crowd of close friends and family. And there is something that gets lost a little bit in translation in having them read, printed on the page, and not told by a great teller and held in rapt attention around the fire.
Fun and quick! -
lovely compilation of irish tales, fun read to get into the spirits. Thankyou Veerle for getting it for my birthday:)
Finished the last story in the plane back from Dublin after a fun trip there. The Celtic history sparked my inspiration, en die is door het bezoek alleen maar aangewakkerd. De stad ademt poezie en de taal leent zich heel erg aan verhalen vertellen.
Excited to read a copy of Ulysses and a bundle of WB Yeats' poems I got there. Love Ireland will for suure come back and visit the countryside aswell.
Some of my faves include The Priest's Supper, The Pooka & The Fate of Frank M'Kenna.
Read the final story in the bus back to the Dublin airport -
The cover of this book makes this a magical read, I really enjoyed it!
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An excellent collection of stories and poems including the most famous creatures of Irish mythology. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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The first thing I noticed is, apparently in Irish writing they love to use commas. I don't know if it was to make it more poetic or if it was just a hell of a lot of run on sentences, but I found it a bit unnecessary and some what harder to read. The second thing, I kept waiting for there to be some kind of lesson, but I don't think there was much of any. Most of the stories I wasn't too big on, they were okay, however, there were a few that made up for the others. For the most part I have already forgotten most of the stories and it only took me few days to read, since it was a short book of short stories. I might go back and read it again some day, but most likely it will just sit on my shelf and collect dust. I think you could probably find better mythology out there and would suggest reading that instead, unless you really just want a quick read and are really into Irish culture.
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This is just a collection of short stories all originating in Ireland. I read this on the plane to and from my trip to Ireland, I would have easily gotten it completed if it held my interest a little more. Some short stories hold your attention more then others while others are just plain boring.
Of course, the book ends with the best story about the Giant Finn MacCool which probably had more interest to me as I had just visited the Giants Causeway where the story takes place.
Overall it had a lot of cool legends and interesting ideas while some stories don't hold as well as others. It was also a very small and quick read book. I'd give it a 2.5/5, average collection of stories. -
As a book of many stories, it is hard to give one rating, but I think three stars covers it pretty nicely. Some of the stories didn't make any sense at all, and others were kind of funny, and others again very delightful. My favorites where the poem The Fairies, The Lady of Gollerus, A Legend of Knockmany and, in spite of atheist me disliking the moral of it, The Priest's Soul by Lady Wilde, mother of Oscar. The butterfly thing? Very inventive.
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1.5 stars....There were a lot more boring ones than there were good, and the good ones don’t make it totally worth it. Also it’s way heavy on the folktales rather than the fairy tales where I figured it would be half and half. I assume some type of lesson was supposed to be presented at the end of most but I didn’t get that. No disrespect, but I’ve come across a lot better compilations than this one.
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I am putting this on my abandoned shelf. Not that the stories weren’t interesting, but they didn’t capture my attention enough to read the whole thing. Maybe this is one of those books that you only read one story at a time, and then put down for a couple months until you’re ready for another story?
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I finished this book of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, which I got from a friend for Christmas. I really liked the stories! Some of them were really cute, and other were a bit disturbing, but I still liked them a lot.
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A mixed bag. A few good, a couple dull as dirt, most all right. I'm happy to have read it and it will look pretty on my shelf, but I've read better collections of folk and fae stories.
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This is a book of Irish fairy and folk tales. I gave this book such a high rating because I was absolutely fascinated at how fairy lore and catholicism intermingled in the majority of these stories. Some of the stories were about the pooka and banshee, which I'm sure existed in Irish lore long before Ireland became Catholic. In this particular book, the moral often ends up being that you should not listen to the devil, you should not practice witchcraft, you should listen to your priest. etc. In older Irish folklore, I'm sure that the lesson would be to not listen to the fae, to be careful of banshees, and to be kind to strangers. I think that the stories evolved - but never lost their true meaning - when catholicism came to Ireland. I think it's fascinating to see how two belief systems came together to form the stories we know today. It's easy to pick out which parts are catholic and which parts are from an older time. I also really like, how even though St Patrick is said to have chased the "snakes" (pagans) out of Ireland, it's quite clear to me, that the snakes never left. Open this book. The snakes are hiding in plain sight.
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This was my 3rd book for Read O Rama round 12.
The book itself is truly stunning so I will be keeping it for that and because I have a lot of Irish heritage in my family, particularly on my dad's side (if "Cahill" isn't a huge clue). I was really excited to get to this one but unfortunately I didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.
For the most part, the stories or poems were difficult to read. A glossary might have been helpful for some terms and I struggled with some stories to figure out what exactly was going on. The two longest stories in the books I ended up skimming or skipping because they were so drawn out and I was having issues with what was happening.
However, I did like the following stories:
The Priest's Supper
The Changeling
The Lady of Gollerus
The Priest's Soul
Overall I did find this collection interesting but I wish I had liked more than four of the stories.
2.5 stars -
This mini pocket book features two poems called The Fairies and The Leprecaun, or Fairy Shoemaker. The fairy/folk tales are The Priest's Supper, The Changeling, The Lady of Gollerus, Pat Diver's Ordeal, The Pooka, The Priest's Soul, The Bunworth Banshee, A Legend of Knockmany, The Fate of Frank M'Kenna, The Witch of Rathdowney, The Three Wishes.
It's an interesting read, but many of the stories show their age, lean heavily toward Catholicism and/or are vague, thereby leaving a lot of questions unanswered. The stories include various Irish words, which I appreciated learning about. The book itself is lovely with its leather cover and gold-painted edges. It may be some sort of companion book to the 700-page Barnes & Noble edition of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. -
It's so hard to rate a collection of tales. I will say that all of these various stories average to about 3 stars, and the book itself is really beautifully put together- nice cover, end pages, ect. I picked this up trying to broaden my fairy tale/folk tale horizons, as the only Irish fairy tales I'd heard at that point were ones from my grandfather that at that point had been American Irish for several generations. Also, I don't remember them well as I was small when he would tell me stories, because once I could read all I wanted was more books. Do I feel closer to my Irish roots having read this? Maybe a bit. Would I read more Irish folk/fairy tales? Absolutely.
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3.5 stars
It was a decent book. I'm not sure if my expectations of it were what kept me from really liking it or if I did not understand some of the stories. But the stories that I did like, I really liked a lot. The Lady of Gollerus and The Priest's Soul were my two favorites and they were really good. The book is also absolutely gorgeous!!! It is definitely worth a read, especially if you are into Irish heritage. I got some insight from it. -
I’ve always loved Irish culture and traditions. Those leprechauns, banshees and fairies - they all intrigued me very much. So I bought this little volume years ago and only now got around to reading it. Before it only pleased my eyes. And I loved it a lot, obviously there was a story or two that I didn’t enjoy as much, but overall it’s a lovely collection. My favourites are “The Lady of Gollerus” and “The Priest’s Soul”.
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A good collection of fairy and folk tales, that has a whimsical morbidness to them.
There is something violent and dark, yet a bit funny about these stories that is hard to find outside the fairy tales realm. Not all fairy tales are told equally well, and it is the alter half of the book is where it really finds its stride. The Priest’s Soul, The Tree Wishes and A Legend of Knockmany are the highlight that come in succession. -
I bought this book from the Museum of Literature in Dublin on a wonderful trip to Ireland! This book was a fanciful look into Irish history and folktales.
This book is a collection of these oral histories that have been passed down through generations of Irish culture. As different stories were written by different authors, naturally some were better than others. Standouts were the poems on fairies and leprechauns and the tale of the Pooka!
