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Celtic Fairy Tales
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Celtic Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs
A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com
Celtic Fairy Tales
Table of Contents
Celtic Fairy Tales. ...............................................................................................................................................1
Joseph Jacobs. ..........................................................................................................................................1
Preface to Celtic Fairy Tales. ...................................................................................................................1
Connla and the Fairy Maiden. ..................................................................................................................3
Guleesh. ...................................................................................................................................................5
The Field of Boliauns ............................................................................................................................13
The Horned Women. ..............................................................................................................................15
Conall Yellowclaw. ................................................................................................................................17
Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'Neary ............................................................................................22
The Shepherd of Myddvai. ....................................................................................................................26
The Sprightly Tailo. ..............................................................................................................................28
The Story of Deidre ...............................................................................................................................29
Munachar and Manacha. .......................................................................................................................37
Gold−Tree and Silver−Tree. ..................................................................................................................38
King O'Toole and His Goose. ................................................................................................................41
The Wooing of Olwen ...........................................................................................................................43
Jack and His Comrades. .........................................................................................................................49
The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire. .....................................................................................54
The Story Teller at Fault. .......................................................................................................................58
The Sea Maiden. ....................................................................................................................................65
A Legend of Knockmany. ......................................................................................................................69
Fair, Brown, and Trembling.. .................................................................................................................74
Jack and His Master. ..............................................................................................................................80
Beth Gellert. ...........................................................................................................................................84
The Tale of Ivan. ....................................................................................................................................85
Andrew Coffey.. .....................................................................................................................................88
The Battle of the Birds. ..........................................................................................................................90
Brewery of Eggshells. ............................................................................................................................99
The Lad with the Goat−skin. ...............................................................................................................100
Notes and References. ..........................................................................................................................104
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Celtic Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
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Preface to Celtic Fairy Tales
· Guleesh
·
Preface to Celtic Fairy Tales
Last year, in giving the young ones a volume of English Fairy Tales, my difficulty was one of collection. This
time, in offering them specimens of the rich folk−fancy of the Celts of these islands, my trouble has rather
been one of selection. Ireland began to collect her folk−tales almost as early as any country in Europe, and
Croker has found a whole school of successors in Carleton, Griffin, Kennedy, Curtin, and Douglas Hyde.
Scotland had the great name of Campbell, and has still efficient followers in MacDougall, Maclnnes,
Carmichael, Macleod, and Campbell of Tiree. Gallant little Wales has no name to rank alongside these; in
this department the Cymru have shown less vigour than the Gaedhel. Perhaps the Eisteddfod, by offering
prizes for the collection of Welsh folk−tales, may remove this inferiority. Meanwhile Wales must be content
Celtic Fairy Tales
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A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com
114086965.002.png
Celtic Fairy Tales
to be somewhat scantily represented among the Fairy Tales of the Celts, while the extinct Cornish tongue has
only contributed one tale.
In making my selection I have chiefly tried to make the Stories characteristic. It would have been easy,
especially from Kennedy, to have made up a volume entirely filled with "Grimm's Goblins" a' la Celtique.
But one can have too much even of that very good thing, and I have therefore avoided as far as possible the
more familiar "formulae" of folk−tale literature. To do this I had to withdraw from the Engiish−speaking Pale
both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laid down the rule to include only tales that have been taken down from
Celtic peasants ignorant of English.
Having laid down the rule, I immediately proceeded to break it. The success of a fairy book, I am convinced,
depends on the due admixture of the comic and the romantic: Grimm and Asbjornsen knew this secret, and
they alone. But the Celtic peasant who speaks Gaelic takes the pleasure of telling tales somewhat sadly: so far
as he has been printed and translated, I found him, to my surprise, conspicuously lacking in humour. For the
comic relief of this volume I have therefore had to turn mainly to the Irish peasant of the Pale; and what
richer source could I draw from?
For the more romantic tales I have depended on the Gaelic, and, as I know about as much of Gaelic as an
Irish Nationalist M.P., I have had to depend on translators. But I have felt myself more at liberty than the
translators themselves, who have generally been over−literal, in changing, excising, or modifying the
original. I have even gone further. In order that the tales should be characteristically Celtic, I have paid more
particular attention to tales that are to be found on both sides of the North Channel. In re−telling them I have
had no scruple in interpolating now and then a Scotch incident into an Irish variant of the same story, or vice
versa. Where the translators appealed to English folk−lorists and scholars, I am trying to attract English
children. They translated ; I endeavoured to transfer. In short, I have tried to put myself into the position of an
ollamh or sheenachie familiar with both forms of Gaelic, and anxious to put his stories in the best way to
attract English children. I trust I shall be forgiven by Celtic scholars for the changes I have had to make to
effect this end.
The stories collected in this volume are longer and more detailed than the English ones I brought together last
Christmas. The romantic ones are certainly more romantic, and the comic ones perhaps more comic, though
there may be room for a difference of opinion on this latter point. This superiority of the Celtic folk−tales is
due as much to the conditions under which they have been collected, as to any innate superiority of the
folk−imagination. The folk−tale in England is in the last stages of exhaustion. The Celtic folk−tales have
been collected while the practice of story−telling is still in full vigour, though there are every signs that its
term of life is already numbered. The more the reason why they should be collected and put on record while
there is yet time. On the whole, the industry of the collectors of Celtic folk−lore is to be commended, as may
be seen from the survey of it I have prefixed to the Notes and References at the end of the volume. Among
these, I would call attention to the study of the legend of Beth Gellert, the origin of which, I believe, I have
settled.
While I have endeavoured to render the language of the tales simple and free from bookish artifice, I have not
felt at liberty to retell the tales in the English way. I have not scrupled to retain a Celtic turn of speech, and
here and there a Celtic word, which I have not explained within brackets − a practice to be abhorred of all
good men. A few words unknown to the reader only add effectiveness and local colour to a narrative, as Mr.
Kipling well knows.
One characteristic of the Celtic folk−lore I have endeavoured to represent in my selection, because it is nearly
unique at the present day in Europe. Nowhere else is there so large and consistent a body of oral tradition
about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the Gaels. Only the byline, or hero−songs of Russia, equal
in extent the amount of knowledge about the heroes of the past that still exists among the Gaelic−speaking
Celtic Fairy Tales
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Celtic Fairy Tales
peasantry of Scotland and Ireland. And the Irish tales and ballads have this peculiarity, that some of them
have been extant, and can be traced for well nigh a thousand years. I have selected as a specimen of this class
the Story of Deirdre, collected among the Scotch peasantry a few years ago, into which I have been able to
insert a passage taken from an Irish vellum of the twelfth century. I could have more than filled this volume
with similar oral traditions about Finn (the Fingal of Macpherson's "Ossian"). But the story of Finn, as told by
the Gaelic peasantry of to−:lay, deserves a volume by itself, while the adventures of the Ultonian hero,
Cuchulain, could easily fill another.
I have endeavoured to include in this volume the best and most typical stories told by the chief masters of the
Celtic folk−tale, Campbell, Kennedy, Hyde, and Curtin, and to these I have added the best tales scattered
elsewhere. By this means I hope I have put together a volume, containing both the best, and the best known
folk−tales of the Celts. I have only been enabled to do this by the courtesy of those who owned the copyright
of these stories. Lady Wilde has kindly granted me the use of her effective version of "The Horned Women ;"
and I have specially to thank Messrs. Macmillan for right to use Kennedy's "Legendary Fictions," and
Messrs. Sampson Low & Co., for the use of Mr. Curtin's Tales.
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In making my selection, and in all doubtful points of treatment, I have had resource to the wide knowledge of
my friend Mr. Alfred Nutt in all branches of Celtic folklore. If this volume does anything to represent to
English children the vision and colour, the magic and charm, of the Celtic folk−imagination, this is due in
large measure to the care with which Mr. Nutt has watched its inception and progress. With him by my side I
could venture into regions where the non−Celt wanders at his own risk.
Lastly, I have again to rejoice in the co−operation of my friend, Mr. J. D. Batten, in giving form to the
creations of the folk−fancy. He has endeavoured in his illustrations to retain as much as possible of Celtic
ornamentation; for all details of Celtic archaeology he has authority. Yet both he and I have striven to give
Celtic things as they appear to, and attract, the English mind, rather than attempt the hopeless task of
representing them as they are to Celts. The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of
the Greeks among the Romans.
"They went forth to battle, but they always fell," yet the captive Celt has enslaved his captor in the realm of
imagination. The present volume attempts to begin the pleasant, captivity from the earliest years. If it could
succeed in giving a common fund of imaginative wealth to the Celtic and the Saxon children of these isles, it
might do more for a true union of hearts than all your politics.
1892 JOSEPH JACOBS.
Connla and the Fairy Maiden
Connla of the Fiery Hair was son of Conn of the Hundred Fights. One day as he stood by the side of his
father on the height of Usna, he saw a maiden clad in strange attire coming towards him.
"Whence comest thou, maiden?" said Connla.
"I come from the Plains of the Ever Living," she said, "there where there is neither death nor sin. There we
keep holiday alway, nor need we help from any in our joy. And in all our pleasure we have no strife. And
because we have our homes in the round green hills, men call us the Hill Folk."
The king and ail with him wondered much to hear a voice when they saw no one. For save Connla alone,
Connla and the Fairy Maiden
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A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com

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