Irish Fairy Tales James Stephens 9781542534994 Books
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Welcome to a special edition of a renowned classic. This classic, difficult-to-find text has been reprinted using a print-on-demand service to provide you with an updated version of the text, at the best value possible! Several edits have been made for readability, including font, text size, spacing, and alignment changes. However, while our goal was to enhance the ease at which this book can be read, we did not alter or change the historic text. Experience this classic in all of its glory and historical significance!
Irish Fairy Tales James Stephens 9781542534994 Books
I enjoyed most of the stories collected here, and I thought T. Crofton Croker had the best of the lot. Soul Cages was my favorite, but Master & Man and Daniel O'Rourke were also creative. The banshee tales were sleep-inducing with realistic but tedious exposition (like some Edgar Allan Poe short stories). Yeats tries to sort the tales into categories, adding a bit of background before each section, but it seems to me that a lot of these tales defy such easy organization. For instance, the Kildare Pooka seems to me to be more of a "brownie" creature (functionally) vs. the creature featured in Douglas Hyde's The Piper & the Puca. But, hey, that's why this is a book of folklore and not a coherent mythological system. I also noted some of Patrick Kennedy's tales are virtually the same as similar tales found in the Brothers Grimm, but I would say upwards of 90% of the tales in this collection were stories I hadn't encountered before.Also, there really was no leprechaun tale here, but we're informed they are of the "solitary fairy" type and so can be expected to wear red jackets, not green as is commonly supposed. But don't fret, there are plenty of fun tales here even without leprechauns! There are witches, pucas, cluricauns (alcoholic leprechauns), enchanted pudding, and all sorts of craziness. Plus, half the fun of reading these is immersing yourself in the charming writing style.
There are a handful of poems, too, but I skipped them and just read the stories.
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Tags : Irish Fairy Tales [James Stephens] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Welcome to a special edition of a renowned classic. This classic, difficult-to-find text has been reprinted using a print-on-demand service to provide you with an updated version of the text,James Stephens,Irish Fairy Tales,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1542534992,FICTION Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
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Irish Fairy Tales James Stephens 9781542534994 Books Reviews
The stories are not intended to be judged by modern sensibilities. There is misogyny and brutality -- as is to be expected in reading ancient folklore.
This version gets only three stars because there are three points in the book where short passages containing songs are missing. I had to find another version of the text online to fill in the gaps. The digitization typos are only rarely distracting.
The book feels cheaply made and this is a re-print of an older book. I'm not saying it wasn't stated, but I never saw anything alerting me that the book was re-printed based on an older copy. I chose to purchase this book mainly because of the illustrations that accompany the story but I was very let down by the low quality printing method. The illustrations were faded and it was obvious in each that the printer was doing a shoddy job. I wouldn't buy this again.
This volume (and other compilations by Yeats) stands out head and shoulders above other books on Irish folk and fairy tales. Yeat's mission was to compile and preserve the traditional tales and folk spirit of the people of his Island, and who better than Ireland's most famous poet to have an ear for language and a good tale? The reviewer who complained that because of the archaic dialect this wasn't an "easy read" is missing the point. That said, if one takes the time, one can "enter into" the dialect, hear it lilting in your mind, and access these wonderful tales fairly readily.
I own a number of volumes of Irish folk and fairy tales and this is the most complete. I love the fact that this book, and Yeats' other volumes, draws upon tales he collected himself from the Irish peasantry of his day. Many of them are traditional tales long told through the years; others are personal experiences of the narrator. Some of them became themes in Yeats' own poetry. What a great gift to the Irish people, to those of us like myself who are of Irish heritage, and to all who appreciate the wonderful old Irish tales.
Yeats was deeply interested in the folk history of his native island, and how the fairy faith manifested in his day. The old tongue was still spoken in corners of Ireland, and he listened to tales told by peat fires on cold winter evenings. Some of it may be nostalgia, but a lot of it spoke to the oppression of the people under foreign governance, and their isolation from the rest of Europe. Yeats's hermetic pursuits influenced his brilliant and precise poetry.
This was more a book of Faerie Tales than one of Fairy Tales--instead of Cinderella-like maidens being rescued by princes and aided by fairy godmothers, there are the shi' of Faery who mingle with the humans for mischief and pleasure, although often the humans manage both of those quite well on their own.
Most of the tales deal with Fionn the son of Uail, and his life and times. They are well-written and witty, and captured my attention.
The first story, though. The first story was boring, uninteresting and had nothing to do with Fionn (although I admit I had no idea who he was when I read it). It was about Tuan, the son of Cairill and how he started as one of Noah's grandsons, and then after achieving old age, managed to be reborn as every notable creature that inhabits Ireland. It was...not a great start to this otherwise wonderful book, and I was expecting the worst after reading it, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the rest of the stories were actually interesting.
There's a few typo-esque mistakes from the scanning, but nothing to cry about, there's a table of contents that isn't as useful as it wants to be (it's a chart, and you can't see the whole thing at once), and there are no illustrations (are you still expecting those from a kindle?), but otherwise the book is sound.
Stories included are
The Story of Tuan mac Cairill
The Boyhood of Fionn
The Birth of Bran
Oisin's Mother
The Wooing of Becfola
The Little Brawl at Allen
THe Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran
Becuma of the White Skin
Mongan's Frenzy (which has VENOMOUS SHEEP in it)
The pages were backwards and crooked. Pages were inserted like manga - you would have to read from back to front - and cut crookedly. I have no idea how the content holds up; I haven't read it and will be returning the item. The paper and print quality is poor for the price, even if it had been put together properly. I expected a thicker paper, not the grocery-store-novel type of paper.
I enjoyed most of the stories collected here, and I thought T. Crofton Croker had the best of the lot. Soul Cages was my favorite, but Master & Man and Daniel O'Rourke were also creative. The banshee tales were sleep-inducing with realistic but tedious exposition (like some Edgar Allan Poe short stories). Yeats tries to sort the tales into categories, adding a bit of background before each section, but it seems to me that a lot of these tales defy such easy organization. For instance, the Kildare Pooka seems to me to be more of a "brownie" creature (functionally) vs. the creature featured in Douglas Hyde's The Piper & the Puca. But, hey, that's why this is a book of folklore and not a coherent mythological system. I also noted some of Patrick Kennedy's tales are virtually the same as similar tales found in the Brothers Grimm, but I would say upwards of 90% of the tales in this collection were stories I hadn't encountered before.
Also, there really was no leprechaun tale here, but we're informed they are of the "solitary fairy" type and so can be expected to wear red jackets, not green as is commonly supposed. But don't fret, there are plenty of fun tales here even without leprechauns! There are witches, pucas, cluricauns (alcoholic leprechauns), enchanted pudding, and all sorts of craziness. Plus, half the fun of reading these is immersing yourself in the charming writing style.
There are a handful of poems, too, but I skipped them and just read the stories.
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