Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland

by Lady Wilde

Overview

268 Pages. Complete and Unabridged!

This represents the actual legendary lore of the Irish folk; that is the product of the literary fancy of Croker, or Lover, or Lady Wilde. That the country whose folklore, if honestly transcribed, might be the most valuable as well as the most beautiful of any in Europe should thus be represented by a literary sham instead of a scientific reality is a very distinct misfortune. And the pity of it is that it is now almost too late to gather up the precious treasures which the imaginative writers have despised. The old legends are dying out, or are becoming adulterated with modern invention by the country people themselves. The time for securing them in their original purity is fast slipping away; many have been already lost beyond recovery. All the more reason to make an earnest appeal for the reverent handling of those that remain. There are, I believe, at present at least three workers engaged in the task of collecting the folk tales of Ireland-Mr. Douglas Hyde, Mr. David Fitzgerald, and Mr. W. Larminie. It is to be hoped that these writers will have the courage to avoid the evil example of their predecessors in the same field; and that as a result of their labours we shall at last have a corpus of genuine and unadulterated Irish folk-lore.

-The Academy, Volume 38

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663547415
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	08/09/2020
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Lady Wilde (née Elgee; 27 December 1821 – 3 February 1896) was an Irish poet under the pen name "Speranza" and supporter of the nationalist movement. Lady Wilde had a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helped to gather. She married Sir William Wilde, an eye and ear surgeon (and also a researcher of folklore), on 12 November 1851 in St. Peter's church in Dublin,[4] and they had three children: William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (26 September 1852 – 13 March 1899), Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), and Isola Francesca Emily Wilde (2 April 1857 – 23 February 1867). Her eldest son William Wilde became a journalist and poet, her younger son Oscar Wilde became a prolific and famous writer, and her daughter Isola Wilde died in childhood.