Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

by William Butler Yeats (Editor), W. B. Yeats (Other)

Overview

Treasury of 64 tales invites readers into the shadowy, twilight world of Celtic myth and legend. Mischievous fairy people, murderous giants, priests, devils, and druids star in such stories as "The Soul Cages," "The Black Lamb," "The Horned Women," "The Phantom Isle," and more. Introduction, Notes by W. B. Yeats.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486269412
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	11/24/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	922,008
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet. Born in Sandymount, Yeats was raised between Sligo, England, and Dublin by John Butler Yeats, a prominent painter, and Susan Mary Pollexfen, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. He began writing poetry around the age of seventeen, influenced by the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but soon turned to Irish folklore and the mystical writings of William Blake for inspiration. As a young man he joined and founded several occult societies, including the Dublin Hermetic Order and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, participating in séances and rituals as well as acting as a recruiter. While these interests continued throughout Yeats’ life, the poet dedicated much of his middle years to the struggle for Irish independence. In 1904, alongside John Millington Synge, Florence Farr, the Fay brothers, and Annie Horniman, Yeats founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which opened with his play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News and remains Ireland’s premier venue for the dramatic arts to this day. Although he was an Irish Nationalist, and despite his work toward establishing a distinctly Irish movement in the arts, Yeats—as is evident in his poem “Easter, 1916”—struggled to identify his idealism with the sectarian violence that emerged with the Easter Rising in 1916. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, Yeats was appointed to the role of Senator and served two terms in the position. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and continued to write and publish poetry, philosophical and occult writings, and plays until his death in 1939.

Table of Contents

THE TROOPING FAIRIES?
The Fairies
Frank Martin and the Fairies
The Priest's Supper
The Fairy Well of Lagnanay
Teig O'Kane and the Corpse
Paddy Corcoran's Wife
Cusheen Loo
The White Trout ; A Legend of Cong
The Fairy Thorn
The Legend of Knockgrafton
A Donegal Fairy
CHANGELINGS?
The Brewery of Egg-shells
The Fairy Nurse
Jamie Freel and the Young Lady
The Stolen Child
THE MERROW?
The Soul Cages
Flory Cantillon's Funeral
THE SOLITARY FAIRIES?
"The Lepracaun ; or, Fairy Shoemaker"
Master and Man
Far Darrig in Donegal
The Piper and the Puca
Daniel O'Rourke
The Kildare Pooka
How Thomas Connolly met the Banshee
A Lamentation for the Death of Sir Maurice Fitzgerald
The Banshee of the MacCarthys
GHOSTS?
A Dream
Grace Connor
A Legend of Tyrone
The Black Lamb
The Radiant Boy
The Fate of Frank M'Kenna
"WITCHES, FAIRY DOCTORS-"
Bewitched Butter (Donegal)
A Queen's County Witch
The Witch Hare
Bewitched Butter (Queen's County)
The Horned Women
The Witches' Excursion
The Confessions of Tom Bourke
The Pudding Bewitched
TYEER-NA-N-OGE-
The Legend of O'Donoghue
Rent-Day
Loughleagh (Lake of Healing)
Hy-Brasail.-The Isle of the Blest.
The Phantom Isle
"SAINTS, PRIESTS-"
The Priest's Soul
The Priest of Coloony
The Story of the Little Bird
Conversion of King Laoghaire's Daughters
King O'Toole and his Goose
THE DEVIL-
The Demon Cat
The Long Spoon
The Countess Kathleen O'Shea
The Three Wishes
GIANTS-
The Giant's Stairs
A Legend of Knockmany
"KINGS, QUEENS, PRINCESSES, EARLS, ROBBERS-"
The Twelve Wild Geese
The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts
The Haughty Princess
The Enchantment of Gearoidh Iarla
Munachar and Manachar
Donald and his Neighbours
The Jackdaw
The Story of Conn-eda
NOTES