Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

Summary

Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry is an anthology of Irish fairy lore, ghost stories, legends and comic tales chosen and introduced by the young W. B. Yeats. Rather than collecting stories himself, Yeats gathered the best versions already printed by nineteenth-century Irish writers and folklorists: Thomas Crofton Croker, William Carleton, Samuel Lover, Patrick Kennedy, Lady Wilde, Letitia Maclintock, Douglas Hyde and others, along with poems by William Allingham, Samuel Ferguson, Edward Walsh and Yeats himself. He arranged them by the kind of being they describe and wrote a short introduction to each section explaining the country people's beliefs. Yeats's general introduction argues that belief in fairies and ghosts is still alive in the Irish countryside, quoting an old man in County Sligo who complains he is annoyed by the fairies, and advising the collector to make friends with children and old men. The Trooping Fairies section opens with Allingham's poem The Fairies and includes Croker's Legend of Knockgrafton, in which the hunchback Lusmore improves the fairies' song and is relieved of his hump while a greedy imitator receives a second one, and Hyde's translation of Teig O'Kane and the Corpse, in which a wild young man must carry a corpse all night to find it a grave. Changelings includes Croker's Brewery of Egg-shells, where a mother tricks a fairy child into revealing its age, and Yeats's poem The Stolen Child. The Merrow section tells of Jack Dogherty, who visits a sea-man's house under the waves and frees the drowned souls kept in lobster-pot cages. The Solitary Fairies cover the lepracaun, the cluricaun, the far darrig, the pooka and the banshee; here Daniel O'Rourke rides an eagle to the moon. Ghosts and Witches, Fairy Doctors gather tales of the dead who return, of witches who steal butter in the shape of hares, and of fairy doctors who cure the fairy-struck, as in The Confessions of Tom Bourke. T'yeer-na-n-oge describes the Land of Youth and enchanted islands such as Hy-Brasail. Saints, Priests includes The Priest's Soul, about a learned priest who denied the soul, and Lover's comic King O'Toole and his Goose, with Saint Kevin. The Devil includes The Countess Kathleen O'Shea, in which a noblewoman sells her soul to demon merchants to save her starving people, a tale Yeats later turned into a play. Giants offers Carleton's Legend of Knockmany, where Fin M'Coul's wife Oonagh outwits the giant Cucullin by disguising Fin as a baby. The last section, on kings, queens and robbers, includes The Twelve Wild Geese and The Story of Conn-eda. The Walter Scott Publishing Company of London published the book in 1888 in its Camelot Series. It closes with Yeats's notes and a short list of authorities on Irish folklore.

Top Lessons

• Kindness rewarded, greed undone

  Many tales turn on courtesy toward the unseen: Lusmore pleases the fairies with a gracious addition to their song and is healed, while Jack Madden, who rushes in for his own gain, leaves with two humps. The same pattern appears in the soul-saving Jack Dogherty and the self-giving Countess Kathleen.

• A people's memory in story

  Yeats insists that these stories preserve how Irish country people understood the world: death and the banshee, the sea and the merrow, healing and the fairy doctor. He treats the tellers and their beliefs with respect, and the anthology became part of a larger effort to recover Ireland's own literature.

• Christian faith and older lore side by side

  Priests and saints share the book with fairies and pookas. The peasants' answer that fairies are fallen angels, neither saved nor lost, shows how Christian teaching and older beliefs were woven together in Irish country life.

• Wit as a weapon

  In A Legend of Knockmany, Munachar and Manachar and the comic tales, cleverness and good humor beat strength. Oonagh's griddle-cakes and Daniel O'Rourke's tall tale show the Irish delight in a good story well told.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The anthology is a rich source for the history of folk medicine in nineteenth-century Ireland. Yeats's section notes describe the fairy doctor, consulted for sick cattle, suspected changelings and the fairy blast or fairy stroke, by which a person struck by the fairies develops a swelling or becomes paralysed; historians of medicine read such beliefs as a vernacular framework for sudden illness, stroke and infant wasting, though the tales themselves make no such identification. The changeling belief, in which a sickly or failing child is thought to be a fairy substitute, is presented here as lore; later events, such as the death of Bridget Cleary in 1895, showed how such beliefs could be acted on. Lusmore's hump, the healing mud of Loughleagh and the banshee's warning of death round out a picture of how country people explained deformity, cure and mortality.

• Changelings, introduction

  Yeats explains the belief that fairies carry off healthy children and leave sickly substitutes that pine away, and the folk tests used to detect them.

• Witches, Fairy Doctors, introduction

  The fairy doctor's knowledge of herbs and spells, and the fairy blast or stroke that causes swellings or paralysis.

• The Trooping Fairies, The Legend of Knockgrafton

  The hunchback Lusmore, shunned by neighbors, is freed of his hump by the fairies; the greedy Jack Madden is given a second.

• T'yeer-na-n-oge, Loughleagh (Lake of Healing)

  A lake whose black mud is said to cure scurvy and sores, and a traveler who arrives on crutches and leaves sound.

• The Solitary Fairies, The Banshee note and tales

  The banshee's wail before a death in the old families, the funeral keen said to imitate her cry, and the death-coach.