Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales Part B

From Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (1892)

King O'Toole and His Goose

• "Och" "by dad" - dialect 
• Hunting seen as morally good
• Lots of background to introduce the king's relationship with the goose
• Who is St. Kavin?

The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire

• Divided into little tiny chapters
• Nonsense plot - lots of things that you just kind of have to take at face value
• Valuable to learn secrets

Beth Gellert

• "His lips and fangs were dripping with blood" yikes!
• Reads like a great tragedy. Makes me wonder what context it was written/originally told in.

Nohoval Cove, Ireland by Vince O'Sullivan via Flickr

The Tale of Ivan

• Intrigued by the multiple spellings of same names (Ivan, Ewan, etc) - when was Gaelic first written?
• Not a lot of personality on the characters

Andrew Coffey

• First person intro ("my grandfather")
• Magical undertones - stumbling into a place you've never seen before
• Characters called by their first and last names 
• Turned out to just be a dream...

Brewery of Eggshells

• Little folk, changelings
• Happy ending!