Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland [Paperback]

THE CLASSIC ONE-VOLUME INTRODUCTION TO IRELAND'S RICH FOLKLORE: WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS'S MAGICAL SELECTION OF TRADITIONAL IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Fairy and Folk Tales of Irelandcombines two books of Irish folklore collected and edited by William Butler Yeats --Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry,first published in 1888, andIrish Fairy Tales,published in 1892. In this delightful gathering of legend and song, the familiar characters of Irish myth come to life: the mercurial trooping fairies, as ready to make mischief as to do good; the solitary and industrious Lepracaun and his dissipated cousin, the Cluricaun; the fearsome Pooka, who lives among ruins and has grown monstrous with much solitude ; and the Banshee, whose eerie wailing warns of death. More than an ambitious and successful effort to preserve the rich heritage of his native land, this volume confirms Yeats's conviction that imagination is the source of both life and art. As Benedict Kiely observes in his foreword, Yeats was seeking not for the meaning of any mystery but for what he had already determined to find...a world of the imagination...a world that fed on dreaming and not on the painted toy of grey truth. CONTENTS
Foreword by Benedict KielyFAIRY AND FOLK TALES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY
Introduction
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

Lepracaun, Cluricaun, Far Darrlħ