A review by henryarmitage
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms And Superstitions Of Ireland by Jane Francesca Wilde (Lady Wilde)
3.0
I found part 1 to be entertaining and educational. It added some depth to what I learned from reading [b:Finn Mac Cool|531042|Finn Mac Cool|Morgan Llywelyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312023729s/531042.jpg|827066].
There's lots of stuff about fairies here. It was interesting to me how after the introduction of Christianity, the Irish shoehorned the belief in fairies into the Christian world view (The Fairies as Fallen Angels). This is fairly typical of the type of syncretistic religion that sometimes develops when an animistic culture adopts Christianity. There seems to be a real ambivalence where the fairies are seen as trickster spirits but not really evil and even as having some noble characteristics.
I skimmed past a lot of the items in the second volume, the spells and charms and superstitions.
You can find a copy of this online at
The Internet way-back machine.
Once upon a time there was this awesome web site known as Bran's Island. It lived at http://www.donaldcorrell.com/. There was a large collection of fiction and folklore there, but sadly the site went down in looks like 2015.
I used to periodically mirror the site in case of tragedy, so it's on my laptop. Over the weekend of 6/8/2019 I was traveling and looking for something to read I came across this. Just now I thought to check for it in Goodreads, and there it is. Cool.
There's lots of stuff about fairies here. It was interesting to me how after the introduction of Christianity, the Irish shoehorned the belief in fairies into the Christian world view (The Fairies as Fallen Angels). This is fairly typical of the type of syncretistic religion that sometimes develops when an animistic culture adopts Christianity. There seems to be a real ambivalence where the fairies are seen as trickster spirits but not really evil and even as having some noble characteristics.
I skimmed past a lot of the items in the second volume, the spells and charms and superstitions.
You can find a copy of this online at
The Internet way-back machine.
Once upon a time there was this awesome web site known as Bran's Island. It lived at http://www.donaldcorrell.com/. There was a large collection of fiction and folklore there, but sadly the site went down in looks like 2015.
I used to periodically mirror the site in case of tragedy, so it's on my laptop. Over the weekend of 6/8/2019 I was traveling and looking for something to read I came across this. Just now I thought to check for it in Goodreads, and there it is. Cool.