Project Gutenberg's Celtic Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

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Title: Celtic Fairy Tales

Author: Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

Posting Date: February 4, 2010 [EBook #7885]
Release Date: April, 2005
First Posted: May 30, 2003

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC FAIRY TALES ***

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CELTIC FAIRY TALES

_SELECTED AND EDITED BY_

JOSEPH JACOBS

_SAY THIS

Three times, with your eyes shut_

Mothuighim boladh an Eireannaigh bhinn bhreugaigh faoi m'fhoidin
duthaigh.

_And you will see

What you will see_

_TO ALFRED NUTT_

PREFACE

Last year, in giving the young ones a volume of English Fairy Tales, my
difficulty was one of collection. This time, in offering them specimens
of the rich folk-fancy of the Celts of these islands, my trouble has
rather been one of selection. Ireland began to collect her folk-tales
almost as early as any country in Europe, and Croker has found a whole
school of successors in Carleton, Griffin, Kennedy, Curtin, and Douglas
Hyde. Scotland had the great name of Campbell, and has still efficient
followers in MacDougall, MacInnes, Carmichael, Macleod, and Campbell of
Tiree. Gallant little Wales has no name to rank alongside these; in
this department the Cymru have shown less vigour than the Gaedhel.
Perhaps the Eisteddfod, by offering prizes for the collection of Welsh
folk-tales, may remove this inferiority. Meanwhile Wales must be
content to be somewhat scantily represented among the Fairy Tales of
the Celts, while the extinct Cornish tongue has only contributed one
tale.

In making my selection I have chiefly tried to make the stories
characteristic. It would have been easy, especially from Kennedy, to
have made up a volume entirely filled with "Grimm's Goblins" _a la
Celtique_. But one can have too much even of that very good thing, and
I have therefore avoided as far as possible the more familiar
"formulae" of folk-tale literature. To do this I had to withdraw from
the English-speaking Pale both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laid