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Title: Irish Wonders

Author: D. R. McAnally, Jr.

Release Date: October 7, 2006 [Ebook #19486]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRISH WONDERS***

[Illustration: "GOD SAVE YER HOLINESS." Frontispiece.]

"GOD SAVE YER HOLINESS." Frontispiece.

Irish Wonders

by D. R. McAnally, Jr.

Edition 1, (October 7, 2006)

THE GHOSTS, GIANTS, POOKAS, DEMONS, LEPRECHAWNS, BANSHEES, FAIRIES,
WITCHES, WIDOWS, OLD MAIDS, AND OTHER MARVELS OF THE EMERALD ISLE

Popular Tales as told by the People

WEATHERVANE BOOKS - NEW YORK

[Illustration]

Copyright (C) MDCCCLXXXVIII

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-72113

All rights reserved.

This edition is published by Weathervane Books

a division of Imprint Society, Inc., distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc.

a b c d e f g h

IN MEMORY OF YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP,

This Volume

IS INSCRIBED TO

MR. JOSEPH B. McCULLAGH,

AS A MODEST TRIBUTE OF

PERSONAL RESPECT.

PREFACE.

The wonderful imaginative power of the Celtic mind is never more
strikingly displayed than in the legends and fanciful tales which people
of the humbler walks of life seldom tire of telling. Go where you will in
Ireland, the story-teller is there, and on slight provocation will repeat
his narrative; amplifying, explaining, embellishing, till from a single
fact a connected history is evolved, giving motives, particulars, action,
and result, the whole surrounded by a rosy wealth of rustic imagery and
told with dramatic force an actor might envy. The following chapters
comprise an effort to present this phase of unwritten Celtic literature,
the material having been collected during a recent lengthy visit, in the
course of which every county in the island was traversed from end to end,
and constant association had with th