Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

"Everyone is a visionary if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching."W. B. Yeats included almost every sort of Irish folk tale in this marvelous compendium of fairy tales and song which he collected and edited for publication in 1892. Yeats was fascinated by Irish myths and folklore, and joined forces with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival. He studied Irish folk tales in the British Museum and chose to reintroduce the glory and significance of Ireland's past through this unique literature.In the world of Irish fairy tales, the cycles of birth, love, pain and death have continued unchanged for countless generations. Here is the literature of the heart - a place where anything is possible and demons cannot be rationalized. In stories where every county and family is favored or plagued by magic, imagination and daily life combine in legend which is both entertaining and terrifying. Here are tales of the chilling wail of the Banshee, whose cry portends death, and of the fish-tailed Merrow, whose beautiful women spurn their gree-haired husbands for handsome local fisherman.There are bewitched puddings, lost wishes, fairies, changelings, Leprechauns, ghosts, giants, devils and kings that touch our souls and fire our imaginations. Not coincidentally it is in the wealth of symbol within Irish folklore that Yeats found the key to his personal and individual mythology - the muse of his poetic genius.