A Treasury Of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales Review

This is my very large and very beautiful volume of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales.

It's seven hundred pages, with embossed, intricate Celtic designs, gold edged pages, and the size of an old church bible.


I purchased it shortly after Christmas last year, and have been chipping away at reading it for the last five months (according to my Goodreads activity).


I got it because I love me some Irish folklore; I find it fascinating.
You can't go wrong with folk tales that tell the legends of a giant named 'Finn MacCool'.

There's a fantastical 'magic-is-always-around-the-corner' feel that permeates these tales, and they have a very 'telling stories passed down from generations past around the family hearth' vibe.


I find short story compilations slightly discombobulating. I have no problem with a 700 page book when it's all one linear plot, but to have roughly 70 10(ish) page stories makes it hard to stay focused, because you're always having to orient yourself to a new setting and new characters.

So I have a hard time reviewing short story anthologies, because of the variety of subject matter. In my experience of short story anthologies, some stories are great, some might be a slog, some may just be downright weird.
And in a seven hundred page book, they kind of tended to blur together, and I caught some potential repeat stories, or stories that were really similar.

There was also some tales that were reminiscent of the fairy tales we are more familiar with, but they deviated in creative ways from the popular versions.

This volume is divided up into several categories, based on the type of tale.

• Ghosts
• Witches & Fairy Doctors
• T'yeer-nan-oge
• Priests & Saints
• Devil
• Giants
• Rocks & Stones
• Treasure Legends
• Legends Of the Western Islands
• Kings, Queens, Princesses, Earls, & Robbers.

I didn't absolutely love every story, but it was a fascinating read, well worth it to me.

Also, having the tales sorted by category was new to me. Usually the anthologies I've read are not sorted by rhyme or reason.
It was nice, if a bit repetitive (there were doubles, or at least tales included that seemed very similar, and the categories weren't perfect, as some of the tales could have fallen into multiple categories) to have the tales sorted thusly.
It let me follow genres of fairy tales, and see similarities and fully explore a certain aspect of folklore before beginning a new genre.


After having read this I offer these few pieces of advice: Don't gate-crash faerie parties, don't go walking home alone at night in the dark when drunk (or ever), communicate with your spouse on supernatural happenings, don't ever share your butter with the neighbours, and if you're a priest who's gone apostate, your only hope for salvation is to have a small child stab you to death with a butter knife (really).


Also, under no circumstances should you willingly go into a haunted building, Just don't do it.