This week I chose to read More Celtic Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs. For some reason I keep choosing tales that have something to do with some part of my heritage. Two weeks ago it was Cherokee Folk Tales, now it’s Celtic Fairy Tales for my Irish heritage. I think this class is bringing me closer to my ancestors. :)
The stories in this section are much longer than most of the stories featured in folk or fairy tales, with some taking 3 parts to finish!
The first story featured, ‘The Fate of the Children of Lir’ was rather sad. Typically, when I think of Celtic Fairy Tales, I think of fairy tales - light hearted and fun tales of whimsy and magic. This tale was certainly filled with magic, but more woe than whimsy. Four children are born to a King and his lovely wife, but she soon dies and he takes her sister as his second wife after a time. She becomes jealous of his children, as he dotes on them and gives them more attention than he does her, so she takes them out to a lake to kill them. However, she finds she cannot drown the children, so she instead turns them into beautiful swans, cursing them in these forms for 900 years.
Her plan backfires because the swans can still talk, so they rat her out for being a traitorous sorceress and in she is in turn transformed into an air-demon.
Perhaps the saddest part of the story (I thought) was how even though the children waited 900 years to be transformed back into humans, they did not take the same age as when they were turned into swans. Instead, they all had the forms of withered old men and women and died soon after regaining their human forms due to their decrepitness.
King Lir bemoans the fate of his beloved children.
Illustration by H. R. Millar
A second story, ‘The Vision of MacConglinney’ is a little more light-hearted, but just as bizarre. A King whose massive hunger is nearly driving his kingdom bankrupt is challenged to fast one night by a young man. Not wanting to look weak, the king obeys and the lad taunts and tempts him by telling him how he once went to a Kingdom in a far-away place made of slatters of bacon, troughs of bread, pots of custard, and rivers of cream. My mouth was watering as I read this, myself!
As he’s doing this, he’s taking savory slices of bacon and passing them just within reach of the King, but not to where he can actually get a bite. Eventually, a small demon is seen climbing out of the King’s mouth, unable to resist the temptation of bacon anymore (and who can blame him? Bacon is delicious!)
And then the demon is thrust into the fire, poof, happily ever after.
More than anything, this story made me think of a similar method I’ve read on how to get rid of tapeworm infections. Very similarly, the afflicted will fast for a night, then hold a very ripe apple in front of their mouth first thing in the morning. Supposedly, the smell will tempt the worm so much that it’s head will come out the mouth, allowing the sick person to pull the worm out. Maybe this story was based off a potential cure for tapeworm infections.
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