Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry Paperback – November 17, 2011

The Irish are the greatest writers & story tellers. Yeats is world renowned as one of Ireland's best so you can't go wrong by buying this treasure trove!

Really interesting collection of stories and legends and folk tales all touching on the supernatural. It has taken a while to read, because each story stands a bit alone.

I enjoyed most of the stories collected here, and I thought T. Crofton Croker had the best of the lot. Soul Cages was my favorite, but Master & Man and Daniel O'Rourke were also creative. The banshee tales were sleep-inducing with realistic but tedious exposition (like some Edgar Allan Poe short stories). Yeats tries to sort the tales into categories, adding a bit of background before each section, but it seems to me that a lot of these tales defy such easy organization. For instance, the Kildare Pooka seems to me to be more of a "brownie" creature (functionally) vs. the creature featured in Douglas Hyde's The Piper & the Puca. But, hey, that's why this is a book of folklore and not a coherent mythological system. I also noted some of Patrick Kennedy's tales are virtually the same as similar tales found in the Brothers Grimm, but I would say upwards of 90% of the tales in this collection were stories I hadn't encountered before.Also, there really was no leprechaun tale here, but we're informed they are of the "solitary fairy" type and so can be expected to wear red jackets, not green as is commonly supposed. But don't fret, there are plenty of fun tales here even without leprechauns! There are witches, pucas, cluricauns (alcoholic leprechauns), enchanted pudding, and all sorts of craziness. Plus, half the fun of reading these is immersing yourself in the charming writing style.There are a handful of poems, too, but I skipped them and just read the stories.

This volume (and other compilations by Yeats) stands out head and shoulders above other books on Irish folk and fairy tales. Yeat's mission was to compile and preserve the traditional tales and folk spirit of the people of his Island, and who better than Ireland's most famous poet to have an ear for language and a good tale? The reviewer who complained that because of the archaic dialect this wasn't an "easy read" is missing the point. That said, if one takes the time, one can "enter into" the dialect, hear it lilting in your mind, and access these wonderful tales fairly readily.I own a number of volumes of Irish folk and fairy tales and this is the most complete. I love the fact that this book, and Yeats' other volumes, draws upon tales he collected himself from the Irish peasantry of his day. Many of them are traditional tales long told through the years; others are personal experiences of the narrator. Some of them became themes in Yeats' own poetry. What a great gift to the Irish people, to those of us like myself who are of Irish heritage, and to all who appreciate the wonderful old Irish tales.

It is always interesting to read the folk tales of a people. If you've an interest in the fairies, giants, and leprechauns this is a great place to start.

While Yeats relied on mostly 19th century literary versions of folktales, which often distorted the stories somewhat in the interest of catering to the Victorian English-speaking cities, the stories themselves are well chosen to represent a wide range of common Irish folk tales and mythical creatures. The stories themselves, moreover, are indeed more literary than perhaps more authentic collections, such as Kevin Danaher's, and are therefore a little more interesting to read. I plan to use this text in a course on Irish literature both because the tales are a good introduction to Irish folklore and because the tales demonstrate how the early-twentieth-century Irish Renaissance adopted, adapted, and remolded the Irish Gaelic tradition.

I enjoyed the strange oddball things that were injected into the stories like the fairy in the pudding which made the pudding jump out of the pot and run away.

Yeats was deeply interested in the folk history of his native island, and how the fairy faith manifested in his day. The old tongue was still spoken in corners of Ireland, and he listened to tales told by peat fires on cold winter evenings. Some of it may be nostalgia, but a lot of it spoke to the oppression of the people under foreign governance, and their isolation from the rest of Europe. Yeats's hermetic pursuits influenced his brilliant and precise poetry.

There were a lot of good stories of fairy tales and poetry. I'm not going to lie, some of the stories were a little boring and dragged a little, but not all of them were boring; I found a lot of them entertaining and funny, though most of them were based on fairies, but I definitely enjoyed the poetry stories, especially when the lines rhymed, but overall, a good book of fairy tales from a different perspective.

Was a gift for my mother who is Irish & she she says its a great book.

Very boring

I liked this volume of folktales collected by W.B. Yeats. Tales of fairies and banshees and other strange creatures abound. A must read for anyone interested in all things Irish.

Interesting