The Twilight Realm

Áine Minogue

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"Exquisite Celtic music." SONGWRITER'S MONTHLY

Enter into a world where day and night collide. Where the woods tend to come alive; as the mysteries of the underworld unfold, shadows of the dark will be no more.

The Twilight Realm radiates its own special blend of mystical magic. Through Áine Minogue's skill as a harpist and beautiful lyrical voice

"Exquisite Celtic music." SONGWRITER'S MONTHLY

Enter into a world where day and night collide. Where the woods tend to come alive; as the mysteries of the underworld unfold, shadows of the dark will be no more.

The Twilight Realm radiates its own special blend of mystical magic. Through Áine Minogue's skill as a harpist and beautiful lyrical voice this collection of twelve audio traces is a spiritual oasis of peace and tranquility." MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

ALBUM CREDITS Tim Archibald: Bass Seamus Egan: Whistle Tom Hill: Clarinet & Clarinet arrangements Winifred Horan: Fiddle Takaaki Masuko: percussion Áine Minogue: Irish harp, vocals, percussion Birdcalls on “Enchanted Valley” appears courtesy of Shanachie Entertainment Group

Studio: AdelMark Studios, Lincoln, MA Mixed by Mark Wessel at AdelMark Studios, Lincoln, MA Engineer for harp, fiddle and whistle tracks: Seamus Egan All other tracking: Mark Wessel (photo: © James Higgins) Liner Notes: Thane Tierney Pre Production: Brian P. Meyers & Aine Minogue Produced by Aine Minogue Graphic Design: Greg Gonzales, Creative Vision Design Company All tracks Traditional, Arranged by Aine Minogue and published by Little Miller Music Company (BMI)

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ARTICLE - FAIRIES, CHILDHOOD

A SIMPLE FAIRY STORY

Once upon a time there were two brothers who lived on the edge of the woods.  Both were born with a hideous humps on their back.

One day, one of the brothers set out to walk into the village.  While passing the fairy fort he heard music.  The fairies came out and invited him in.  They played for him the most magical and beautiful music he had ever heard, they fed him delicious food, played games with him and if that wasn’t enough, they even took the lump from his back.  

Delighted, he returned home  to tell his brother of his great adventure and good luck.

The next day, his brother set out and heard music while passing the fairy fort.  The fairies invited him in.  He was ecstatic thinking he would have a similar experience to his brother and he waited joyfully in anticipation of magical music, delicious food. To think he too might no longer have a lump on his back.

So, he was horrified when the fairies were cruel to him, whipped him. Not only did they not take away his lump - the gave him the lump from his brother's back.   

The poor man went home beaten, disappointed and carrying two humps on his back!

So, is there a moral to this story?  I would say - no.  Nor do we find a moral in most fairy stories.  An interesting thing about fairylore is that it's likely to interweave nicely with whatever it is you believe in the first place.  The one thing it clearly does is reflect life.  One day you walk down the street and have a great day. The next, who knows?   

Is there harm in needing time or mechanism outside of ourselves to help us accept life. Why is it that a man can leave his home one morning and stumble upon a miracle; and on another day, his brother following a similar path returns at evening with twice as many troubles as he left with that morning?  

For whatever reason, you walk down the next day and all hell breaks loose! These types of stories don’t explain the “why.” They simply make it clear that “life happens” and while we wait for understanding, acceptance and the bigger hand to comfort, these reflections of humanity can serve a wise and lovely purpose for our common frailties as human beings. 
 

CHILD CARE AND FAIRY LORE

As you might expect, a great deal of fairy lore revolves around children. What’s surprising is the social utilizing of fairy lore around child care and safety. A simple folkloric strain around fairy lore was that if you didn’t value your children, there was something out there that would happily take over the job for you. This might sound strange to us in a modern world but in a pre-internet, pre-psychology and media-free world, how was a mother (and many entered motherhood at a very young age) to be cajoled and prove capable of care in societies where infant mortality rates were high and family sizes were generally large?

I never cease to be amazed by the wisdom and simplicity of some of these tales and traditions. The superstition ran that fairies loved beautiful little children and that if they were not watched, or if the house was not keep free of clutter and essentially clean, the fairies might well be drawn in to “take” the child. It would be a mistake to view our ancestors as fools. However, the overriding sense that children were precious and to be minded is the main theme here. 

Since mothers tend toward worry over their young children, the world of fairy didn’t just offer a projection for those worries; guarding against the fairies gave a mother a series of tasks to prevent any harm coming to her child. They were imminently practical measures around watchfulness and maintenance.  

To look at the nature of fairies is to look at a wide spectrum of human nature but overall their quality was childlike, but children have an amoral quality and this is what made the world of fairy a precarious proposition and a place that could be visited but should never become a habit or habitation for the average mortal… 


CHILD LOSS, CHANGELINGS AND FAIRY LORE

So where did this idea of the fairies taking children come from? Like so much of fairy lore, it sounds like superstition and perhaps even ignorance. But any time you scratch a folkloric tradition or strain of thinking, there’s probably something interesting there…

The myth of the Changeling did serve a societal purpose. The stories of a changeling revolve around the idea of a mother’s child being “taken” by the fairies and a sickly fairy child being left in his/her place. The exchanged “fairy” child would generally get sicker and sicker and die. It’s little wonder that we look at these stories, shake our heads and walk away in confusion. Why would any culture hold in its annals such a themes only to have it re-appear in story after story. 

It’s well to remember that in the Middle Ages, fairy stories were prevalent and this continued for centuries… 

As mentioned, we’re referring to societies with high infant mortality rates and child sicknesses. Women often reared large families. 

For a mother, the idea that her child was “taken” and not “gone” was the central emotional tool that the idea of a changeling offered. Since the fairies would have loved the child they had “taken,” it was likely they would remain forever childlike and in a land of enchantment. The child that had gotten sick and died, on some level, was not the child the mother had given birth to, and therefore the ability for child care and some detachment to provide emotional relief to the mother, albeit in the form of nothing more than a superstition, was often pivotal to recovery from the unthinking - the sickness and death of a child… 

I would never wish to give the impression that our Irish ancestors were walking around with this as a core belief system. I’m thinking of those times in life that are often unspoken, when something simple feels like a word of comfort from the departed, hearing a significant song at the right moment, seeing a symbol, a bird… These comforts do not reside in that part of the psyche that encompasses the everyday, but it does offer comfort to that part of us that needs to go on…

The country was deeply Christian for much of its history and a concurrent devotion to the Mother (Mary) and saints, such as St. Brigid (with her attendant earthy folkloric aspects) would have been likely. In fact the devotion to both these women was deepened by their personal narratives of child loss, care and the other relatable aspects of their own experience. While a woman was likely to attend Church by day and pray for her child, it was in the middle of the night, when the depths of loss surfaced and during those inconsolable moments that a woman might draw on the emotional, albeit irrational comfort of her child being elsewhere and happy, with a chance of return, as opposed to the idea that the child was gone forever. And even though belief in an afterlife was ingrained in Irish culture, for a grieving mother, when logic has flown out the window and the heart is sore, this cultural oddity, “the changeling” could provide comfort to some part of a psyche and heart that could find no comfort in either logic, religion or loved ones. As Yeats said, there are some things that are too big “for even the biggest heart to hold.” 


“AWAY WITH THE FAIRIES”
What Are they talking about?

Another one! As the sombrero is to Mexico, so goes the Irish -  “away with the fairies.“  For the Irish, it can feel like a caricature. But! Yes, I’ve said it before, beneath the surface superstition, the concept of being “away with the fairies” when brought into the light of day illustrates the use of fairy lore as a social tool for reincorporation the disenfranchised or absent back to society, with their dignity intact. What do I mean by that? Well, the best example might be around a bout of depression or other passages that a body might want to leave behind. It’s worth considering how small communities and villages dealt with mental illness or even intermittent depression, in a country that’s not known for its sunlight… If a community member had a ‘bout,” it was easier to put behind them with a general consensus that they had been “away with the fairies.” This social agreement of sorts served to give permission to its most vulnerable to re-enter the daily functioning and communal pursuits of the locality. It negated the necessity for explanation or probing while allowing people to resume social interaction without question or comment. It was a way to “save face.” Any explanation is better than none. And explanations for odd behavior, mental illness and depression weren’t available to people. In truth, mental illness seem to change over time and we still find much of that area, inexplicable and difficult to understand. It’s little wonder that an explanation through the use of fairy lore surfaced…  

 

Here again, the changeling idea is often unearthed. The idea that an adult could be “taken” and therefore not “be themselves” was not that unusual and to some degree continues on a subconscious level. (“I wasn’t myself” of “he wasn’t himself” is a phrase I’ve often heard during my lifetime) And when I think about it, it seems like issues of depression and other mental health diseases (they seem to change over time), can feel to the sufferer as though they are being “taken over” by something over which they have no control. In any event, this mechanism of permission to return to everyday life after difficulty has that sound kindness and wisdom that I’ve come to associate with Irish folkloric tradition. 


MYTH, FAIRYLORE AND CARL JUNG

So now that we’ve taken a look at how fairy lore and fairy tales were utilized in society (Middle Ages stories were mostly fairy stories! And it continued for centuries especially in Western Europe) what is it that fairy lore represents? Where does it come from? Similarly mythology would seem to fulfill a similar function in connecting us to the various aspects of human nature. By creating stories around archetypal characters, we see in them extreme versions of our own human quality traits and are thus enabled to detach from clinging to our own small story and to see the world in broader terms, as well as our role in the bigger picture. 

Carl Jung often drew upon these so-called archetypal characters of fairy lore and myth as a way of reflecting the psyche. Mythologist Joseph Campbell carried on this work and saw myth as the reflection itself of the human psyche. Combined with symbology and ritual, he regarded the old stories as a key to understanding ourselves and the collective experience of what it means to be human. 

“Presence is holding love without twisting it to your desire” Marion Woodman

A list of Jungians including Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Marion Woodman followed suit in drawing deeply from the well of fairy tales as a means of exploring and understand even more aspects of the human psyche. 

Did the Irish see it this way? It’s hard to know. In the same way that attendees of Star Wars movies love the stories, are They thinking about the archtypal characters and the story as a reflection of the collective human experience? 


FAIRY TALES, MYTH AND STORYTELLING IN HOLLYWOOD 

It’s interesting to note that George Lucas drew on much of Joseph Campbell’s studies of the “hero” archetype for his Star Wars movies and openly credits Campbell at every opportunity. “The Power of Myth,” a series of interviews of Campbell by Bill Moyers - and one of PBS most popular shows - actually took place at Lucas’ ranch.

For a time in Hollywood, the Truby method gave classes in the Heroes’ journey, in which seven points are hit on in the profession of the journey the hero is making. 

Hollywood stories used to run on the Shakespeare Five-Act structure - sometimes down to the page i.e. specific things had to “happen” by page “x.” It also had a three-act structure, although no one could tell you where on began and another ended. Campbell’s model (as taught in LA by Truby) offered an alternative. Many movies and stories about heroes that do incorporate the seven points as listed by Campbell, did become very successful. The more obvious was the Star Wars movies, which are, for many, a modern form of mythology set in the future, instead of the past. So, lest anyone think mythology or fairy lore are things of the past, check out the “hero” movies and fairy stories (Disney) at your megaplex and it will become clear that humanity has never ceased to cherish fairy lore and mythology. There have, however been some format changes! It’s its own nourishment…

FAIRYTALES CARRIED ON
Marion Woodman

And so many Jungian psychologies continued on in the tradition of Jung and Campbell. For them the stories provided a mirror to the psyche. Clarissa Pinkola Estés surprise success with her “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype” evidences the deep interest in stories that resonate and are simply another form of fairytales and myths. 

One of my favorite Jungian psychologists is Marion Woodman. It took a while for me to understand her vernacular but once the meaning of the terms became clear, her work held great insights. I am grateful for all her insights, particularly with respect to artists and the creative process and what’s important to transmit to audiences… 

Marion defines feminine and masculine in archetypal terms, the idea that we all have masculine and feminine aspects, irrespective of gender. She explains the focus of those tales that address the “conjuncto” or sacred marriage of the self to the self in unifying and balancing all of the self. The masculine (paraphrasing) represents more linear thinking and is more linear in nature. The feminine is more representative of circular thinking and is circular in nature. Honestly, it goes a lot deeper than than but hopefully it gives enough basis to explain a fairytale in this light…
 

SLEEPING BEAUTY
What does it mean? 

In this light, another reading of such tales as “Sleeping Beauty” reveals an entirely new and different meaning e.g. Sleeping Beauty represents the feminine in all of us, and in this case, the part of the feminine that is sleeping and awaits the journey of the Prince (the masculine aspect) through the “forest” to the castle (the castle almost always represents the psyche), often using a sword (discernment) to “cut away” those things that get in the way of his moving forward toward the castle to meet and marry that part of himself, or subconscious, that is “sleeping.” 

We often seek in modern times to explain what all the symbolism means but the thinking is that irrespectively of whether we consciously understand the symbols, the effect of hearing these tales is similar. It feeds parts of us.


GREAT LITERATURE AND ARCHTYPES

There is school of thought that relegates the great classic stories of out times to an integration of two aspects of ourselves, namely the conscious and the subconscious, the masculine and feminine. I don’t want to get too deep into the psychology here;) But I found this fascinating anything that helps me to see the world, or stories of the world in a slightly different way, I love to pass it along.

So, when I look at a timeless novel such as “Withering Heights,” which was been described as the ultimate arthtypal story. Heathcliff represents the masculine, a man unable to temper his character. Katherine is similarly lacking. All wildness and raw. Over time and through experience, they “give birth” to the next generation or in archtypal terms, they give birth to a more conscious version of themselves. Their “children” are able to meet each other more easily and ultimately “marry” in a way that the early archtypal versions of the characters could never hope to since they represented the unrefined traits of the feminine and masculine. Once these were tempered, it was easier for the more refined versions of themselves to connect. 

When I began to apply this type of symbolic thinking to all the great novels, it opened up a new world for me. In politics, I even find it helpful to view world events as a series of symbolic stories and much as with fairy lore, fairy tales and myth, it gives me a different view and helps to put things in perspective.

I never stop learning from these stories and songs that were all left to us and for us… Whatever has happened or will happen to me is likely to have happened to those who have gone before - at least at a symbolic level - and knowing this, hearing the stories, hearing the songs, learning them, singing them and thinking about them helps me to be in the world because as much as it appears to be changing, what it means to be human remains very much - the same…   

 

WHY DID FAIRYTALES DIE OUT? DISNEY…

Carl Jung and his cohorts came on the scene parallel to the dying out of fairy lore and many of the folkloric traditions I write about on this site. 

By the mid-twentieth Century, Ireland was quickly moving from a country of mostly small farmers into a newer age. Immigration was high (and always had been), but combine outside influences, with a new availability of newspapers and the advent of mass-transportation, fairy lore and many of its attendant traditions went out of fashion. And not for the first time. 

Interestingly electric was also a factor in the demise of the practice of fairy story telling. It was easier to belief in the presence of the unknown prior to electric light. And if you’ve ever walked a country road on a dark night with no sign of a moon for guidance, it’s easy to see where the idea of fairies come from. More accurately, we ascribe our “fears” to the dark but ultimately, the deepest fear is what’s in ourselves. 

So, when light came to houses and villages and it was possible to “see in the dark,” something in us stopped looking for it outside the door and began to look within.

The advent of newspapers made it more difficult to suspend belief in the existing fairy lore structures as a means of dealing with our human nature. So began the reading of “real” stories from around the world. In addition, immigrants who could now return due to mass transportation carried a new sensibility that didn’t always embrace the old stories or ways. 

And so, it would appear to make perfect sense that the seeds of archetypal psychology came to sprout within a short time of the introduction of electricity, mass transportation and media. Soon the world gave us Jung. 
 

IRISH FAIRYLORE AND THE DARK HALF OF THE YEAR 

I really enjoy the Celtic cycle of the year and have recorded a lot around it, probably mostly because I love the idea of the outer and inner life reflecting each other and having traditions and ways of marking them. From an Irish perspectively, I don’t think I’m alone in this. 

As I’ve written extensively, in the old cycle of the year, day began at dusk, not dawn since the dark was always thought to come before the light, much as with childbirth. 

And the year was divided into two halves, the light half and the dark half. New Year’s Eve began at dawn on the feast of Samhain (Oct 31st) and went until May Day. The light half began on May Day and run until Samhain. The year was divided into “quarter days” or “pattern days” as they later came to be known. The two other pattern days were Lughnasadh (August 1) and Imbolc (Feb 1). The solstices and equinoxes were also acknowledged.

The light half of the year consisted of the business of life, our business. It was the time to sew crops, and harvest them. It was the time for activities of all kinds and very importantly, it was the time of marriages. The light half belonged to the people. 

The dark half was believed to belong to the otherworld. 

It’s when we begin to view this otherworld, not as a series of fantastical characters, but as a reflection of our inner nature, that we can come to enjoy the richness of fairy tales and the valuable function they serve. 

So, it might be fairer to say the light half is for our active selves, the external half. And the dark half is for contemplation, the inner self.
 

WHAT OTHERWORLD?
There are, broadly speaking, three otherworlds that are often referenced in Irish fairy stories and writings. And I do mean broadly since it’s a multi-faceted area.

The Land Beneath the Waves. 

Seafaring men (and they were virtually all male) of old viewed the land beneath the waves as a mysterious netherworld of sorts. Irish mythology and even its songs refers to mermaids.

There’s a plethora of songs about Selkies, another type of sea creature related to the seal that transforms into human formon land, usually, tho not always in female form. 

We see these shape changing stories as part of cultural mythology and lore all over the world. But, as even, I find the Irish/Celtic versions the most intriguing…

The background to the “The Mermaid” song follows a similar storyline to many selkie and mermaid tales from the tradition.

A man goes to sea and often sees a mermaid in the water and falls in love with her. Cy cajoling or capture, she comes to land. Conversely, the selkie may choose the sailor and return to land willingly with him. When the selkie or mermaid arrives on land, she sheds her skin.

Depending on whether she came willingly or not, the seal skin is then hidden by her husband from her, or hidden by the selkie herself so she will not be tempted to return to the sea.

Time passes and even though she longs for her home, the sea, life continues. Children are born. Invariably, the children are the ones who usually (tho not always) find the seal skin. No matter what the circumstances, this resurrection of her old form compels her to put the skin back on. She is then powerless to resist the lure of the sea. Her husband and children are heartbroken… The song has its roots in Donegal. 

In the version of “The Mermaid” that I sing (in Gaelic), her daughter, Máire is on shore sining to her mother. This particular song is somewhat unusual in that it takes place after the mermaid has returned to the sea. In many of the mermaid and selkie stories, the leaving of the land also marks the end of the narrative. In contrast to the complexity of the emotion the mermaid feels, being torn between love for her shore bound children and the magnetic pull of the sea, the melody is very soothing and easy. In this manner it takes on more the qualities of a lullaby than a lament. 
 

SELKIE

This particular Selkie song (most come to us from Scotland), the selkie is, in fact, male and plays as a conversation between the Selkie and a mortal woman. 

We hear the point of view of the Selkie “I am a man upon the land, I am a Selkie in the sea.” And also the point of view of his mortal companion “It was not well” said the maiden fair, “that the great Selkie… should have come and brought a babe to me.”

Much like the fairy tales I’ve mentioned previously and fairy lore in general, songs like “The Mermaid” are not expressing a lesson, a moral stance, or a resolution. They’re simply reflecting what is. I have often thought that any woman who has felt the pull between her children and other vocations, particularly one that feels authentic and puts us in our own skin understands this Mermaids song on a visceral level. For the many women who return to a “calling” such as work, whether for vocational, financial or fulfillment purposes, might they not just as easily relate to the plight of the Mermaid?

And this is why I find myself going back to these songs over and over. A thousand articles and books on the work/home pull have never expressed for me what this song says in three verses.   

The mermaids and selkies, like many mythological creatures, never come to resolve. Some things are not resolvable. They just are. And the greater comfort, as ever, lies in knowing that we are not alone in our situation and that the many others who have gone before have left to us a way to relate and to know we can, albeit ill-at-ease continue to take our place as part of the human family.


FAIRY SONGS AND POETRY

While music is associated with the fairies themselves, poets, particularly Irish poets, have been inspired by the otherworld for centuries. Here is a selection of Celtic poems from as early as the 12th Century taken from the Book of Leinster, up to the 20th Century when W. B. Yeats was enthralled with Celtic mythology and the world of fairy. Much of Yeats' poetry and writing alludes to the Celtic otherworld and it adds a wonderful depth and richness to much of his work. Included are 'Song of the Wander Aengus,' 'The Stolen Child,' 'The Magi' and ' 'The Hosting of the Sidhe.'


TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIRE
By WB Yeats

While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
And of the wayward twilight companies
Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
Under the fruit of evil and of good:
And of the embattled flaming multitude
Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,
And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,
And with the clashing of their sword-blades make
A rapturous music, till the morning break
And the white hush end all but the loud beat
Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.



THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
By WB Yeats

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caolite tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolite tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.



THE MAGI 
By WB Yeats

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.



FAERY SONG
By Oran Sidhe
Translated by Shaw

I left in the doorway of the bower
My jewel, the dusky, brown, white-skinned,
Her eye like a star, her lip like a berry,
Her voice like a stringed instrument.
I left yesterday in the meadow of the kind
The brown-haired maid of sweetest kiss,
Her eye like a star, her cheek like a rose,
Her kiss has the taste of pears.



THE STOLEN CHILD 
By W. B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of the reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping 
than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping 
than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping 
than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping 
than he can understand.



SONG OF THE WANDERING AENGUS
By W. B. Yeats
First published in 1899, this poem tells the story of Aengus, the (Irish) God of love, who falls in love with a bean sidh (banshee) in a dream. He then spends his life searching for her – choc full of mythological allusions….

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head
And cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



THE HOSTS OF THE FAERY
Translation: Kuno Meyer

Introduction: According to Patrick Logan (The Old Gods – the facts about Irish Fairies), this poem can be found in the Book of Leinster written in the twelfth century. “It describes a party of warriors who went to Magh Mel (Plain of Honey), and of the many names of fairyland, to help the king recover his wife who had been abducted from him. When they had recovered the stolen wife they all decided to remain in fairyland where their leader shares the ruling power with the king.

White shields they carry in their hands,
With emblems of pale silver;
With glittering blue swords,
With mighty stout horns.
In well-devised battle array,
Ahead of their fair chieftain
They march amid blue spears,
Pal-visaged, curly-headed bands.
They scatter the battalions of the foe,
They ravage every land they attack,
Splendidly they march to combat,
A swift distinguished, avenging host!
No wonder though their strength be great:
Songs of queens and kings are one and all;
On their heads areGolden-yellow manes.
With smooth comely bodies,
With bright blue-starred eyes,
With pure crystal teeth,
With thin red lips.
Good they are at man-slaying,
Melodious in the ale-house,
Masterly at making songs,
Skilled at playing fiddle



THE MAN WHO DREAMED OF FAERYLAND
By W. B. Yeats

He stood among a crowd at Drumahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stoney care;
But when a man pd fish into a pile,
It seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the raveled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover’s vows
Under that woven changeless roofs of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.

He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its gray and muddy mouth
Sang that somewhere to north or west or south
There dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race
Under the golden or the silver skies;
That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot
It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit:
And at that singing he was no more wise.

He mused behind the well of Scanavin,
He mused upon his mockers: without fail
His sudden vengeance were a country tale,
When earthly night had drunk his body in;
But one small knot0grass growing by the pool
Sang where- unnecessary cruel voice –
Old silence bids its chosen race rejoice,
Whatever raveled waters rise and fall
Or stormy silver fret the gold of day,
And midnight there enfold them like a fleece
And lover there by lover be a t peace.
The tale drove his fine angry mood away.

He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;
And might have known at last unhaunted sleep
Under that cold and vapor-turbaned steep,
Now that the earth had taken man and all:
Did not the worms that spired about his bones
Proclaim with that unwearied, reedy cry
That God has laid His fingers on the sky,
That from those fingers glittering summer runs
Upon the dancer by the dreamless wave.
Why should those lovers that no lovers miss
Dream, until God burn Nature with a kiss?
The man has found no comfort in the grave.



A FAIRY SONG 
By Percy French

Stay, silver ray,

Till the airy way we wing
To the shade of the glade
Where the fairies dance and sing:
The mortals are asleep –
They can never understand
That night brings delight,
It is day in Fairyland

Float, golden note,
From the lute strings all in tune,
Climb, quiv’ring chime,
Up the moonbeams to the moon.
There is music on the river,
There is music on the strand,
Night brings delight,
It is day in Fairyland.

Sing while we swing
From the bluebell’s lofty crest.
Hey! Come and play,
Sleepy songbirds in your nest;
The glow-worm lamps are lit,
Come and join our Elfin band,
Night brings delight,
It is day in Fairyland.’

Roam thro’ the home
Where the little children sleep,
Light in our flight
Where the curly ringlets peep.
Some shining eyes may see us,
But the babies understand,
Night brings delight,It is day in Fairyland.

 

I'D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY'S CHILD
By Robert Graves (1895–1985)

CHILDREN born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart’s desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they’re seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
Two strong ponies and ten sheep;
All have houses, each his own,
Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild—
I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.

 

THE FAIRIES 
By William Allingham

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We dare n't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music,
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen,
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow;
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite?
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We dare n't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

 

THE ELVE'S DANCE
Anonymous

Round about, round about,
In a fair ring-a,
Thus we dance, thus we dance,
And thus we sing-a,
Trip and go, to and fro
Over this green-a,
All about, in and out,
For our brave Queen-a.

 

INVOCATION TO THE FAIRIES
By F.D. Browne-Hemans

Fays and fairies haste away!
This is Harriet's holiday:
Bring the lyre, and bring the lute,
Bring the sweetly-breathing flute;
Wreaths of cowslips hither bring,
All the honours of the spring;
Adorn the grot with all that's gai,
Fays and fairies haste away
Bring the vine to Bacchus dear,
Bring the purple lilac here,
Festoons of roses, sweetest flower,
The yellow primrose of the bower,
Blue-ey'd violets wet with dew,
Bring the clustering woodbine too
Bring the baskets made of rush,
The cherry with it's ripen'd blush,
The downy peach, so soft so fair,
The luscious grap, the mellow pear:
These to Harriet hither bring,
And sweetly in return she'll sing
Be the brilliant grotto scene
The palace of the Fairy Queen
Form the sprightly circling dance,
Fairies here your steps advance;
To harp's soft dulcet sound
Let your footsteps lightly bound
Unveil your forms to mortal eye;
Let Harriet view your revelry

 

FAERY SONG
By John Keats

Ah ! Woe is me ! poor silver-wing !
That I must chant they lady's dirge,
And death to this fair haunt of spring,
Of melody, and streams of flowery verge --
Poor silver-wing ! ah ! woe is me !
That I must see
These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall !
Go, pretty page ! and in her ear
Whisper that the hour is near !
Softly tell her not to fear
Such calm Favonian burial !
Go, pretty page ! and softly tell --
The blossoms hang by a melting spell,
And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice
Upon her closed eyes,
That now in vain are weeping in their last tears,
At sweet life leaving, and these arbors green --
Rich dowry from the spirit of the spheres
alas ! poor queen !

 

GREEN RAIN
By Mary Webb

Into the scented woods we'll go,
And see the blackthorn swim in snow.
High above, in the budding leaves,
A brooding dove awakes and grieves;
The glades with mingled music stir,
And wildly laughs the woodpecker.
When blackthorn petals pearl the breeze,
There are the twisted hawthorne trees
Thick-set with buds, as clear and pale
As golden water or green hail--
As if a storm of rain had stood
Enchanted in the thorny wood,
nd, hearing fairy voices call,
Hung poised, forgetting how to fall.

 

HERE WE COME A-PIPING
Anonymous

Here we come a-piping,
In springtime and in May;
Green fruit a-ripening,
And Winter fled away.
The Queen she sits upon the strand,
Fair as lily, white as wand;
Seven billows on the sea,
Horses riding fast and free,
And bells beyond the sand.

 

THE FAIRY RING
By George Mason and John Earsden

Let us in a lover’s round
Circle all this hallowed ground;
Softly, softly trip and go,
the light-foot Fairies jet it so.
Forward then and back again,
Here and there and everywhere,
Winding to and fro,
Skipping high and louting low;
And, like lovers, hand in hand,
March around and make a stand.

 

I STOOD AGAINST THE WINDOW
By Rose Fyleman

I stood against the window
And I looked between the bars,
And there were strings of fairies
Hanging from the stars;
Everywhere and everywhere
In shining, swinging chains;
The air was full of shimmering,
Like sunlight when it rains.

They kept on swinging, swinging,
They flung themselves so high
They caught upon the pointed moon
And hung across the sky.
And when I woke next morning,
There still were crowds and crowds
In beautiful bright bunches
All sleeping on the clouds

 

HALLOWEEN SONG OF DIVINATION
Traditional

Introduction: In Chamber’s “Popular rhymes of Scotland (1870) there is another version of a Mother Goose rhyme (Luna, every woman’s friend…) that was recited at Halloween by girls who wished to know who their husband might be and what the quality of the marriage might be.

This knot, this knot, this knot I knit,
To see the thing I ne’er saw yet
To see my love in his array,
And what he walks in every day;
And what his occupation be,
This night I in my sleep may see.
And if my love be clad in green
His love for me is well seen;
And if my love is clad in gray,
His love for me is far away;
But if my love be clad in blue,
His love for me is very true.

“Once this was done, she placed the garter under her pillow, believing that her intended would appear in her dreams and that the colour of his clothes would attest to the quality of the marriage.”

Source: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Skelton, Robon & Margaret Blackwood, Arkana (Penguin Group) London, 1990

 

THE FAIRY QUEEN
Anonymous

Come, follow, follow me,
You, fairy elves that be:
Which circle on the greene,
Come, follow Mab your queene.
Hand in hand let’s dance around,
For this place is fairye ground.

When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest:
Unheard,and unespy’d,
Through key-holes we do glide
; Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.

And , if the house be foul
With platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,
And find the sluts asleep:
There we pinch their armes and thighs;
None escapes, nor none espies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid,
And duely she is paid:
For we use before we goe
To drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroomes head
Our table-cloth we spread;
A grain of rye, or wheat,
Is manchet, which we eat;
Pearly drops of dew we drink
In acorn cups fill’d to the brink.

The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snails,
Between two cockles stew’d,
Is meat that’s easily chew’d;
Tailes of wormes, and marrow of mice,
Do make a dish, that’s wonderous nice.

The grasshopper, gnat, and fly,
Serve for our minstrelsie;
Grace said, we dance a while,
And so the time beguile;
And if the moon doth hide her head,
The gloe-worm lights us home to bed.

On tops of dewie grasse
So nimbly do we passé,
The young and tender stalk
Ne’er bends when we do walk:
Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.

 

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
By John Keats

O what can ail thee Knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake
And no birds sing!

O what can ail thee Knight at arms
So haggard and so woe begone?
The Squirrel’s granary is full
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lilly on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the Meads
Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild –

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love
And made sweet moan –

I sat her on my pacing steed –
And nothing else saw all day long
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery’s song –

She found me roots of relish sweet
And honey wild and manna dew
And sure in language strange she said
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grotA
nd there she wept and signed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With Kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed. Ah Woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,
Pale warriors death pale were they all;
They cried – “La belle dame sans merci
Thee hat in thrall.”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is withered from the Lake
And no birds sing.

 

THE NIGHT SWANS
By Walter de la Mare

“Tis silence on the enchanted lake,
And silence in the air serene,
Save for the beating of her heart,
The lovely-eyed Evangeline.

She sings across the waters clear
And dark with trees and stars between,
The notes her fairy godmother
Taught her, the child Evangeline.

As might the unrippled pool reply,
and answer far and sweet,
Three swans as white as mountain snow
Swim mantling to her feet.

And still upon the lake they stay,
Their eyes black stars in all their snow,
And softly, in the glassy pool,
Their feet beat darkly to and fro.

She rides upon her little boat,
Her swans swim through the starry sheen,
Rowing her into Fairyland –
The lovely-eyed Evangeline.

“Tis silence on the enchanted lake
And silence in the air serene;
Voices shall call in vain again
On earth the child Evangeline.

Evangeline! Evangeline!
Upstairs, downstairs, all in vain.
Her room is dim; her flowers faded;
She answers not again.

 

FAIRY-LAND
By Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales- and shadowy floods-
cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again- again- again-
Every moment of the night-
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down- still down- and down,
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be-
O'er the strange woods-
o'er the sea-
Over spirits on the wing-
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep!-
O, deep!Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like- almost anything-
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before-
Videlicet, a tent-
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen

 

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
By Lewis Carroll (1872)

Child of pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet and
I and thouAre half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy tale.

 

THE FAIRIES’ DANCED
By Thomas Ravenscroft

Dare you haunt our hallow’d green?
None but fairies here are seen
Down and sleep,
Wake and weep,
Pinch him black, and pinch him blue,
That seeks to steal a lover true!
When you come to hear us sing,
Or to tread our fairy ring,
Pinch him black, an pinch him blue!
O thus our nails shall handle you!

 

THE RUIN
By Walter de la Mare

When the last colours of the day
Have from their burning ebbed away,
About that ruin, cold and lone,
The cricket shrills from stone to stone;
And scattering o’er its darkened green,
Bends of the fairies may be seen,
Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet
Dancing a thistledown dance round it:
While the great gold of the mild moon
Tinges their tiny acorn shoon.

 

THE ELVES’ DANCE
By THOMAS RAVENSCROFT

Round about in a fair ring-a,
Thus we dance and thus we sing-a;
Trip and go, to and fro,
Over this green –a;
All about, in and out,
Over this green-a.

 

SIR WALTER SCOTT

She who sits by haunted well,
Is subject to the Nixies’ spell;
She who walks on lonely beach
To the Mermaid’s charmed speech;
She who walks round ring of green,
Offends the peevish Fairy Queen;
And she who takes rest in the dwarfie’s cave,
A weary weird of who shall have

 

THOMAS CAMPION

Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air,
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair,
Then thrice-three times tie up this true love’s know,
And murmur soft “She will or she will not.”

Go, burn these poisonous weeds in yon blue fire,
These screech-owl’s feathers and this prickling briar,
This cypress gathered at a dead man’s grave,
That all my fears and cares an end may have.

Then come, you Fairies! Dance with me a round!
Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound!
In vain are all the charms I can devise:
She hath an art to break them with her eyes

 

MOTHER GOOSE 

There are men in the village of Erith
Whom nobody seeth or heareth,
And there looms, on the marge
Of the river, a barge
That nobody roweth or steereth.

 

MOTHER GOOSE

Little Lad, little lad, where were you born?
Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn,
Where they sup butter-milk
With a ram’s horn;
And a pumpkin scoop’s
With a yellow rim,
Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in.

 

THOMAS CAMPION

Hark, all you ladies that do sleep!
The fairy-queen Proserpina
Bids you awake and pity them that weep:
You may do in the dark
What the day doth forbid;
Fear not the dogs that bark,
Night will have all hid.

But if you let your lovers moan,
The fairy-queen Proserpina
Will send abroad her fairies every one,
They shall pinch black and blue
Your white hands and fair arms
That did not kindly rue
Your paramours’ arms.

In myrtle arbours on the downs
The fairy-queen Proserpina,
This night by moonshine leading merry rounds,
Holds a watch with sweet love,
Down the dale, up the hill;
No plaints or groans may move
Their holy vigil

 

QUEEN MAB
By P. B. SHELLEY

I am the Fairy MAB: to me ‘tis given
The wonders of the human world to keep:
The secrets of the immeasurable past,
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find:
The future, form the causes which arise
In each event, I gather: not the sting
Which retributive memory implants

In the hard bosom of the selfish man;
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue’s votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spend day,
Are unforeseen, unregistered by me:
And it is yet permitted me, to rent
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
For which it hath its being, and may taste
That peace, which in the end all life will share

 

THE FAIRIES
By ROBERT HERRICK

If ye will with Mab find grace,
Set each Platter in his place:
Rake the Fier up, and get
Water in, ere Sun be set.
Wash your Pailes, and cleanse your Dairies;
Sluts are loathsome to the Fairies:
Sweep your house:
Who doth not so,
Mab will pinch her by the toe.

Solstice & the Celtic Otherworld

While the Solstices were not as important to the ancient Irish as the major fire festivals, mainly Lughnasadh (August 1), Beltane (May Day, May 1), Imbolc (February 1) and Samhain (Halloween), they were none the less celebrated.

The solstice, much like the fire festivals, was considered a time when the veil between the worlds was thin and lines along which the world of the natural and supernatural might merge.  Fairylore is full of creatures that come to life on mid-Summers Eve, and many films, poems and other writings reflect these ideas beautifully.  While these themes have been relegated to the world of children, it's hard not to get excited on mid-Summer's Eve, read a few lines from the bard, and go back to a time when the lines of the imagination drew in and out of these realities with great ease. 

My strongest mid-Summer association is often with the bard himself.   Mind you, the bard seems to have drawn a little inspiration from the otherworld in his "Midsummer Night's Dream." 

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turn them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name

ACT V, Scene 1, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare

Above all, it enables us to align with the world we live in and for many of us the easiest entrance into that particular castle is through nature itself.  Is it any wonder we feel a certain alignment at mid-Summer.  The old Irish would have said it was 'our' time.  The time of the people.  The time to do the business of living.  Planting, sewing, reaping, marrying - and for a brief time at  mid-Summer wondering what else is out there and what there might be to align with.   For this reason, it was known as the 'light half' of the year.

My childhood was full of fairy forts.  There's hardly a townland in Ireland without a fort, fairy ring, holy well or some 'place.'  Magical places were always thresholds, where rivers met or townlands bounded each other.  Magical times were when time met, dawn and dusk.  Of couse, no one had to explain this to us back then, we ruled those worlds and happily travelled in and out of them after school each day. I vividly remember the sense that time was suspended. Traipsing over thistles and mud, much of the world felt mysterious. 

Fairy forts were often left untended and there are farmers in Ireland to this day who will not build on a Fort. It’s considered unlucky. Of course they were magic!  Such a fuss! In case you think I’m joking, let me clear and say I know of at least one such person. And when he was young he would have laughed at the idea himself! Everyone seemed to know where they were. Today I would be hard pressed to find many of them.

It’s interesting all these years later is to piece together the thinking behind of some of the old ideas, such as leaving the otherworld to its own devices. As the saying goes “leave well-enough, alone.”  

To study fairy lore within the folkloric tradition is to study human nature. 

Over time, we've come to view these otherworldly creatures as reflections of our own psyche, a means of taking parts of ourselves, thinking of them symbolically and creating stories around them, in order that we might better understand who we are and what it means to be human.

The characters in fairy stories often represent an aspect of ourselves or our aspirations. The stories themselves are not teaching stories and there is rarely a moral to a fairy story. In fact, depending on ones personality, chances are these stories may just reinforce what we already felt or sensed. What they do serve, and beautifully is to  “reflect” our nature and in so doing give us a mechanism for symbolic thinking, a means of coming to terms of what it is to travel through the world and be human; a new way of “seeing” things from a sometimes exaggerated perspective and so giving us a more detached view of what it is to be human and the parts that we are contending with at any given time in our lives. In the same way as a comedian (jester archetype) will guide us to a place where we can laugh at ourselves by exaggerating our humanness and reflecting it to us as folly, fairy lore works similarly and serves a similar function.

Interestingly, it can and did interweave beautifully with Christianity. I look on the vilification of magic - a child’s sense of wonder and their innocence in suspending belief - as a loss, of sorts.

There are many voids in the initial experiences, shocks and traumas that humans experience that are not easily filled by theology. Fairy lore can be a beautiful mechanism to switch to symbolic thinking while people come to terms with their life experiences. This does not necessarily take from the religious or spiritual aspect, it appears more to fill the void between shock and awareness. It also serves to balance those juxtaposed opposites of life and spirit, the natural or real and supernatural. 

So, here's a simple fairy story, the first one I learned, and the root story of one of the first songs I learned 'De Luain, De Mairt' in celebration of the Summer, the Solstice and the Celtic Imagination.


BIBLIOGRAPHY - TWILIGHT REALM
Celtic Otherworld - Fairies 

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Barber, Richard   King Arthur
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Barber, Richard  The Knights and Chivalry 
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Call of the Hero (1991)
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Hill, Stephen        Roman Ireland (Stanley Ireland, ed) 
Kelly, Fergus      A Guide to Early Irish Law
Kelly, Penny. The Elves of Lily Hill Farm: A Partnership with Nature. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1997
Kinsella, Thomas      The Tain
Lady Gregory Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland
Logan, Patrick & Jim O Callahan   The Holy Wells of Ireland
Loomis, Roger S.    The Development of Arthurian Romance
Lysaght, Patricia    The Banshee
McNeill, Marion The Silver Bough
McArthur, Margie. Faery Healing: The Lore and the Legacy. Aptos, CA: New Brighton Books, 2003
Mac Cana, Proinsius  Celtic Mythology
Mac Cana, Proinsius   The Mabinogi
Maier, Bernhard    Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture
MacKillop, James     Dictionary of Celtic Mythology
Mallory, J.P.(ed)    Aspects of the Tain
Matthews, John. The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Celtic Otherworld. Issaquah, WA: The Lorian Association, 2004
O Sullivan, Sean (editor) Folktales of Ireland
Padel, O.J.       Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature
Patricia Kelly 
Powell, T.G.E.   The Celts (Ancient Peoples and Places) 
Rankin, David    Celts and the Classical World 
Rees, Alwyn & Brinley  Celtic Heritage
Ross, Anne   Folklore of the Scottish Highlands
Ruer O hUi      
Thomas, Charles Celtic Britain 
Evans-Wentz, W.Y. & Terrance McKenna    The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries
Yeats, W. B.      Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland
Yeats, W. B.  The Celtic Twilight: Faerie & Folkore 

SUGGESTED MOVIES: 
IRISH:  
The Secret of Roan Inish

OTHER: 
The Princess Bride:
https://www.netflix.com/watch/60000361?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cf63921526dc77c965ab7560f4540206ba336c479%3A0ef4366f0d9f7d4a67d0b3a129310281f7095de3

Peter Pan & related movies & books



For more information in Irish Sacred Texts, Myths and Sagas: 

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/vob/index.htm 

 

NOTE FOR SCHOLARS: 

CELT:  University College Cork 

List and hosts the “Documents of Ireland.” (speaks for itself) 

Fantastic resource - includes Annals of Ulster and Annals of the Four Masters.

Many of the documents are in Latin or Irish but there’s enough English to keep it riveting! 

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/publishd.html