Gaelic Tales
Kevin Danaher , Folk Tales of the Irish Countryside (Mercier IRE). The best volume on fairy and folk tales, recorded with a civil servant's meticulousness and a novelist's literary style. Myles Dillon (ed), Irish Sagas (Mercier IRE). An excellent examination of Cuchulainn, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, etc in literary and socio-psycho-logical terms. Seamus Heaney , Buile Suibhne ; in English, Sweeney Astray (Faber; Noonday). A modern reworking of the ancient Irish saga of the mad king Sweeney. Padraig O Conaire , Finest Stories (Poolbeg o/p; Dufour o/p). O Conaire's dispassionate eye roams over the cruelties of peasant life. Tomas O Criomhthain , (sometimes Thomas O'Crohan), An tOileo in English, The Islandman (OUP UK). Similar to O Conaire but non-fiction and, if possible, even more raw. Sean O Tuama and Thomas Kinsella , An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed (Dolmen o/p; University of Pennsylvania, o/p). Excellent translations of stark Irish-language poems on famine and death. See also Kinsella's translation of one of the earliest sagas, the Ta Bo Cuailnge (OUP UK o/p). Peig Sayers , An Old Woman's Reflections (OUP UK). Unfortunately, Sayers' complacent acceptance of her own powerlessness is still held up as an example to Irish schoolchildren. Still, in spite of itself, a frightening insight into the eradication of the Irish language through emigration, poverty and political failure. A funny deconstruction of the Sayers style is Flann O'Brien's An Beal Bocht ; in English, The Poor Mouth (HarperCollins; Dalkey Archive). Alan Titley , A Pocket History of Gaelic Culture (O'Brien Press IRE). Concise, witty and some-times irreverent analysis of the nature of Gaelic culture, its survival in Ireland and lasting impact. William Butler Yeats (ed), Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (Hippocrene Press; Simon & Schuster). Yeats get all misty-eyed about an Ireland that never existed.
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