Irish Folktales

My personal response to the Irish Fairytales:

The King of Ireland’s Son started with the building of a great story. The King’s son killed a raven and it was the blackest skull he had ever seen, which just so happened to fall on the whitest snow and bleed the reddest of reds. The son saw those colors and the contrast of the three and decided that he would find and marry a woman with hair so dark, skin so white and cheeks so red. Of course there was only one woman like this in the world and his search for this woman leads us on an adventure with little green men, giants, and other gifted companions. His saga eventually results in a convoluted courtship with the woman he seeks. In the end he wins her hand and finds that his generosity to his companions resulted in their commitment to his geas.

This story was interesting and I was surprised that after such travels the King’s son encountered a woman that rejected him. It took much work and cunningness to make this a “happily ever after story”.

The Man Who Had No Story was a quick tale that I imagine would serve as a bed time story for kids. The story is full of fantasy. Brian, the untalented man plays the fiddle, sings songs, holds mass, and doctors on a man, all of this at the direction of a lovely girl in a fairly land. He is introduced as having nothing and searching in vain for rods (to make baskets). He decides to cut the bar in a fairy glen and soon is overtaken by a fog that may well have been sleep. He wakes up after a long night of adventure and his bundles of bar are under his head. There may be a “you can do it” message in this story.

The Birth of Finn MacCumhail initially reminded me of the story of baby Moses in some ways. The King was advised that his grandson would take over the kingdom one day. As a precaution he watched his daughter’s every move, but she marries Cumhal and bears a son, Finn. The King knows that he will one day lose his kingdom, so he orders the child to be killed. The child was rescued and the King decided to kill every male infant so that there was no way for the grandchild of the King to escape. The story winds on and on until one day Finn MacCumhail is offered the hand of the King’s daughter (would this be Finn’s mother?) if he was able to defeat great obstacles that many warriors had failed to do. Those warriors were being held prisoners, pending their execution. Finn succeeded and the King gave Finn his daughter, but Finn asked to see the prisoner/warriors instead. Finn convinced the King to trade his daughter for the warrior champions and thus the birth of the Fenians of Erin.

This story correlates to the rise of Irish Nationals that opposed British rule in the 1850s. Finn MacCumhail’s mythical warrior status was used by the Irish revolutionaries as motivation and namesake in the 19th century conflict with British rule. The revolutionaries referred to themselves as “Fenians.”

Dreams of Gold was a quick story about a pot of gold, I am sure there is some moral to the story, but I never really got it. The title itself suggests fairytales…DREAMS….GOLD.

Usheen’s Return to Ireland was my favorite of the Irish Fairytales that we were assigned to read. Here is story of the Land of the Young, where you never grow old, never suffer from hunger or sickness. It is inhabited by fairies and happiness. But Usheen who was taken to Tir-Nan-Oge by a deer that he was hunting would one day return to the land of mortals (Ireland). He discovered that his friends and his comrades were dead and that the world had continued to age while he had not. He was given one rule to obey upon his return, and that was, do not touch the ground. Usheen was overcome with sentimental memories upon his return and forgot to stay on his horse. He climbed from the horse and touched the ground; he immediately lost the youth that he had captured at Tir-Nan-Oge.