SAY THIS
Three times, with your eyes shut
And you will see
What you will see.
Celtic Folk and
Fairy Tales
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
JOSEPH JACOBS
EDITOR OF "FOLK-LORE"
ILLUSTRATED BY
JOHN D. BATTEN
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
To
ALFRED NUTT
Preface
ast year, in giving the young ones a volume of English Fairy Tales,my difficulty was one of collection. This time, in offering themspecimens of the rich folk-fancy of the Celts of these islands, mytrouble has rather been one of selection. Ireland began to collect herfolk-tales almost as early as any country in Europe, and Croker hasfound a whole school of successors in Carleton, Griffin, Kennedy,Curtin, and Douglas Hyde. Scotland had the great name of Campbell, andhas still efficient followers in MacDougall, MacInnes, Carmichael,MacLeod, and Campbell of Tiree. Gallant little Wales has no name torank alongside these; in this department the Cymru have shown lessvigour than the Gaedhel. Perhaps the Eisteddfod, by offering prizesfor the collection of Welsh folk-tales, may remove this inferiority.Meanwhile Wales must be content to be somewhat scantily representedamong the Fairy Tales of the Celts, while the extinct Cornish tonguehas only contributed one tale.
In making my selection I have chiefly tried to make the storiescharacteristic. It would have been easy, especially from Kennedy, to[vi]have made up a volume entirely filled with "Grimm's Goblins" á laCeltique. But one can have too much even of that very good thing, andI have therefore avoided as far as possible the more familiar"formulæ" of folk-tale literature. To do this I had to withdraw fromthe English-speaking Pale both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laiddown the rule to include only tales that have been taken down fromCeltic peasants ignorant of English.
Having laid down the rule, I immediately proceeded to break it. Thesuccess of a fairy book, I am convinced, depends on the due admixtureof the comic and the romantic: Grimm and Asbjörnsen knew the secret,and they alone. But the Celtic peasant who speaks Gaelic takes thepleasure of telling tales somewhat sadly: so far as he has beenprinted and translated, I found him, to my surprise, conspicuouslylacking in humour. For the comic relief of this volume I havetherefore had to turn mainly to the Irish peasant of the Pale; andwhat richer source coul