Irish Earth Folk.
Author: MacMANUS, Diarmuid.
NY: Devin-Adair, 1959. xiv, 192 pages. Illustrated. Hardback.
Paddy Flynn, a little bright-eyed old man of Ireland, when asked by William Butler Yeats if he had ever seen the fairies, replied, “Am I not annoyed with them?” Again, an old woman believed neither in hell nor in ghosts; “but there are faeries and little leprechauns and water-horses and fallen angels,” she said. And as Yeats wrote, “No matter what one doubts, one never doubts the faeries,” for, as a man said to him, “they stand to reason.”
In this persuasive book, Diarmuid Mac Manus, writing not as a folklorist but as a historian, records in factual detail many manifestations of the spirit world of recent years. He tells how the Thornhill fairy appeared to two young sisters in their room, and the Mount Leinster fairy to a young woman as she was taking the cows home.
The Pooka, that great black animal with blazing eyes, walks through these pages, and the magical properties of fairy trees manifest themselves to men and women.
The fairies—those “gentle folk”—often so friendly and helpful, perform outrageous acts of mischief, and these the author relates exactly as they occurred. He tells of magic cures performed in cases beyond the healing power of medicine, and of the uncanny powers of the fabulous Biddy Early, the nineteenth-century seer and worker of spells.
The author of Irish Earth Folk, as a recorder of the facts, corrects many misconceptions about the spirit world. His book is a delight to read, a contribution to the literature of the fairy folk, and a primary source of information for a host of readers of all ages.
DIARMUID A. MAC MANUS comes of a County Mayo family that has held its present estate of Killeaden in the West of Ireland for more than a century. As a boy he often visited the tenants’ cottages, listening to the tales that were told there. He went through the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and went to India with a British regiment in 1911. There he learned Indian folklore and the life of the villages. In World War I he was severely wounded at the Dardanelles. Back in Ireland, he was closely identified with Ireland’s struggle for freedom and with the great personalities of the Irish Literary Revival. He was a close friend of Yeats in the poet’s later years. During World War II he worked in civil defense in London and afterward went to Germany, studying the folklore there. His present book is the result of his long study of folklore and local history in farming areas of Ireland.
CONTENTS:-
Preface
I The Middle Kingdom
II The Fairy Folk
III Fairy Trees
IV The Pooka
V Magic Cures
VI Pranks and Mischief
VII Fairy Ground and Paths
VIII The Stray Sod
IX Hostile Spirits and Hurtful Spells
X Biddy Early
ILLUSTRATIONS:-
The Killeaden thorn tree
A fairy fort
The famous fairy fort of Lis Ard
A fairy oak on Lis Ard
The demon thorn tree
Paddy Baine’s house, with corner removed
The river Gweestion, where the “stray sod” was effective
The fairy trilogy of oak, ash, and thorn
The road of the three dark figures
The Big House, where Biddy Cosgary lived
Martin Groak and Mac Manus family members
ISBN: None/Unknown
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