Irish Folk Tales

(1)Write your personal response to each of the Irish Fairytales for this lesson’s reading. (2) What do the Irish fairytales tell you about the Irish view of space and time?

I’d like to begin by saying I really enjoy reading folk tales from any culture. I found several wonderful websites with additional Celtic folk tales as well as tales from many other cultures. If you have any interest in the subject, I recommend visiting:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm (this website is truly amazing)
http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/celtic/
http://www.luminarium.org/mythology/ireland/ (this website is more like a portal linking you to many other websites as well as internal information.

The folk story “The King of Ireland’s Son” was a typical journey story with a moral at the end. There were several repetitious phrases coming from the oral tradition that surrounds most folk traditions. Journey stories are fairly typical in popular culture fantasy novels - one of my favorite genres. Journeys are usually undertaken by a reluctant hero, often someone who doesn’t realize he’s a hero. All journey tales include tests of some sort. In this folktale, the King’s son takes this journey to find the perfect woman who will become his wife. He is accompanied and supported by several individuals he meets on the road and is ultimately rewarded for being a good person. This was my second favorite of the stories probably because it was a forerunner for the fantasy novels I enjoy.
“Dreams of Gold” was a series of mini-stories (2-3 sentences each) about finding a pot of gold.
My favorite tale was “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail”. I enjoyed this tale so much that I found many other tales of Finn MacCumhail and his forces called the Fenians. This group of tales, known as the Fenian Cycle or the Ossian Cycle, reminded me of the Athurian legends. (please see http://www.shadowdrake.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=37 for an interesting code of behavior and tests for membership into the Fianna.) Both are filled with battles and journeys. Additionally, both sets of legends have mystical components with stories replete with witches and humans with supernatural powers. Many of the tales in the Fenian Cycle repeat phrases and story lines – again illustrating how oral traditions functioned so effectively. For example, the tale “Fin MacCumhail and the Fenians of Erin in the Castle of Fear Dubh” repeats the story line of a hag with three sons with a few modifications. Also, the battle description, “Water sprang out of gray rocks, cows cast their calves even when they had none, and hard rushes grew soft in the remotest corner of Erin.” (Henry Glassie. “Irish Folktales,” p243) was the same in both tales. Personally, I love the reference to non-pregnant cows giving birth and was thrilled to see it used more than once.
Another tale from the Fenian Cycle, “Usheen’s Return to Ireland,” is possibly a forerunner of the Rip Van Winkle tale from the 19th century. This story best demonstrated a concept of time that is quite amazing. In this story, Usheen is carried underground to Tir-Nan-Oge where time moves very slowly – a few days equate to a thousand years. When he finally returns to his home, everything is overgrown and broken. He is so overcome with grief, he allows his emotions to lead him to his own destruction. This theme is also found all throughout science fiction usually when an author is trying to make a point about how long space travel will really take and the sacrifices people will be making when they undertake their journey.
Finally, “The Man Who Had No Story” started as a political statement against the English but quickly moved to a supernatural tale of a common man experiencing life. I found this tale particularly intriguing as it implies that having a story to tell is important. This makes sense in a culture of oral traditions and folk tales. If you run out of stories, your tradition dies. Stories are a cultural currency in a way.

The Irish and Community

This blog is a little outside the current topic for the first week of our discussion on Irish folk tales. However, I wanted to add some personal insights I gained from reading "Bringing It All Back Home" by Nuala O'Connor.

I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. I was raised Catholic and spent 13 years in Catholic school. My maternal grandparents were first generation Lebanese and my paternal grandparents were generic American. We believe that side of the family ultimately hailed from Britain, but nobody has done a family tree. For all I know, I could be a descendant of someone on the Mayflower. My grade school and high school and Jacksonville, in general, had little cultural or ethnic identity. I say had, but the present tense is also applicable.
Jacksonville is an interesting place. The westside is typically Southern. This is the part of town that earned us the nickname "South Georgia." (I realize I am speaking in significant generalizations, but I've lived here 31 of my 45 years and I'm trying to make a point so please indulge me.) The rest of Jacksonville, however, is more difficult to classify. It is not really Southern and it's not typically Floridian, except for the beaches. Mostly, I consider it "white bread" - and not the good crusty on the outside, soft on the inside with a slight yeasty flavor white bread. It's Sunbeam white bread - no air pockets, smooth, tasteless white bread. (Please don't assume I don't love my home town. I just acknowledge its limitations. The proximity to all kinds of waterways and to Disney more than make up for the lack of good ethnic restaurants.)
Jacksonville is also a Navy town which makes it very transient. It always amazes me how comparatively few natives live here. I once attended a story-telling event and was the only one in the crowd who had been born here. Because of it's transient nature, no significant cultural communities have developed.
All that said, there is a fairly large Arabic community in Jacksonville, but we are scattered all over the city and our lives didn't center around our identity or that community.
Now, to the point of this blog (thanks for bearing with me). In 1989 I moved to Cleveland and was introduced to what remained of cultural neighborhoods. They were beginning to splinter as first-generation moved to second-generation moved to third-generation. There still remained plenty of Catholic schools and churches identified by their ethnic connection - Irish, German, Slovak, Polish, etc. I always thought this was unusual - less of a melting pot and more of a pot-luck with all the appetizers, entrees, vegetables and desserts on their own tables. After reading "Bringing It All Back Home," I realized the Irish communities were less a banding together and more a continuation of a cultural norm.

This way of life was based on continuity and tradition and was communal rather than individualistic. In such a context emigration was a huge wrench; it was a kind of death and was mourned as such.
(p. 32)

So, forming these communities in Cleveland and elsewhere was not only a natural process but also one that allowed the newly-arrived to more easily assimilate to a new country and, eventually, a new way of life.