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.

Comedy and Structure

Watch Kani Yamabushi and Kamabara and compare and contrast the plays in structure, characters, etc. in a group discussion. Do any of the “one liners’ remind you of past or present jokes?

I've read several of the other blogs on this subject and the topic has been covered in great detail. I don't believe I have much to add on this specific question. Therefore, I would like to discuss Kyogen from a slightly different perspective. (If you go to my profile, you can access the other class blogs.)

What strikes me about Busu, Kani Yamabushi and Kamabara in particular and Kyogen, in general, is the staging and its contrast to Western plays.
Ortalani discusses the Noh stage (and the Kyogen stage by default) in "The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary", pp 144-146. The set staging for all Noh and Kyogen plays allows the use of the viewer's imagination. The play is experienced on an additional creative level similar to a play reading where the characters either sit through the recitation or approach a microphone one or two at a time. The observer becomes an active mental participant – more deeply involved than in Western plays where every aspect is controlled and fed to the audience. (I should say that I’m generally discussing mainstream theatre in this essay.) Also, the performance becomes more personal. Renditions can be compared based on individual performances and not influenced by the surroundings and trappings of the show. Although, it must be noted that costumes come into play in such a way that could affect a comparison. However, since the Tokugawa era (from 1603 to 1868 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period), these costumes have been stylized enough that perhaps they no longer impact a viewer’s response to the performance.
Another thing that struck me was our previous discussions from Dissanayake's “What is Art For?” regarding comparisons between Art and ancient rituals. It seems to me that Japanese theatre is a marriage between these two concepts almost to an extreme.
Additionally, in his discussion of Noh, Ortolani says:

Zeami then explains the importance of moments of non-action, when nothing seems to happen on the stage. This is one of the great secrets of the tradition. It is based on the continuous, profound concentration of the actor, who is supposed never to relax his inner tension. The actor’s concentration unites him with the deepest self, which is a metaphysical reality identical for all things. The moments of non-action, as well as those before and after, are all rooted in the same deep reality, the kokoro of all things, which provides the profound continuity to the apparent non-continuity of action. (p114)

I equate non-action by the performer to the negative space of the absolutely spare structure of the stage. These anti-reality aspects of the performance and the performance space center the concentration, removing all distractions and allowing both the performer and the audience to look inward for meaning. Negative space in painting is a useful tool for forcing the artist to think about what is being depicted rather than concentrating on the object itself. The example I was given years ago during a drawing class was observation of the negative space around my hand. Now, I still can’t draw my hand (I can barely draw a hangman game), but looking at the negative space focused my attention on shapes and patterns that I didn’t usually see. I believe the negative of non-action and the simplified stage achieve the same end.

I realize I have drifted from Kyogen to Noh, however, I found the descriptions of the Noh performances much more interesting that I did the Kyogen performances. The humor portrayed, in general, does not appeal to me even in our culture (Lucy and Ethel notwithstanding.)