MYTHOLOGICAL TALES | FAIRY TALES | FOLKTALES

Once upon a time, settling in after a hard day's work, they gathered around the turf-fire, passing the time chatting about the day’s events while keeping their fingers busy weaving, whittling, spinning and sewing. The young boys would climb up wherever they could get a good view, while the young girls crouched between the knees of their fathers and brothers, all waiting anxiously for the seanachie, the local lay storyteller, to begin to tell his tales. The seanachie would take his time, however, easing back into his chair and reddening his pipe with an ember from the fire, waiting for the muse of inspiration to stir his soul into motion. Then, all at once the storyteller, usually a man ancient of days and saintly in habit, began to speak, weaving a tale that those in attendance may never have heard, though they might have heard him tell his tales for many years — such was the size of his repertoire. Perhaps it was a pithy, local anecdote from the recent past, an adventure tale of Finn McCool and the Fianna, or maybe, in more recent centuries, a story about St. Patrick. Whatever the tale, however, the storyteller always had his audience’s complete attention from the first word to the last.

Make sure to return every quarter, at which time our virtual seanachie will present you with another trinity of stories from his nearly limitless treasury of folklore. These tales will always include one story from each of the three basic types of folklore: Mythological Tales, Fairy Tales, and Folktales:

MYTHOLOGICAL TALES | FAIRY TALES | FOLKTALES

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