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The Kiltartan wonder book

Chapter 19: NOTE.
By Lady Gregory
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Children & Young Adult ReadingMythology, Legends & Folklore

About This Book

A collection of short folktales from a rural parish retold in a colloquial voice, presenting whimsical and moral narratives centered on ordinary people, fools, kings, and enchanted animals. Episodes follow quests and tests—mysterious birds, helpful mules, hidden rulers, and magical transformations—that mix humor with wonder and pragmatic cunning. Stories vary in length and form, alternating straightforward adventure with brief fables and mythic motifs, often resolving by cleverness, ritual acts, or revealed identities. Illustrations accompany many tales, and the prose preserves dialect rhythms, lending intimacy and an oral-storytelling flavor throughout.

NOTE.

I have not changed a word in these stories as they were told to me, but having heard some of them in different versions from different old people, I have sometimes taken a passage or a phrase from one and put it in another where it seemed to fit. The Seven Fishers for instance, the beginning of which I have given as told by the old man of a hundred years, drifted into the adventures of Shawneen and of The Bullockeen, and I took another ending for it; and the story of Shawneen, begun in a workhouse, was continued at my own door by a piper from County Kerry. I have only once, in The Seven Fishers, taken a few sentences from a story told, not to me, but to another. I tell this, because folk-lorists in these days are expected to be as exact as workers at any other science.

As to the substance of the stories, there is a hint in Shawneen of Perseus and Andromeda, and in The Three Sons of the Garden of the Hesperides, and of Eden itself in The Curious Woman. And who can say whether these have travelled from east to west, or from west to east, for the barony of Kiltartan, in common with at least three continents, holds fragments of the wonder tales told in the childhood of the world.

A. G.
Printed by Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin

Transcriber’s Notes

The full-page illustrations from the original text have been placed into the text. The page numbers in the list of illustrations are those in the original text and may not reflect where the illustrations are placed in this version. In the HTML version, the illustrations in the text now link to a higher resolution image file.

Itemized changes from the original text:

  • Frontispiece: Added hyphen in “HE CAME DOWN SPREAD-LEGS” to match Table of Illustrations and reference in text.
  • Dedication: Added missing period after “R” in “R. G. G.”
  • p. 19: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after “…that is in that wood.”
  • p. 21: Supplied missing word “do” in “…all he had to do was to…”
  • p. 48: Changed “neek” to “neck” and supplied missing apostrophe in “hound’s” in “…that was around the hound’s neck…”
  • p. 48: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after “…till I know what is happening to Shawneen.”
  • p. 56: Changed “ocmmands” to “commands” in “And she laid commands on the King.”
  • p. 60: Changed comma to period at end of paragraph after “…she went home to her mother.”
  • p. 65: Changed “be” to “he” in “…he cut off as he was bade…”
  • p. 66: Changed “its” to “it’s” in “…it’s lonesome to be housekeeping alone.”
  • p. 96: Changed “a young” to “as young” in “…he got young again, a young as his own son.”