Donegal Fairy Tales

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Tales as old as the curlew’s call are today listened to around the hearths of Donegal with the same keen and credulous eagerness with which they were hearkened to hundreds of years ago. Of a people whose only wealth is mental and spiritual, the thousand such tales are not the least significant heritage. Of those tales, the ten following are but the lightest.

The man who brings his shaggy pony to the forge “reharses a rale oul’ tale” for the boys, whilst he lazily works the bellows for Dan.

As she spins in the glow of the fir-blaze on the long winter nights, the old white-capped woman, with hair like a streak of lint, holds the fireside circle spellbound with such tales as these.

When at Taig, the tailor’s, on a Saturday night, an exasperated man clamors angrily for the long-promised coat, Taig says, “Arrah, Conal, man, have sense, and be quate, and sit down till ye hear a wondherful story of anshint happenin’s.” And the magic of the tale restores Conal to a Christian frame of mind, and sends him home forgetful of a great procrastinator’s deceit.

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