Irish Folk and Fairy Tales: Edited and Selected by William Butler Yeats

· Post Hypnotic Press Inc. · Narrated by Gerard Doyle
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15 hr 24 min
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“Even a newspaper man, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celts is a visionary without scratching.” — from the Introduction

This collection combines Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, first published in 1888, and Irish Fairy Tales, published in 1892, with an introduction by Bernard O’Donoghue and a foreword by Dr. Anne Abrams.

In this charming collection, listeners will find themselves transported to the shadowy, twilit world of Celtic myth and legend — where the deenee shee (fairy people) work their mischief, where priests and the devil wage an endless struggle for the souls of humankind, where clever wives outwit murderous giants and druids cast geise (spells). Read by Golden Voice Narrator Gerard Doyle (narrator of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, Mick Herron's "Slow Horses" series and much more), you will be transported by this delightful recording.

The majority of the tales presented here were collected in the nineteenth century by such folklorists as William Allingham, T. Crofton Croker, Douglas Hyde, and Lady Wilde (Oscar Wilde’s mother). From this rich legacy, William Butler Yeats, who drew upon Irish fairy lore for his own poetry and plays, chose an especially interesting and representative selection: “The White Trout; A Legend of Cong,” “The Brewery of Egg-shells,” “The Soul Cages,” “The Kildare Pooka,” “The Black Lamb,” “The Horned Women,” “The Phantom Isle,” “King O’Toole and his Goose,” “The Demon Cat,” “The Giant’s Stairs,” “The Twelve Wild Geese,” and many more — 78 in all.

Now lovers of myth and legend can immerse themselves in this treasury of time-honored tales brimming with the warmth, charm, and age-old peasant lore of rural Ireland. An Introduction and Notes by W. B. Yeats help elucidate the background of the stories and their meaning and role in Irish life and culture.

About the author

Gerard Doyle was born of Irish parentage and raised and educated in England. His 50 year acting career spans television, radio and theatre on both sides of the Atlantic, including Broadway and London’s West End, as well as touring in Britain and internationally with the English Shakespeare Company. He's recorded of over 500 audio books in genres ranging from mystery and suspense, fantasy, comedy, YA, and non-fiction. He is one of Audiofile's featured “Golden Voices”. Fifty of Gerard’s book recordings have been selected by Audiofile for a prestigious “Earphones” award, and the magazine has, over several years, recognized him as “Best Voice of the Year” in a number of genres. 15 of his recordings have been selected as AudioFile’s “Best Audiobook of the Year”, and Gerard has been nominated seven times for the Audio Publishers Association’s coveted “Audie” awards, winning in 2007 in the “Mystery and Suspense” category for "Dead Yard". His recording of Adrian McKinty’s “Gun Street Girl” was nominated for the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS) 2015 Voice Arts Awards.

William Butler Yeats (/jeɪts/, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and writer, widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in 20th-century literature. A central force in the Irish Literary Revival, he co-founded the Abbey Theatre alongside Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, serving as its chief in its formative years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Irish laureate. He also served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

Yeats was a Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father, a lawyer turned portrait painter, influenced his early artistic sensibilities. Yeats was educated in both Dublin and London, and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo, which later inspired much of his poetry. Fascinated from an early age by Irish mythology and the occult, he became a leading voice in the Irish literary scene while living in London.

Yeats’s early poetry, published from 1889, was heavily influenced by Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite poets like John Keats, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Edmund Spenser, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These early works are lyrical, symbolic, and often otherworldly in tone.

Around 1900, his poetry evolved, becoming more earthy, realistic, and political. Although he moved away from some of the mystical beliefs of his youth, he retained an interest in cyclical theories of history and spiritual themes. In 1897, Yeats became chief playwright of the Irish Literary Theatre, and later supported younger writers such as Ezra Pound.

Among his most notable works are:


The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894)

Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902)

Deirdre (1907)

The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

The Tower (1928)

Last Poems and Plays (1940)

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