Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/60

 IRISH FOLK-TALES.

OLLECTORS of folk-tales are, I think, not generally aware that there is a field as yet ungleaned within easy reach, and one which the rapid advance of education will soon leave bare. For some years past I have taken much interest in the Irish inhabitants of the place in which I live; but it is only lately that I have become aware of the number of folk-tales which are to be found among them. I am making a collection of these, which may ultimately find its way into print. Meanwhile it may be interesting to some of the readers of the Folk-Lore Journal if I give an example or two from those which I have already obtained.

My amanuensis is a lad named Patrick Weathers, aged 13, a native of Newcastle, county Cork, who came over here with his parents about seven years ago. I am sending the stories exactly as he wrote them down at the dictation of the narrators, who in some cases can neither read nor write, a fact which is much in favour of the genuineness of their stories. These tales are handed down from father or mother to children in true traditional style; and it is amusing to gather together a crowd of boys from eleven to fourteen years old, and set them story-telling. They like nothing better; and the variety and number of the stories they tell is astonishing. But if the collection is to be of real value it must be made now; these lads as they grow up will mix in the stories that they read with those handed down to them—my leading raconteur the other night began telling "The Golden Fleece" from Hawthorne's "Wonder-book," to which I had directed his attention—so that there is no time to be lost.

Without further preface I will give three short examples. The first was related by Mary Weathers, mother of the writer: Pat assures me that "this is a true story; it was a relation of my mother's that it happened to."