The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147824 Message #3428327
Posted By: Jim Carroll
30-Oct-12 - 10:15 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Sources of Fairy Tales
Subject: RE: Folklore: Sources of Fairy Tales
"he described Folk as 'a fraud, a delusion, a myth' and 'simply a name for our ignorance"
There is little doubt that anthologists like the Grimms and Burton were dipping into a deep well of ancient oral creation for their tales (no matter what Jacobs, Boyes et al were claiming) A look at the excellent annotated edition of Grimm's Household Tales (Margaret Hunt, 1884 makes that perfectly clear)
Some of these armchair academics really do (or did) need to get out more often!
I would highly recommend Georges Denis Zimmermann's excellent 'The Irish Storyteller' for a survey of the Irish art of storytelling. Incidents such as that covered in 'The Burning of Brigid Cleary' show how deeply a belief in 'the fairies' was rooted in the lives of the rural Irish; in that case it was used as opposition for not passing the Home Rule bill at the end of the 19th century.
The belief in fairies in Ireland is often described here as having made an enormous contribution to archaeology, so deep was it that it prevented many farmers from ploughing up many of the prehistoric sites because they were believed to be 'fairy forts'.
A local woman summed up these beliefs to a collector friend some years ago, when, having recorded an evening's worth of fairy tales and lore he asked her did she believe in fairies and received the reply, "no, but they're there all right".
Jim Carroll