Description: Táin Bó Cúailnge (the driving-off of cows of Cooley, more usually rendered The Cattle Raid of Cooley or The Táin) is the central tale in the Ulster Cycle, one of the four great cycles that make up the surviving corpus of Irish mythology. It is recorded in Old and Middle Irish, and is written mainly in prose, with some verse sections, especially at moments of heightened tension or emotion. The tale relates a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and h...
Description: AT a time like the present, when in the opinion of many the great literatures of Greece and Rome are ceasing to hold the influence that they have so long exerted upon human thought, and when the study of the greatest works of the ancient world is derided as useless, it may be too sanguine to hope that any attention can be paid to a literature that is quite as useless as the Greek; which deals with a time, which, if not actually as far removed from ours as ar...
Description: The Gododdin Poems was first published in 1869 under the authorship of William F. Skene. The Gododdin (pronounced go'doðin) were a Brythonic people of north-eastern Britain (modern north-east England and south-east Scotland) in the sub-Roman period, best known as the subject of the 7th century Welsh series of poems known as Y Gododdin, attributed to Aneirin. The name Gododdin is the Modern Welsh form; it is derived, via earlier Welsh Guotodin from the Bryth...
Description: The poems have separate pagination and register, and were re-issued in 1762 without the prose description as 'A collection of curious Scots poems'
Description: The Library of Alexandria is an independent small business publishing house. We specialize in bringing back to live rare, historical and ancient books. This includes manuscripts such as: classical fiction, philosophy, science, religion, folklore, mytholog
Description: The volume is divided into 'books', one each allotted to the doings and lives of Saints Brigit, Columcille, Patrick, and Brendan the Navigator (who voyaged to the promised land). The last two books are more mythical, one dealing with the fabulous voyage of Maeldune and the other, called `Great Wonders of the Old Time', amply justifies the title. About the Author: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (15 March 1852–22 May 1932), née Isabella Augusta Persse, was a...
Description: This is a collection of short stories set in ancient and modern Ireland, by a now-forgotten popular author of the early twentieth century, Marah Ellis Ryan. Ryan was a novelist, actress and activist for Native American rights. This was her only book about Ireland, as far as I can tell. She tapped a huge body of tales, lore and song which was being rediscovered at the time by the 'Celtic Twilight' movement. Her social consciousness is in evidence here, partic...
Description: Norse, Viking or Scandinavian mythology comprises the indigenous pre-Christian religion, beliefs and legends of the Scandinavian peoples, including those who settled on Iceland, where most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled. Norse mythology is the best-preserved version of the older common Germanic paganism, which also includes the closely related Anglo-Saxon mythology. Germanic mythology, in its turn, developed from an earlier Indo-Eu...
Description: The vast and interesting epic literature of Ireland has remained, for the most part, inaccessible to English readers until these last sixty years. In 1853, Nicholas O'Kearney published the Irish text and an English translation of The Battle of Gabra, and since that date the volume of printed texts and English versions has steadily increased. Now there lies open to the ordinary reader a considerable mass of material illustrating the imaginative life of mediev...
Paged continuously ; Added t.-p. in German
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 ; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Description: This is Kuno Meyer's translation of the old Irish saga, the Voyage of Bran. In this magical odyssey to the limits of reality, Bran takes a characteristically time-dilated journey to a distant isle of luxury. On return, he learns that ages have passed and he and his expedition have already passed into myth. He can never again touch the soil of his homeland and sails off again. The text references ancient Celtic gods and also contains quasi-prophetic passages ...
Mainly reprinted from Notes & queries
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 ; Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592 ; English literature
Description: To gather folk-lore one needs, I think, leisure, patience, reverence, and a good memory. I tried not to change or alter anything, but to write down the very words in which the story had been told. Sometimes Mr. Yeats was with me at the telling; or I would take him to hear for himself something I had been told, that he might be sure I had missed or added nothing. I filled many copybooks, and came to have a very faithful memory for all sides of folk-lore, stor...
Description: The Scottish folklorist J.F. Campbell pieced together the tale of the Celtic Dragon, an intricate oft-told story involving not just dragons but mermaids, giants, and sidhe (fairies). This story, or portions thereof, is found in many Indo-European folklore traditions, as far afield as India. Campbell includes not only his merged narrative, but original Gaelic texts for two of the episodes. Campbell is best known for his four volume Popular Tales of the Wester...
Description: Treasury of fanciful, picturesque narratives—assembled by noted folklorist and recounted in their native vernacular—tell of brownies, kelpies, mermen and other supernatural creatures that assist, annoy and otherwise meddle in the lives of simple Scottish country folk. A delightful collection of imaginative and entertaining nursery and fairy tales, animal fables, witchcraft lore, and stories with a comic twist. IT is only within comparatively recent years th...
BC
Description: The classic novel by Bram Stoker that tells the story of a mysterious worm-like creature that kills people on the grounds of a nearby English estate.
Description: Slavery in Massachusetts is an 1854 essay by Henry David Thoreau based on a speech he gave at an anti-slavery rally at Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854, after the re-enslavement in Boston, Massachusetts of fugitive slave Anthony Burns. It was an unusually public anti-slavery effort for the author, one that not only served to advance Anthony Burns' cause, but also introduced Thoreau, his writing, and his beliefs to a wider audience. Slavery in Mass...