Celts -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Fairy tales -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Tales -- Great Britain
_Parallels._--The earliest version, from an Egerton MS. of the fifteenth
century, has been printed by Mr. S. H. O'Grady in his _Silva Gadelica_,
No. 20, with an English version, pp. 332-42. Mr. Campbell of Tiree has
given a short Gaelic version in the _Transactions of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness_, 78-100. Campbell of Islay collected the fullest version
of this celebrated story, which is to be found among his manuscript
remains now in Edinburgh. Mr. Nutt has given his English abstract in
_Folk-lore_, i. 373-7, in its original form. The story must have
contained twenty-four tales or episodes of stories, nineteen of which
are preserved in J. F. Campbell's version. For parallels to the various
incidents, see Mr. Nutt's notes on MacInnes, pp. 470-3. The tale is
referred to in MacNicol, _Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the
Hebrides_, 1779.
_Remarks._--Nothing could give a more vivid idea of what might be called
the organisation of the art of story-telling among the Celts than this
elaborate tale. Mr. Nutt is inclined to trace it, even in its present
form, back to the twelfth or thirteenth century. It occurs in an MS. of
the fifteenth century in an obviously unoriginal form which shows that
the story-teller did not appreciate the significance of many features in
the folk-tale he was retelling, and yet it was orally collected by the
great Campbell in 1871, in a version which runs to 142 folio pages.
Formally, its interest consists in large measure in the curious
framework in which the subsidiary stories are imbedded. This is not of
the elaborate kind introduced into Europe from the East by the Crusades,
but more _naive_, resembling rather, as Mr. Nutt points out to me, the
loosely-knit narratives of Charles Lever in his earlier manner.
XLIII. HOW FIN WENT TO THE KINGDOM OF THE BIG MEN.
_Source._--J. G. Campbell, _The Fians_ (_Waifs and Strays_, No. iv.),
pp. 175-92.
_Parallels._--_The Voyage to Brobdingnag_ will occur to many readers,
and it is by no means impossible that, as Swift was once an Irish lad,
_The Voyage_ may have been suggested by some such tale told him in his
infancy. It is not, however, a part of the earlier recorded Ossianic
cycle, though over-sea giants occur as opponents of the heroes in that
as well as in the earlier Ultonian cycle.
XLIV. HOW CORMAC MAC ART WENT TO FAERY.
_Source._--Kindly condensed by Mr. Alfred Nutt from an English version
by Mr. S. H. O'Grady in _Ossianic Society's Publications_, vol. iii. The
oldest known version has been printed from fourteenth century MSS., by
Mr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische Texte_, iii. I. The story existed in some
form in the early eleventh century, as it is cited in the epic catalogue
contained in the Book of Leinster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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