The Giant Book of Celtic Myths and Legends and Tales of Old Ireland [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The two books featured in this volume - Celtic Myths and Legends and Tales of Old Ireland - gather together traditional tales from the Celtic lands of Scotland, Wales and Ireland and then concentrate solely on the Irish tradition of storytelling, evoking an Ireland that has all but vanished: Ireland before the industrialisation of this modern age when it was a country of rebellious peasants, tormented priests, eccentric country gentry and overbearing English landlords. The Celtic strongholds of Scotland, Wales and Ireland are rich in ancient customs; from these lands come tales of gods and giants, feasting and wooing, hunting and hurling, lust for battle, blood, bravery and deaths with honour. These stories were faithfully recited yet enriched with detail with each telling around the peat fires in great halls and village hovels, and have thus survived virtually unchanged down through the centuries. The stories in this collection examine the very origins of the Celtic people and then tell the tales of their fabled beasts and magic folk - the fate of the Children of Turenn (Irish), the love between Pwyll and Rhiannon (Welsh), the legend of the Brown Bear of the Green Glen (Scottish), and many, many more. The companion volume to Celtic Myths and Legends, Tales of Old Ireland, is a collection of famous names and great works, including James Joyce's The Dead, W. B. Yeats's The