Symbols Of Creginations In The Fairy-Faith In Celtic Countries

More than figures of imagination, fairies take on the human world as peers to the Irish people. Walter Evans-Wentz, Max Lüthi, Linda-May Ballard, and William B. Yeats dive into what fairies represent to many Irish people. Not only are they respected spirits, but also human like beings who interact with people. In The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Evans-Wentz provides an in-depth investigation of the culture surrounding Celtic folklore. He dives into how fairies shaped reality rather than being a figment of imagination by focusing on the people impacted by Celtic fairy tales and the tales’ lasting impression on them. Evans-Wentz submerged himself in the culture before writing this book by talking to the people who knew it best, fairy believers
He describes the portrayal of fairy tale characters as endless symbols of the reader’s interpretation. “The principal actors in the fairy tale are neither individuals nor character types, but merely figures, and for just this reason can stand for a great many things” (Lüthi 126). Lüthi approaches the topic with the realization that fairy tales have a transformative quality. They take shape of the story the reader desires, applying it to their own life and dreams. Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales does not touch purely on Irish fairy tales, but the idea brought up in this chapter relates significantly to the Irish culture of folklore. The Irish pass on stories they created with nothing but their minds, making the tales applicable to people cut from the same cloth or enduring similar struggles and dreams. Fairy tales aren’t pure entertainment, but rather an extension of life as both Lüthi and Ballard explain. Ballard goes a step further by indicating that fairies are implemented to influence humans. In “Fairies and the Supernatural on Reachrai,” Ballard explains the nature of fairies according to Gaelic culture. She states that fairies not only embody the dreams of Irish folk but also maintain the power to scare them from doing wrong. Ballard establishes that authors create a world of imagination with an underlying
He integrates fairy tales and ethnology to point out the tales’ importance during “The Troubles” and other times of conflict in Ireland. Doing so, Ó Crualaoich builds off the ideas of Lauri Honko, a folklore and religion professor from Finland. According to Ó Crualaoich, Honko created a model of folklore steps that Ireland followed when bringing folklore back to unify Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Ó Crualaoich summarizes one of Honko’s ideas, “a significant shift in emphasis from the study of folklore materials as product of past tradition to a concern with process in the representation of shared identity in aesthetic and other functional modes of community life has taken place” (82). Folklorists in Ireland during times of conflict used Irish tales to bring Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland together, hoping to bring forward a shared tradition to calm the outraged populations. Although the countries still dispute, it is believed, at least by Ó Crualaoich, that Irish fairy tales brought them together and reduced conflicts between them. This chapter displays the strength of Irish fairy tales, a strength like that of no other tales. For Ireland, these tales reminded people of what life used to be like and made it possible to forget the battles at hand. This ties back to the ideas of Yeats,