![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i168.photobucket.com\/albums\/u165\/billbunter\/IrishTalesofterror.jpg\" "\\"Irish")
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Having found a different toad I thought it\u2019s time to review this Irish collection. Incidentally, it must have a look-in as the most inappropriate cover as there are no toads in Ireland; I have it on good authority that they were banished by St Pat.<\/p>\n
Blurb
\nIRELAND \u2014 the land of legend, where pixies, ghosts and witches are a part of life. From this isle-of storytellers comes a hair-raising collection of sinister, eerie tales by such masters of mystery as Sean O’Casey, Shane Leslie, Sheridan le Fanu and W. B. Yeats.<\/p>\n
Introduction \u2013 Jim McGarry
\nJim gives the game away in a short introduction, mostly telling us that there is a factual basis for some stories and Ireland is a ghostie kind of place. One of the problems with this collection is that it plays on \u2018Irish\u2019 and \u2018ghosts\u2019 and mixes up fiction with apparent fact. Makes it slightly difficult to firstly, believe the supposedly historic ghost stories and secondly, to enjoy the tales. Having said that, there are some true stories that are more horrible than the others and there are a couple of hidden gems particularly Shane Leslie \u2013 The Diplomatist\u2019s Story.
\n.<\/p>\n
James Reynolds \u2013 The Weeping Wall
\nReynolds begins the anthology with a story of wall in castle Scrinzy in Poland. Miss Considine, a lovely Irish girl, marries a Polish Cavalry officer having met him at the Dublin horse show. His family has a grim and awful history of dark doings in the past There\u2019s a wall in the castle that weeps every time someone is about to die in horrible circumstances and, in an \u2018oh gosh really!\u2019 fashion, it spells out their name. It can only be seen by the family. Similarly to most traditional Irish love songs, everyone dies. It\u2019s a well told tale but marked like a number in the anthology with a kind of catholic undercurrent. By this I mean the people that believe you can get cured at Lourdes have a a set of naughtier friends who believe you can also do nasty things with ritual objects and the like. It\u2019s not the fact that you possibly can do this witchcraft stuff \u2013 it\u2019s the credulous reaction to it that makes the collection a bit \u2018Dickensian\u2019.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Casey \u2013 The Raid
\nO\u2019Casey belongs to the world of literature and by line two of this story of a British raid in 1920 in an Irish slum we know we\u2019re not going to like it. The Irish and Welsh and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent the Scots have a love of words for words sake. For me, this often tends to get in the way of a good story. If you compound it with an uncomfortable tale of the Black and Tans abusing the Irish you are left with something that is utterly horrible but not horror.<\/p>\n
Patrick Bardan \u2013 The Warning
\nBryan MacGuire loves a beautiful Irish farm girl then changes his mind and troupes off with a slightly more middle class one. \u2013 Generally an awful mistake in a land with access to potent spells and witchery. It\u2019s a sound enough short story of witchcraft.<\/p>\n
Jim McGarry \u2013 The Clonmel Witch Burning
\nThis is the last recorded case of witchcraft in the Western world (although that may have now changed with the introduction of some African witches in the UK) For sheer awfulness the brutal and horrific killing of a young girl by her family makes utterly sickening reading.<\/p>\n
Shane Leslie \u2013 The Diplomatist\u2019s Story
\nHere is an absolute gem, five star story about a reticent diplomat whose social skills get him invited to every gathering \u2013 but he won\u2019t go to one house. A lesson in story telling for anyone. Absolute must read.<\/p>\n
W. B. Yeats \u2013 The Sorcerers
\nYeats is probably my favourite poet and every reading of his work tends to confirm my belief that he was a genius. His prose doesn\u2019t send any tingles along the spine but this account of a meeting of naughty Irish dabblers is a fairly straightforward depiction of the occult and its dark side. Certainly makes you look at the local baker in a new light.<\/p>\n
James Reynolds \u2013 The Headless Rider Of Castle Sheela
\nAnother thoroughly good and well evoked tale of a bad horseman who ultimately gets his comeuppance. It\u2019s highly descriptive and somehow has a real feel of authenticity.<\/p>\n
J. S. Le Fanu \u2013 The Dream
\nNot my favourite Fanu. This story about an ill man is one of the \u2018oh gosh really!\u2019 brigade with all sort of moral overtones and unlikely coincidences and the price of naughtiness \u2013 in this case a drunkard reforms and then makes the classic error.<\/p>\n
William Carleton \u2013 Wildgoose Lodge
\nRather than reading this tale by Carleton you\u2019d be better served looking here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wildgoose_Lodge_Murders for a true account.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a horrible story.<\/p>\n
Jim McGarry \u2013 The Island Magee Terror
\nPossibly the last witch trial \u2013 interestingly better documented here than in Irish records as they were burned in the civil war.<\/p>\n
Charles Maturin \u2013 Melmoth The Wanderer
\nVery good story about a miser and his poor nephew. The descriptions leading to the denouement of the poverty of the nephew and the miserliness of the uncle are extremely well executed and the dying scene has an absolute ring of authenticity. I was too thick to work out what the ending meant but nevertheless enjoyable stuff.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a bunch of myths and legends scattered throughout and they make better reading than a few of the stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having found a different toad I thought it\u2019s time to review this Irish collection. Incidentally, it must have a look-in as the most inappropriate cover as there are no toads in Ireland; I have it on good authority that they were banished by St Pat. Blurb IRELAND \u2014 the land of legend, where pixies, ghosts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hell","category-horror","category-reviews-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heavenmakers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}