Book picks similar to
Irish Fairy Tales by Edmond Leamy
celtic-myth
folklore
folktale-fairytale-fable-legend
ireland
Shay – Any Given Saturday: : The Autobiography
Shay Given - 2017
He has played in World Cups and FA Cup finals; shared a dressing room with football greats like Roy Keane, Alan Shearer and Robbie Keane and worked under celebrated managers like Kenny Dalglish, Bobby Robson and Martin O’Neill. But Shay has had to show courage and strength of mind to get where he wanted in life. At four years old, he cruelly lost his mother to cancer at the age of just 41. Mum Agnes’s dying wish was that Dad Seamus would keep the family together. Seamus kept his word and the Given clan watched with pride as Shay forged a record-breaking career in the sport he loved. From Donegal to Saipan, Glasgow to Wembley and Tyneside to Paris, it’s been some journey. Shay has seen it all. Glorious highs and desperate lows. Dressing room wind-ups and team-bonding punch-ups. Brutal injuries and crippling self-doubt. Along the way, he has made so many friends. When one of his closest pals, Gary Speed, died suddenly in 2011, he was devastated. He played on, doing the only thing he knew to get him through the pain – pulling on a shirt and a pair of gloves. Shay loves football – for him, nothing can beat the buzz of a Saturday afternoon or the thrill of a big match night under lights. But he has never lost touch with the fans who make the game what it is. Entertaining, opinionated and inspirational, his long-awaited autobiography ANY GIVEN SATURDAY features a stellar cast of famous football names from the past 25 years. It tugs at the heart strings, bubbles with banter and lets slip secrets behind the big stories. This is a rare journey behind the scenes as told by one of our own.
The DeLorean Story: The car, the people, the scandal
Nick Sutton - 2013
The short life of the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car – a vision of the future with its gullwing doors and stainless steel body – began after John DeLorean secured financial backing from the British government for his car-making venture in Northern Ireland. Four years and nearly 9,000 cars later the company went bust and DeLorean faced questions about fraud against the British taxpayer, and his big ally, Colin Chapman of Lotus, also drew scrutiny. As an insider’s account, this book contains a great deal of new information about the DeLorean scandal.
The Running Book
John Connell - 2020
1 bestselling author of The Cow Book.
The Tailor And Ansty
Eric Cross - 1942
It has become a modern Irish classic, promising to make immortal the Tailor and his irrepressible wife, Ansty. The Tailor never travelled further than Scotland, yet the breadth of the world could not contain the wealth of his humour and fantasy. All human life is here - marriages, inquests, matchmaking, wakes - and always the Tailor, his wife and their black cow.
Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold
Daisy JohnsonImogen Hermes Gowar - 2019
A panther runs through the forests of England and pixies prey upon violent men.From the islands of Scotland to the coast of Cornwall, the mountains of Galway to the depths of the Fens, these forgotten folktales howl, cackle and sing their way into the 21st century, wildly reimagined by some of the most exciting women writing in Britain and Ireland today.
The Trigger Men: Assassins and Terror Bosses in the Ireland Conflict
Martin Dillon - 2003
Over three decades he has interviewed and investigated some of the most professional, dangerous and ruthless killers in Ireland. Now Dillon explores their personalities, motivations and bizarre crimes.Many of Ireland's assassins learned their trade in fields and on hillsides in remote parts of Ireland, while others were trained in the Middle East or with Basque separatist terrorists in Spain. Some were one-target-one-shot killers, like the sniper who terrorised the inhabitants of Washington State in the autumn of 2002, while others were bombers skilled in designing the most sophisticated explosive devices and booby traps. Another more powerful group of 'trigger men' were the influential figures in the shadows, who were experts in motivating the killers under their control. All of these men, whether they squeezed the trigger on a high-powered rifle, set the timer on a bomb or used their authority to send others out to commit horrific and unspeakable acts of cruelty, are featured in this book. The Trigger Men takes the reader inside the labyrinthine world of terrorist cells and highly classified counter-terrorism units of British Military Intelligence. The individual stories are described in gripping, unflinching detail and show how the terrorists carried out their ghastly work. Dillon also explores the ideology of the cult of the gunmen and the greed and hatred that motivated assassins in their killing sprees. There are penetrating insights into the mindset of the most infamous assassins: their social and historical conditioning, their callousness......
Scottish Ghost Stories
Elliott O'Donnell - 1911
We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
The Irish Fairy Book
Alfred Perceval Graves - 1909
This is the world of the Irish fairy tale, a magical realm kept alive by generations of storytellers and their avid listeners. As Alfred Perceval Graves, author of the ballad "Father O'Flynn" and a former president of the Irish Literary Society, wrote in the introduction, "The truth is that the Gaelic peasant, Scotch and Irish, is a mystic, and believes not only in this world, and the world to come, but in that other world which is the world of Faery, and which exercises an extraordinary influence upon many actions of his life." In The Irish Fairy Book, Graves has collected Ireland's best-loved fairy tales written by some of its favorite authors. Included are W.B. Yeats' "The Stolen Child," Lady Gregory's "Cuchulain of Muirthemne," Standish James O'Grady's "The Coming of Finn," Lady Wilde's "The Horned Women" and "The Demon Cat," and many more. Illustrations by George Dunham add a delightful touch to this charming collection.
If Women Rose Rooted: The Power of the Celtic Woman
Sharon Blackie - 2016
Somewhere along the line, she realised, she had lost herself - and so began her long journey back to authenticity, rootedness in place and belonging. In this extraordinary book of myth, memoir and modern-day mentors (from fashion designers to lawyers), Blackie faces the wasteland of Western culture, the repression of women, and the devastation of our planet. She boldly names the challenge: to reimagine women's place in the world, and to rise up, firmly rooted in our own native landscapes and the powerful Celtic stories and wisdom which sprang from them.A haunting heroine's journey for every woman who finds inspiration and solace in the natural world.
The Morrigan: Meeting the Great Queens
Morgan Daimler - 2014
This book is an introduction to the Morrigan and several related goddesses who share the title, including Badb and Macha. It combines solid academic information with personal experience in a way that is intended to dispel the confusion that often surrounds who this goddess was and is. The Morrigan is as active in the world today as she ever was in the past but answering her call means answering the challenge of finding her history and myth in a sea of misinformation, supposition, and hard-to-find ancient texts. Here in one place, all of her basic information has been collected along with personal experiences and advice from a long-time priestess dedicated to a goddess who bears the title Morrigan.
Connemara: Listening to the Wind
Tim Robinson - 2006
With Connemara, he creates an indelible portrait of a small corner of the world. From the unmarked graves of unbaptized infants to the shimmering peaks of the Twelve Pins, Robinson brings his close attention and dazzling prose to describe the mountains, bogs, shorelines, and landscape of his home and, at the same time, make a great statement about the world at large.
The Star-Touched Queen: Chapter Sampler
Roshani Chokshi - 2016
Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you're only seventeen?Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father's kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran's queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar's wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire...But Akaran has its own secrets -- thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most. . .including herself.A lush and vivid story that is steeped in Indian folklore and mythology. The Star-Touched Queen is a novel that no reader will soon forget.
The Cooper's Wife Is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary
Joan Hoff - 2000
Immediately, strange and lurid rumors began circulating the neighborhood about what had happened. Some said she ran off with an egg seller; others supposed it was an aristocratic foxhunter who had taken young Bridget away. Swirling amid rumors was the barely whispered, but widely held, belief that Bridget had gone with no mortal man; rather, she had gone off with the fairies. The mystery deepened when seven days later her body was discovered, bent, broken and badly burned in a shallow grave. Within a few days, the unimaginable truth came to light: for almost a week before her death Bridget had been confined, ritually starved, threatened, physically and verbally abused, exorcised, and, finally, burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, her father, and extended family who confused bronchitis with a "fairy dart." They had all become convinced that "their Bridgie" had been taken from them and her fairy-possessed body left behind to deceive them. In The Cooper's Wife Is Missing, Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates make sense of this ancient, rarely publicized, ritual exorcism and explain how the incident went on to become a national and international incident. Set against a backdrop of renewed Irish nationalism, a Church crackdown on lingering pagan practices and the ongoing British humiliation of Catholic Ireland, the authors deftly map the dislocating anxieties that beset the rural peasantry in late nineteenth-century Ireland. Bewildered and frightened by the changes occurring all around them, pulled in all directions by their politicians, priests, landlords and English overlords, the Clearys were not alone in retreating to the relative comfort of pagan ritual. Drawing on first-hand accounts, contemporary newspaper reports, police records, trial testimony and a rich wealth of folklore, the authors weave a mesmerizing tale that touches upon magic, madness and mystery as it details, day by day, Bridget's ordeal and the resulting investigation. This is narrative history at its evocative best. It fascinates as it illuminates.