A Treasury of Irish Folklore edited by Padraic Colum [1982 TRADE PAPERBACK]

  • $50.00


A Treasury of Irish Folklore: The Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom, Ballads and Songs of the Irish People edited by Padraic Colum 

SECOND REVISED EDITION [1982] PORTLAND HOUSE

Epic, yet sadly rare and out of print collection! 

Jumbo trade paperback.  Like new and seemingly unread.  Some light wear to cover and tanning to pages. 


Here are the Irish – the bold, witty, imaginative, sentimental, fighting Irish. Here is their humor, their guff and their blarney, their sharp satiric wit and their incomparable good talk.

Here are their heroes, from Cuchullain, Deirdre, Maeve, Concobar, Cormac, Finn, Grania and Brian Boru to Tyrone, Rid Hugh, Hugh O’Neill, Robert Emmet, O’Connell, Parnell and Collins, Here’s Stain Patrick and Father Prout, Blind Raftery, Mr. Dooley, John L. Sullivan and John McCormack. Here are the lakes, the harp and the shamrock, the charms, oaths, curses and blessings – the ways and traditions of the Irish people. Here is Ireland – at work and at play, singing, dancing, fighting – as the Irish themselves tell about it, by the firesides, in the taverns and at the fairs, at home and across the seas. Irish folklore is probably the richest in the world, for the Irish are great story-tellers, and since the days of the bards, the folk singer and the story-teller have always had a high place.

For this treasury, Padraic Colum searched through all the Irish lore and selected the best of the stories and ballads about the saints and the heroes, the great lords and the sturdy peasants, the wolfhounds and the race-horses, the tragedies and the romances, the heart and soul of the land and the people. Never before has there been contain in one volume such a wealth of heartwarming, dramatic and delightful material about the Irish. Its 640 jam-packed pages have hundreds of stories and many folksongs, a library in itself, covering every phase and feature of Irish life – mythical, historical and modern. It is a nonpareil collection that every reader – Irish or not – will treasure and enjoy.