Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [2]
The question remains, however, why, if the Irish are the least superstitious of Europeans, they still have so much affection for “them” and indeed why they seem to be so prevalent in this collection of Irish stories, dominating the first half and sneaking into the second half. There are, I believe, a number of explanations. The Irish love stories—they are really the only ones in the world who should write short stories—and “they” are the source of endless good stories. Moreover, they are occasionally somewhat sympathetic to humans, though they usually pay no attention to them.
The so-called “Celtic twilight,”which Irish writers in the last century created as an ambience for their stories, does reflect to some extent the mystical bent of Irish culture, even in Dublin. In all the fog and the rain, mixed intermittently with dazzling sun showers, the boundaries between the real and the fantastical do seem a bit porous.
The pre-Christian culture of the land believed that the boundaries between this world and the “many-colored lands”were thin and in some times of the year easily permeable—All Hallows, Brigid’s Day, May Day, Lady Day in Harvest (Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lugnasa). At these four days of the yearly cycle, especially All Hallows, those in the many-colored lands were free to walk among the living—to seek forgiveness, to settle scores, to request prayers, and to express love. The Church, which was very skillful in absorbing pagan festivals in the Celtic Isles, easily baptized these festivals and called them Rogation Days. In some popular Irish Catholicism the blessed in heaven are depicted not as existing in some far-off space but all around us, watching us with affection and pride.
So Ireland is a land of twilight, twilight weather, twilight religion, twilight culture. Small wonder then that fantasy stories of Irish origin and influence are for the most part stories told at twilight time and in twilight perspective by lovers of half-light.
Ms. Duane’s story, “Herself,” brings the night streets of Dublin alive with mystery and wonder and introduces a very new and very dangerous member of the Troop, who wants to destroy all the others. To deal with this threat she recalls your man back from Zurich and reunites him with his old love, Anna Livia Plurabelle.
Your man lives on also in the stories of Flan O’Brien, who reports that himself survived death in Zurich during the war and works in South County Dublin, where he tends bar and write pious tracts for Jesuit magazines. O’Brien—ne Brian O’Nolan—is not thought of as a fantasy writer, but only because there was no such thing as fantasy literature in his days and because few read him today. However, he is certainly the greatest of all Irish fantasy masters.
Tanith Lee, whose work I have admired for a long time, admits to only a strain of Irish genes.However, one need only to read one of her stories, any of her stories, to know that she comes from the twilight world and to suspect that this story (“Speir-Bhan”) is far more autobiographical than her many chilling vampire tales. I’ve never heard of the three fox women before, but they surely belong in the faerie legions, and I would not want to meet them on a dark night in the County Mayo or in London either. Note that in the first two stories, the faerie adjust easily to modern life, walking the streets of Dublin or riding the tube in London.
The next two stories are violent. In the first, “Troubles” (Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple), two branches of the Shee fight one another in a pub on the eve of Beltaine. The good guys, as depicted by the narrator, win the bloody brawl, and the narrator comments that if they did not have the Irish, the fey would have to invent them.
In Judith Tarr’s story (“The Hermit and the Sidhe”), the violence is between the Shee and the Church,