--- title: _to Alfred Nutt_ — Celtic Fairy Tales · full text with trees description: _to Alfred Nutt_, «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: PREFACE --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / \_to Alfred Nutt\_ # \_to Alfred Nutt\_ \_to Alfred Nutt\_ of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole text, 59 sentences and 1451 words. Every sentence has its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself; 3 of them are in the tales treebank and were checked by a teacher model. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/1/) — PREFACE - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/2/) — Last year, in giving the young ones a volume of English Fairy Tales, my difficulty was one of collection. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/3/) — This time, in offering them specimens of the rich folk-fancy of the Celts of these islands, my trouble has rather been one of selection. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/4/) — Ireland began to collect her folk-tales almost as early as any country in Europe, and Croker has found a whole school of successors in Carleton, Griffin, Kennedy, Curtin, and Douglas Hyde. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/5/) — Scotland had the great name of Campbell, and has still efficient followers in MacDougall, MacInnes, Carmichael, Macleod, and Campbell of Tiree. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/6/) — Gallant little Wales has no name to rank alongside these; in this department the Cymru have shown less vigour than the Gaedhel. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/7/) — Perhaps the Eisteddfod, by offering prizes for the collection of Welsh folk-tales, may remove this inferiority. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/8/) — Meanwhile Wales must be content to be somewhat scantily represented among the Fairy Tales of the Celts, while the extinct Cornish tongue has only contributed one tale. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/9/) — In making my selection I have chiefly tried to make the stories characteristic. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/10/) — It would have been easy, especially from Kennedy, to have made up a volume entirely filled with "Grimm's Goblins" \_a la Celtique\_. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/11/) — But one can have too much even of that very good thing, and I have therefore avoided as far as possible the more familiar "formulae" of folk-tale literature. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/12/) — To do this I had to withdraw from the English-speaking Pale both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laid down the rule to include only tales that have been taken down from Celtic peasants ignorant of English. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/13/) — Having laid down the rule, I immediately proceeded to break it. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/14/) — The success of a fairy book, I am convinced, depends on the due admixture of the comic and the romantic: Grimm and Asbjoernsen knew this secret, and they alone. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/15/) — But the Celtic peasant who speaks Gaelic takes the pleasure of telling tales somewhat sadly: so far as he has been printed and translated, I found him, to my surprise, conspicuously lacking in humour. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/16/) — For the comic relief of this volume I have therefore had to turn mainly to the Irish peasant of the Pale; and what richer source could I draw from? - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/17/) — For the more romantic tales I have depended on the Gaelic, and, as I know about as much of Gaelic as an Irish Nationalist M. P., I have had to depend on translators. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/18/) — But I have felt myself more at liberty than the translators themselves, who have generally been over-literal, in changing, excising, or modifying the original. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/19/) — I have even gone further. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/20/) — In order that the tales should be characteristically Celtic, I have paid more particular attention to tales that are to be found on both sides of the North Channel. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/21/) — In re-telling them I have had no scruple in interpolating now and then a Scotch incident into an Irish variant of the same story, or \_vice versa\_. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/22/) — Where the translators appealed to English folklorists and scholars, I am trying to attract English children. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/23/) — They translated; I endeavoured to transfer. - [24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/24/) — In short, I have tried to put myself into the position of an \_ollamh\_ or \_sheenachie\_ familiar with both forms of Gaelic, and anxious to put his stories in the best way to attract English children. - [25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/25/) — I trust I shall be forgiven by Celtic scholars for the changes I have had to make to effect this end. - [26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/26/) — The stories collected in this volume are longer and more detailed than the English ones I brought together last Christmas. — checked by a teacher - [27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/27/) — The romantic ones are certainly more romantic, and the comic ones perhaps more comic, though there may be room for a difference of opinion on this latter point. - [28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/28/) — This superiority of the Celtic folk-tales is due as much to the conditions under which they have been collected, as to any innate superiority of the folk-imagination. - [29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/29/) — The folk-tale in England is in the last stages of exhaustion. - [30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/30/) — The Celtic folk-tales have been collected while the practice of story-telling is still in full vigour, though there are every signs that its term of life is already numbered. - [31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/31/) — The more the reason why they should be collected and put on record while there is yet time. - [32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/32/) — On the whole, the industry of the collectors of Celtic folk-lore is to be commended, as may be seen from the survey of it I have prefixed to the Notes and References at the end of the volume. - [33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/33/) — Among these, I would call attention to the study of the legend of Beth Gellert, the origin of which, I believe, I have settled. - [34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/34/) — While I have endeavoured to render the language of the tales simple and free from bookish artifice, I have not felt at liberty to retell the tales in the English way. - [35](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/35/) — I have not scrupled to retain a Celtic turn of speech, and here and there a Celtic word, which I have \_not\_ explained within brackets--a practice to be abhorred of all good men. - [36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/36/) — A few words unknown to the reader only add effectiveness and local colour to a narrative, as Mr. Kipling well knows. - [37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/37/) — One characteristic of the Celtic folk-lore I have endeavoured to represent in my selection, because it is nearly unique at the present day in Europe. - [38](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/38/) — Nowhere else is there so large and consistent a body of oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the Gaels. - [39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/39/) — Only the \_byline\_, or hero-songs of Russia, equal in extent the amount of knowledge about the heroes of the past that still exists among the Gaelic-speaking peasantry of Scotland and Ireland. - [40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/40/) — And the Irish tales and ballads have this peculiarity, that some of them have been extant, and can be traced, for well nigh a thousand years. - [41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/41/) — I have selected as a specimen of this class the Story of Deirdre, collected among the Scotch peasantry a few years ago, into which I have been able to insert a passage taken from an Irish vellum of the twelfth century. - [42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/42/) — I could have more than filled this volume with similar oral traditions about Finn (the Fingal of Macpherson's "Ossian"). - [43](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/43/) — But the story of Finn, as told by the Gaelic peasantry of to-day, deserves a volume by itself, while the adventures of the Ultonian hero, Cuchulain, could easily fill another. - [44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/44/) — I have endeavoured to include in this volume the best and most typical stories told by the chief masters of the Celtic folk-tale, Campbell, Kennedy, Hyde, and Curtin, and to these I have added the best tales scattered elsewhere. - [45](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/45/) — By this means I hope I have put together a volume, containing both the best, and the best known folk-tales of the Celts. - [46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/46/) — I have only been enabled to do this by the courtesy of those who owned the copyright of these stories. — checked by a teacher - [47](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/47/) — Lady Wilde has kindly granted me the use of her effective version of "The Horned Women;" and I have specially to thank Messrs. - [48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/48/) — Macmillan for right to use Kennedy's "Legendary Fictions," and Messrs. - [49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/49/) — Sampson Low & Co., for the use of Mr. Curtin's Tales. - [50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/50/) — In making my selection, and in all doubtful points of treatment, I have had resource to the wide knowledge of my friend Mr. Alfred Nutt in all branches of Celtic folk-lore. - [51](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/51/) — If this volume does anything to represent to English children the vision and colour, the magic and charm, of the Celtic folk-imagination, this is due in large measure to the care with which Mr. Nutt has watched its inception and progress. - [52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/52/) — With him by my side I could venture into regions where the non-Celt wanders at his own risk. - [53](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/53/) — Lastly, I have again to rejoice in the co-operation of my friend, Mr. J. D. Batten, in giving form to the creations of the folk-fancy. - [54](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/54/) — He has endeavoured in his illustrations to retain as much as possible of Celtic ornamentation; for all details of Celtic archaeology he has authority. - [55](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/55/) — Yet both he and I have striven to give Celtic things as they appear to, and attract, the English mind, rather than attempt the hopeless task of representing them as they are to Celts. - [56](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/56/) — The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of the Greeks among the Romans. " - [57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/57/) — They went forth to battle, but they always fell," yet the captive Celt has enslaved his captor in the realm of imagination. - [58](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/58/) — The present volume attempts to begin the pleasant captivity from the earliest years. — checked by a teacher - [59](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/2/59/) — If it could succeed in giving a common fund of imaginative wealth to the Celtic and the Saxon children of these isles, it might do more for a true union of hearts than all your politics. - ← previous: [\_say This](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/1/) - next →: [Joseph Jacobs.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/3/) - ↑ back to [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/)