Meeting the Other Crowd
*Starred Review* During folklore's first and greatest period, the end of the nineteenth century, such gifted writers as Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats wandered the Irish countryside, gathering the oral vestiges of a great tradition. Publishing their gleanings later, sometimes altered in transcription, they garnered an audience eager for tales of heroes, fairies, and gods. Such compilations as theirs remain major sources of Irish mythology. One of the best-knownseanachies, or traditional tale spinners, in Ireland today, Lenihan is an Irish-speaking schoolmaster in the very area where Gregory and Yeats gathered their tales. He discloses that, despite the arrival of fax, Internet, and cell phone, the old tales persist. His fresh collection includes some famous motifs, such as the "fairy blast" that steals away people and things, but also such regionally specific figures as Biddy Early, the White Witch of Clare--a historical figure around whom myths have accrued. Lenihan focuses on the "other crowd" of the title: the fairy people, who are the diminished remnants of old gods, still able to affect the world of humankind. This is not quaint fluff but the powerful, sometimes disturbing lore of a world parallel to and occasionally intersecting ours. A major contribution to its field, the book is also compulsively readable, not least because Green, an audio producer, has helped capture the torque of Irish speech in Lenihan's storytelling.Patricia MonaghanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.