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A review by ehays84
Between Worlds: Folktales of Britain & Ireland by Kevin Crossley-Holland
4.0
This sort of book is about as close as we can get to traveling back in time. Thanks to Neil Gaiman for recommending this, although I have read 4 other books by Crossley-Holland before, and enjoyed them all.
I am not a folklorist, but I have always loved to read folk and fairy tales. Of course, when I was young, I loved to read them just for the stories, and often the kind of mystery of the stories. I remember finding some copy of original (not Disney-ified) folktales on a bookshelf in my house, probably mostly Grimm brothers, and being entranced and heartbroken at many of the stories, and also at finding out the truth about the original versions of many stories I thought I already knew. But I think even at that age, I was sensing something deeper, and that is really the joys, fears, sorrows, and sensibilities of our ancestors. In many ways, reading stories like these is a much truer way to understand what it would have been like to live in, say, Norfolk or Galway in the early modern period up until around 1900 or so, than reading many social history books.
What you always struggle to learn from a history book is, "what did the people at the time actually think and feel about what they were experiencing?" A lot of that will just always be hidden from us due to the subjective nature of human consciousness, but I think stories get at something much deeper than what can be described based on parish records or the like. We need both, of course, but too often these sort of folktales are neglected.
We get so much in these stories that just doesn't always make sense, and for that reason, this excellent set of linguistically modernized original folktales by the master story teller Kevin Crossley-Holland is not for everyone. But life and what happens in it doesn't always make sense.
Did people in the British Isles literally believe in the fair folk? I don't know, probably some did, but I think that is missing something more important. People's lives in those days were characterized so much by what they didn't and couldn't know, and this comes out in story form. People didn't know much beyond a 30 mile radius from where they were born. They didn't know why they got sick. They didn't know what the weather would be like 2 days from now. I could go on and on. They just had to respond, as best they could, to what they faced. And this definitely comes out in a lot of syncretism in these stories--we often have priests and magic charms co-existing, without any seeming dissonance.
My main other experience with these sort of stories as an adult is the master folklorist Joseph Jacobs, and these stories compared favorably with those. Jacobs' works are all old enough that they are out of copyright, so I plan to keep reading more of his works in the future to expand the geographic regions from which I have read folktales.
I am not a folklorist, but I have always loved to read folk and fairy tales. Of course, when I was young, I loved to read them just for the stories, and often the kind of mystery of the stories. I remember finding some copy of original (not Disney-ified) folktales on a bookshelf in my house, probably mostly Grimm brothers, and being entranced and heartbroken at many of the stories, and also at finding out the truth about the original versions of many stories I thought I already knew. But I think even at that age, I was sensing something deeper, and that is really the joys, fears, sorrows, and sensibilities of our ancestors. In many ways, reading stories like these is a much truer way to understand what it would have been like to live in, say, Norfolk or Galway in the early modern period up until around 1900 or so, than reading many social history books.
What you always struggle to learn from a history book is, "what did the people at the time actually think and feel about what they were experiencing?" A lot of that will just always be hidden from us due to the subjective nature of human consciousness, but I think stories get at something much deeper than what can be described based on parish records or the like. We need both, of course, but too often these sort of folktales are neglected.
We get so much in these stories that just doesn't always make sense, and for that reason, this excellent set of linguistically modernized original folktales by the master story teller Kevin Crossley-Holland is not for everyone. But life and what happens in it doesn't always make sense.
Did people in the British Isles literally believe in the fair folk? I don't know, probably some did, but I think that is missing something more important. People's lives in those days were characterized so much by what they didn't and couldn't know, and this comes out in story form. People didn't know much beyond a 30 mile radius from where they were born. They didn't know why they got sick. They didn't know what the weather would be like 2 days from now. I could go on and on. They just had to respond, as best they could, to what they faced. And this definitely comes out in a lot of syncretism in these stories--we often have priests and magic charms co-existing, without any seeming dissonance.
My main other experience with these sort of stories as an adult is the master folklorist Joseph Jacobs, and these stories compared favorably with those. Jacobs' works are all old enough that they are out of copyright, so I plan to keep reading more of his works in the future to expand the geographic regions from which I have read folktales.