Celtic Folk Tales
Fairy realms, enchanted animals, giants and difficult promises recur in these tales associated with Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Breton traditions. Sources include Joseph Jacobs’s collections and Edmund Leamy’s literary fairy tales. Their versions do not all come directly from a village storyteller: source notes explain the particular book or earlier material used.
The collection ranges from comic trickery to violent tragedy. Check the guidance for the individual telling before reading it with children.
54 stories are in this collection right now.
Browse by region: Europe.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Salmon of Knowledge
Young Finn is told to cook the magic Salmon of Knowledge for his teacher and not taste a bite, but a burnt thumb changes everything for him.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Cuchulain and the Hound of Culain
Late for a feast at the smith Culain’s house, the boy Setanta must face a savage watchdog armed only with a hurley stick and a ball.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Voyage of Bran
A silver branch and a stranger’s song call Bran across the sea to the Land of Women, but the journey home holds a terrible surprise for his crew.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Children of Lir
Their jealous stepmother turns Lir’s four children into swans, doomed to wander the lakes and seas of Ireland for nine hundred years.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Selkie Wife
A Shetland man hides the sealskin of a sea-maiden so she must stay and marry him, until one of their children finds the skin hidden behind a corn stack.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Wooing of Olwen
To win the giant’s daughter Olwen, young Kilhuch and King Arthur’s strangest champions must find a lost prisoner and hunt a terrible magic boar.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Vision of MacConglinney
A wandering scholar cures a king’s endless hunger by tying him up, eating in front of him and describing a dream of houses and boats made of food.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Tale of Ivan
Ivan takes three pieces of advice instead of three years’ wages, and each one saves his life, his friends or his good name on the long road home.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Story-Teller at Fault
A king’s story-teller who cannot think of a tale loses everything at dice to a lame beggar, and is whisked off to watch the stranger’s wildest tricks.
Celtic Folk Tales
The Story of Deirdre
Hidden from birth because of a dark prophecy, Deirdre falls in love with Naois, son of Uisnech, and flees with him from the king who means to marry her.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Story of the McAndrew Family
Seven foolish McAndrew brothers lose their cows, their gold and their land, field by field, to neighbours ready to cheat them, until only begging is left.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Sprightly Tailor
Dared to sew a pair of trews by night in a haunted church, a cheerful tailor keeps stitching while a huge, roaring thing rises bit by bit from the floor.