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 Field of Boliauns
Tom Fitzpatrick catches a leprechaun mending a shoe in a hedge and makes him show where his gold is buried, but the little man is cleverer than Tom.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Fairy Tree of Dooros
A tiny fairy drops one magic berry in Dooros Wood, is banished to the land of giants, and brings back Sharvan the Surly to guard the tree that springs up.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Farmer of Liddesdale
A desperate farmer hires the first stranger who knocks, a ploughman who sniffs his stakes and asks a strange wage: all the corn he can carry in one rope.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Enchanted Cave
Prince Cuglas chases a deer into a cave and finds himself in the realm of a fairy queen who loves him, while his true love, Princess Ailinn, waits at Tara.
Celtic Folk Tales
The Battle of the Birds
A prince promises his future son to a giant in exchange for moving a magical castle. Years later, Auburn Mary helps that son escape impossible tasks and reclaim a lost memory.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Black Horse
A king’s youngest son swaps a lame old pony for a black horse that can go anywhere in the world, then must fetch a Greek princess for the Prince Underwaves.
Celtic Folk Tales
Smallhead and the King’s Sons
Smallhead, mocked by her cruel half-sisters, outwits a wicked hag again and again, wins husbands for her sisters, then frees an enchanted prince for herself.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Princess Finola and the Dwarf
A mute dwarf who loves the lonely Princess Finola is given back his speech by a fairy and sets out for a magic spear and shield to break her enchantment.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Powel, Prince of Dyfed
Powel chases a lady on a white horse whom no rider can catch, wins Rhiannon with a magic bag, and years later must learn the truth about their lost son.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Paddy O’Kelly and the Weasel
Paddy O’Kelly pockets a heap of gold that a weasel has piled on a hearth, and the angry creature turns out to be far more than she seems.
Celtic Folk Tales
Munachar And Manachar
Munachar sets out to punish greedy Manachar for eating his raspberries, but every helper he needs asks for something first, all the way to a leaky sieve.
Celtic Folk Tales
Morraha
Morraha wins a castle and a wife at cards from a stranger in a green boat, then loses a game and must fetch the sword of light and a strange story.