Europe
Explore European fairy tales and folk narratives, from household tales and fairy realms to enchanted castles and difficult quests. The collection filters help distinguish Grimm, Celtic, Norse and other sources; their individual tellings can have very different audiences and endings.
150 stories are in this region right now.
See also: Turkey, Russia, Ancient Greece.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
King O’Toole and His Goose
Old King O’Toole can no longer hunt, and his only joy is a goose too old to fly, until a stranger offers to make her new for a curious price.
Celtic Folk Tales
Jack the Cunning Thief
Jack's career of deception leads to four challenges from a squire: a goose, guarded horses, a ridden horse and a bed sheet.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Jack and His Comrades
Poor Jack sets off to seek his fortune and rescues a donkey, a dog, a cat and a cock, and together the five comrades rout a gang of robbers.
Celtic Folk Tales
Jack and His Master
Jack confronts the master who injured his brothers, exploiting the wording of their bargain and finally demanding money for their support.
Celtic Folk Tales
Hudden and Dudden and Donald O’Neary
Donald O'Neary retaliates after two farmers kill his cow, but his escalating tricks also harm people outside their quarrel.
Celtic Folk Tales
How Fin Went to the Kingdom of the Big Men
Fin sails to the Kingdom of the Big Men, where the king keeps him as a pet dwarf, and with his hound Bran he defeats the sea monsters that haunt the land.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Guleesh
Guleesh rides with the fairy host to France to steal a princess on her wedding night, outwits the fairies, then must find a way to give her back her voice.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery
High King Cormac trades his family for a silver branch whose music ends all sorrow, then follows them into a strange land of wonders to win them back.
Celtic Folk Tales
Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree
A jealous queen asks a trout in a well who is the most beautiful, and when it names her daughter Gold-Tree, she sets out to destroy the girl.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Elidore
A boy runs away from his strict monk teachers and is led through a cave into a sunless land of little people, until greed for a golden ball ends it all.
Celtic Folk Tales
Fair, Brown, and Trembling
Kept at home by jealous sisters, Trembling rides to church three Sundays in magic robes, loses a shoe to a prince, and then faces her sister’s worst treachery.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Dream of Owen O’Mulready
Owen O’Mulready has never had a dream, so his master tells him to sleep on the hearth, and that night he sets off for America on the back of a crane.