Review: Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland by WB Yeats

Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland by William Butler Yeats
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this as part of my research for a short story I was writing, and it ended up taking up taking longer to read than the story did to write! That doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on the book, though, as I found it quite interesting. Engrossing in parts, even.

Here, Yeats gathers and edits stories and myths from Ireland, largely from the translations and collections of other folklorists. It focuses mainly on the faeries, though it also includes water creatures (i.e. the merrow), witches, ghosts, and various mythical creatures. If you're wanting a lot on the mythic heroes, there's some but not a great deal. (You'd want to supplement in this area, I should think.) It does, however, include a good mixture of "traditional Irish" tales and "Irish Catholic" lore, which I found fascinating, such as discussions of the souls of faeries, folk tales about saints and the devil, and so forth. Too many studies are apt to separate "pagan" and "Catholic" beliefs artificially, in my opinion, and this synthesis feels more authentic to Irish culture.

If you're studying Irish folklore for scholarly or academic reasons, I think you can find better sources, though this might be useful as a historical look. The stories are largely anecdotal, and I didn't always know what was regional and what was widespread. Academic sources generally have more specificity to them, which would be necessary to avoid generalizing local legend. However, for a writer or an interested reader, this collection is very nice. I found it highly readable, with a nice feel of the local dialects, and the price was outstanding, if I recall correctly. My one major criticism of this book, in terms of usefulness, is that I'd love to have an edition with an index. Without one, the book is really only useful for a read, and not as a reference.

Finally, it's exciting to read such a record from the pen of such a famous writer, and as a piece of national literature or history of ethnography, it has become something of a classic.

I found it very interesting, and it was useful for my purpose. I'd recommend it, considering its price and classic status, to anyone wanting casual reading or light research on the topic of Irish folklore, with the caveat that it is comparatively light in the hero legends, as well as a bit lacking in the rich cryptozoology of Ireland (aside from the pooka and a few other common ones).

I enjoyed it, though it was a bit of a long haul. It made excellent before-bed reading, one or two stories at a time.

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Review: Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Black Like Me: Updated by John Howard Griffin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In all honesty, I must admit I have no idea how to rate this book. Given GR's star system, it's confusing to me. It really is sort of "amazing" in terms of its undertaking, compelling material and its impact. Yet, I'm not sure I can give it a full 5, despite its status as a classic. I loved this book in high school, and back then I would have rated it 5 stars without question. Now, as an adult, I hesitate. I will try to explain.

Black Like Me has a couple different aspects, each with different levels of usefulness.

As an early "non-fiction novel" it does ride up there with In Cold Blood. As a story, I found it hard to put down, and I found it quite gripping. Griffin's prose is charismatic and well constructed, and the "story" has a nice progression and flow due to the travel element, from New Orleans to the "heart of segregation," and it's hard not to hold your breath through his travels Southward. I also found his personal reflections fascinating, as his introspection developed.

As "ethnography," I do feel this book has great importance. Griffin records a lot of voices he would not have been able to capture had be not blackened his face, and his vignettes tell the reader a lot about the nature of segregation. While I feel he pulls some editorial punches (for example, I feel he shys away from recording dialects and other details that might have been valuable left intact), and I know he has shaped the material with a particular theme in mind, I also think it's a valuable read for anyone studying this period, or race relations in general. Griffin, from all accounts, seems to have led a remarkable life, and this period is one of its major highlights.

As social justice philosophy, it's of course admirable in its goals. It does demonstrate that skin colour overrode (overrides?) all, since he changed neither his name nor his credentials as he traveled. He was, as he says, the same man, but for colour, and he succeeds in describing the many, many adjustments he was forced to make because of his darker skin.

However, in this area it has dated a bit, in my opinion. Looking at it from 2012, it's hard to embrace the "black face" of it (though Griffin is clear that he never lied to people about being a black man; he just darkened himself and let people decide what they would), but it isn't just the performance of dark skin that makes me uneasy. It's actually the number of times that Griffin uses the term (or concept) of "we" to describe his experience within the black community, and how often he refers to himself as "black" that makes me uneasy. In a way it fits, because he was living under the restrictions, but I wonder at the "right" of this.

But, he spent eight weeks. Eight weeks, out of (at that point) 40-odd years. While the place of pigment can't be discounted, it's difficult to agree that he had become a black man over eight weeks of sharing these restrictions. Always, he knew he could take it off, and return to his "real life". I can't help but think that pretending simply can't reproduce the feeling of permanence. Darkening one's skin can't really compare with living in that skin, and likely feeling (in the 50s) the sense of no escape, ever, from segregation. So, to me, these assertions rather over-stepped into appropriation. I believe Griffin's heart was in the right place, but I do think this is over reaching the limits of his experiment.

As Malcolm X noted about this book, "Can you imagine how much more horrifying it would be to live like this your whole life?"

For this, I pull back a bit from five stars, because over-stressing this book has its dangers, in my opinion, and buying Griffin as an "insider" just doesn't fly. He certainly had a better understanding than people who hadn't walked a mile in those shoes, but he wasn't really an "insider," either, because he knew it was an experiment.

He works much better as a "participant observer," perhaps, although his own emotional "insiderness" was compelling in its own right when it was appropriate. (Of particular relevance were the moments of revelation he had looking at himself in a mirror, and facing his own racism and feelings of complete alienation from the black face that looked back at him.) His space on the margins of the white community in the face of his beliefs and his findings were especially interesting to me.

Griffin's description of the book's reception by the write community is dreadful (literally, filled with dread). The last section of the book feels a bit disjointed and tacked on, which is a pity, but I think it's part of the book's power. (There were a few moments where it went into martyr-mode, but overall he kept it pretty concise and journalistic, and held back from too much self-congratulation.)

Black Like Me, as some critics have said, is a great book on racism - for white people. It is in the book's portrayal of the whites along the way, and the reactions it spurred, that ring the best for me.

The edition I read had an afterword from after 1967, which made an interesting epilogue. By this point, Griffin was noticing that his position as "spokesman" was wearing thin, and it seems he wanted to (and had been asked to, perhaps) step back. He found he was being asked to consult on the "race problem" with white committees who didn't even think to invite black leaders! He was becoming, for white leaders, a safe or more palatable substitute, and that simply didn't work. As he expressed in an interview elsewhere, it had become ridiculous for him to serve as a voice for the black community, when it had many, better voices of its own. For me, this realization went a long way to addressing my concerns in the book itself.

So, final reckoning...? Certainly worth the read, as history and as a work of prose. I would recommend anyone interested in this period or these issues read this, particularly the updated edition. If you want to know more about Jim Crow laws and practices in everyday life, this book could be valuable to you. But, like with most serious issues, I caution that this shouldn't be the only book you read about it. This is not the final word, and I don't believe Griffin meant it to be. But it might make an excellent starting point, and is a good narrative illustration among the numerous academic books on the subject.

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Rawhide, Bloody Bones and Tommy Rawhead

In the new Saint Patrick's Day story I wrote (currently in the hands of the publisher), Cormack's Luck, a grim little specter from my childhood made a rather unwelcome appearance. 

Bloody Bones.

Katie, the heroine of our sweet Irish tale, is an American fantasy writer with an education in folklore and mythology (I always wanted to turn a folklorist into a romantic lead!), and she runs afoul of an Irish doctor who is anti-fantasy, anti-folktales, and anti-fairytales, and he's none too pleased that Katie has been telling many a tall tales to his impressionable, motherless four year old son.

And he's particularly freaked out by creepers like Bloody Bones.

I was intrigued to find that Bloody Bones (first known to me in Nova Scotia, Canada), who you might also know by the names Tommy Rawhead or Rawhide, was originally an Irish folk bugbear or boogeyman. And quite possibly the most terrible one of them all.

Bloody Bones, according to the versions from my youth, hides in closets or cellars, waiting to eat small children who lie or curse; crouching on a pile of the crushed bones of his victims, and bleeding profusely from his skinless scalp.

Artist Amanda Wood opened up the recesses of her own childhood trauma to contribute this horrific rendering of the beast in question. Shudder.

Can I just pause to say, "Gross"?

Here's how Wikipedia describes him, quoting Ruth Tongue:

Bloody-Bones is usually said to live near ponds, but according to Ruth Tongue in Somerset Folklore, "lived in a dark cupboard, usually under the stairs. If you were heroic enough to peep through a crack you would get a glimpse of the dreadful, crouching creature, with blood running down his face, seated waiting on a pile of raw bones that had belonged to children who told lies or said bad words.”

Scott Andrew Hutchins says:

... Bloody Bones "is rumored to have a crouching form like a rock. He is covered all over with matted hair, has pale flat eyes, and lives in dark cupboards..."

According to other versions, Bloody Bones might be found lurking in the woodshed, or even amongst the pipes under the sink (which must be a variation used by parents who lived in apartments but still wanted to traumatize their kids).

In Yorkshire, they used to sing:

Rawhead and Bloody Bones

Steals naughty children from their homes,

Takes them to his dirty den,

And they are never seen again.

Pleasant, no?

From Ireland and England, Bloody Bones made it to North America, especially to the Appalachians, where he spread onwards, particularly in the Irish diaspora, the American south and in African-American folklore. From there, he's gone on to feature in books, movies, and many a nightmare.

In a version from the Ozarks, Raw Head was created like some sort of corpse golem, by an old woman who was grieving over the murder of her pet hog. From the pieces of her skinned animal, she created Bloody Bones, so he could seek revenge on the hunter who slaughtered him:

Betty continued the chant until a bolt of silver lightning left the plate and streaked out threw the window, heading in the direction of Hog-Scald Hollow. 

When the silver light struck Raw Head's severed head, which was piled on the hunter's wagon with the other hog heads, it tumbled to the ground and rolled until it was touching the bloody bones that had once inhabited its body. As the hunter's wagon rumbled away toward the ridge where he lived, the enchanted Raw Head called out: "Bloody bones, get up and dance!"

Immediately, the bloody bones reassembled themselves into the skeleton of a razorback hog walking upright, as Raw Head had often done when he was alone with Old Betty. The head hopped on top of his skeleton and Raw Head went searching through the woods for weapons to use against the hunter. He borrowed the sharp teeth of a dying panther, the claws of a long-dead bear, and the tail from a rotting raccoon and put them over his skinned head and bloody bones.

Off hand, the only thing I recall finding as creepy is Tailypo, another cryptozoid horror from my childhood. And possibly clowns. And html.

So, while I have plenty of "nicer" Irish redcaps and good folk in my story, Bloody Bones had to make an appearance to round out all the merrow and selkies. He doesn't even have the benefit of being handsome like the still-deadly Gancanagh or super-cool like the pooka.

Bloody Bones is just plain, unremittingly awful.

And, no word of a lie, I had to turn on every light in the room just to write his name into the book! Even now, writing this blog post, I'm not feeling very well at all.

The things I do for my art!

In sum: Be careful what you tell your kids. And watch yourself if you have to go to the cupboard under the stairs.

Romancing Historical Details

Today, we have a guest blog from historical romance author Jackie M. Smith, on the joys of research and the importance of understanding your time period for quality writing.

When I first researched for my historical romance A Soldier’s Vow, I discovered so many interesting facts about the French country during one of the most terrifying periods in their long history. The German army had easily invaded the Northern part of France and often bombarded Paris but never succeeded in penetrating the city’s walls. Nonetheless, the city had been hit in other different and equally devastating ways.

Blackouts, food shortages and influenza affected everyone. Through my research, I discovered many families could no longer afford to keep their children fed, therefore they sent the weakest members of their family to their relatives in the country or other safer places. In A Soldier’s Vow, I wanted to show how the heroine Winnie Douglas saw and lived what everyone went through between 1914 and 1918 Paris. I also show how the war affected the women who stayed behind and waited for their husband, brother, cousin who joined the war effort.

The war also changed the soldiers who fought and saw firsthand the horrors and victories of war. Henry Whitfield, the hero in A Soldier’s Vow, had no idea what he would see and experience when he left his Canadian hometown. Many countries including Canada sent their strongest and bravest men overseas and fight an unknown enemy. They trained hard and fought even harder. Yet what waited for them in the trenches became their worst enemy. Rats, lice and other diseases caused the most terrible living conditions for every soldier on both sides.

Using such details in my book not only creates a setting but also brings the reader back to a time of turmoil, courage and undying love.

So, how do you approach researching your time period?

~*~
Jackie M. Smith is a Canadian novelist who currently writes historical romances for XOXO Publishing. Her novel, A Soldier's Vow, is available for purchase here.