Perdurable Story Elements from Celtic Folklore and Mythology: These as More Recent Tastes as Observed and Reflected on In Regional 'New England', in Northern New South Wales

Abstract

It is remarkable how enjoyable Celtic/neo-Celtic tales prove to be to literary study groups. This is especially so in 'Celtic Country', when reading groups acquire a taste for such texts - doubtless because of the enduring motifs, the engagement with nature, and because they are put in touch with the considerable Celtic strand in Australian (rural) society. Further, these texts inspire a measure of 'neo-Celtic' writing. "Perhaps the most significant thing about the Irish myths... is that they were written when the literatures of modern Europe had not yet been born. ('Introduction', p. 22, to 'The First Book of Irish Myths and Legends', 1965 [8th ed.] 1982, by Eoin Neeson). "Great were the marvellous stories told of Ossian's heroes... giants, and witches and young men bold." (Attributed to Sheriff Nicolson). "Literary folk and fairy tales are metaphor in a broad sense. The story itself is an extended image, a dream crafted by the wide-awake dreamer. They are folk tales in the sense that they use and re-use traditional materials: oral cadences, stock characters, status-conferring imagery, formulaic settings or plot. They are not, in the scholarly sense, folk - that is, out of the oral tradition." (Jane Yolen, in 'The Horn Book Magazine', 51.5, October 1975, pp. 496-497.). "Myth is simply the cement that binds society together." (David Greene, p. 2, of 'Myth and Reality in Irish Literature', ed. by Joseph Ransley, 1977.).