XXIV. Battle of Birds. XXIV. Battle of Birds. of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole text, 20 sentences and 517 words. Every sentence has its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself.
1 _Source_.--Campbell (_Pop. 2 Tales, W. Highlands_, No. ii.), with touches from the seventh variant and others, including the casket and key finish, from Curtin's "Son of the King of Erin" (_Myths, &c., 32 seq. 3 _). 4 I have also added a specimen of the humorous end pieces added by Gaelic story-tellers; on these tags see an interesting note in MacDougall's _Tales_, note on p. 112. 5 I have found some difficulty in dealing with Campbell's excessive use of the second person singular, "If thou thouest him some two or three times, 'tis well," but beyond that it is wearisome. 6 Practically, I have reserved _thou_ for the speech of giants, who may be supposed to be somewhat old-fashioned. 7 I fear, however, I have not been quite consistent, though the _you's_ addressed to the apple-pips are grammatically correct as applied to the pair of lovers. 8 _Parallels_.--Besides the eight versions given or abstracted by Campbell and Mr. Curtin's, there is Carleton's "Three Tasks," Dr. Hyde's "Son of Branduf" (MS.); there is the First Tale of MacInnes (where see Mr. Nutt's elaborate notes, 431-43), two in the _Celtic Magazine_, vol. xii., "Grey Norris from Warland" (_Folk-Lore Journ. 9 _ i. 316), and Mr. Lang's Morayshire Tale, "Nicht Nought Nothing" (see _Eng. 10 Fairy Tales_, No. vii.), no less than sixteen variants found among the Celts. 11 It must have occurred early among them. 12 Mr. Nutt found the feather-thatch incident in the _Agallamh na Senoraib_ ("Discourse of Elders"), which is at least as old as the fifteenth century. 13 Yet the story is to be found throughout the Indo-European world, as is shown by Prof. 14 Koehler's elaborate list of parallels attached to Mr. Lang's variant in _Revue Celtique_, iii. 15 374; and Mr. Lang, in his _Custom and Myth_ ("A far travelled Tale"), has given a number of parallels from savage sources. 16 And strangest of all, the story is practically the same as the classical myth of Jason and Medea. 17 _Remarks_.--Mr. Nutt, in his discussion of the tale (MacInnes, _Tales_ 441), makes the interesting suggestion that the obstacles to pursuit, the forest, the mountain, and the river, exactly represent the boundary of the old Teutonic Hades, so that the story was originally one of the Descent to Hell. 18 Altogether it seems likely that it is one of the oldest folk-tales in existence, and belonged to the story-store of the original Aryans, whoever they were, was passed by them with their language on to the Hellenes and perhaps to the Indians, was developed in its modern form in Scandinavia (where its best representative "The Master Maid" of Asbjoernsen is still found), was passed by them to the Celts and possibly was transmitted by these latter to other parts of Europe, perhaps by early Irish monks (see notes on "Sea-Maiden"). 19 The spread in the Buddhistic world, and thence to the South Seas and Madagascar, would be secondary from India. 20 I hope to have another occasion for dealing with this most interesting of all folk-tales in the detail it deserves. ← previous XXIII. Andrew Coffey.next → XXV. Brewery of Eggshells.↑ back to Celtic Fairy Tales This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/58/