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Post by dem bones on Aug 26, 2022 8:05:13 GMT
Peter Tremayne - Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror (Brandon, 1992) Aisling
Deathstone
My Lady of Hy-Brasil
The Samhain Feis
The Mongfind
The Pooka
Tavesher
Fear a' Ghorta
The Dreeador
Daoine Domhain
Amhránaí Blurb: “A superb series of stories." — Examiner
"Deliberately calculated to give nightmares to anyone whose veins contain one drop of Irish blood." — Times Literary Supplement
"The telling of each eerie legend is sure-footed and convincing, with Tremayne clearly enjoying his role as a curator of arcane knowledge." — Time Out
"Somewhere at the core of legend lies a grain of fact, a sliver of history. It's this dimension that makes Peter Tremayne's Aisling such compelling reading." — Irish News
"Peter Tremayne is a master of the genre." — Irish PostGreat Irish Tales of Terror is the anthology that introduced me to Peter Tremayne. "The Samhein Feis" is also included in his excellent Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror. The bulk of the Sister Fidelma/ The Ants legend's short non- Dracula-related supernatural fiction in 256 page paperback. My Lady of Hy-Brasil (Francesco Cova [ed.], Kadath, Fall 1984). "It is said that if one of her tears falls on the skin of a man, he must become her slave for all time." Once every seven years, the sunken island of Hy-Basil reappears for 24 hours, providing opportunity for the ancient sorceress and chieftain, Lady Aideen O'Flaherty, to take the form of the beautiful young woman she was and cast her spell on the first sailor to come ashore. Despite the best efforts of a deranged monk to drive him away, our narrator, an American, stops too long in Aideen's company. Tavesher: (Charles L Grant [ed], Shadows #9, 1986). Kurt Wolfe, a surveyor of Houston, Texas, travels to S.W. Ireland to inspect long deserted copper mines in the Kerry mountains. Despite attempts to dissuade him from risking a broken neck - "no one goes up there these days" - Wolfe presses on regardless to come a cropper in the first tunnel he enters. A doctor - lucky he was at hand! - revives the bewildered Texan and guides him back toward the nearest village, but — something's terribly wrong!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 28, 2022 12:47:01 GMT
The Pooka : (Charles L. Grant [ed], Shadows #8, 1985). Following their acrimonious divorce, Jane insists he keep the "lucky charm" given her by a bent old tinker woman when they visited Inveray, her birthplace, in Southern Ireland. Jane knows that, now he has hurt her, that hurt will rebound on him. The "Pooka," a tiny green marble, pointy hat goblin, duly sets to destroy his lover, Beth, and all he holds dear.
Fear a' Ghorta: (Charles L. Grant [ed], Final Shadows, 1991). Connacht, co. Galway. Father Ignatius takes the first confession in 25 years of a man whose nickname alone (it translates as "man of hunger") should raise alarm bells. The penitent recalls an episode during the Great Famine of 1845–49 when Dangan Cutteen, the village spokesperson, approached the lord of the land, Captain Chetwynd, to save the starving community, only for the English tyrant to laugh in his face. "I don't care a damn about your people. Eat the bodies of your dead for all I care." What a great idea! That same night, Cutteen leads his desperate neighbours on a night raid.
Possibly the author's most ghoulish horror moment, which, given where it was first published, was not what I was expecting. Loved it.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 29, 2022 14:23:38 GMT
Aisling: (W. Paul Ganley [ed.], Weirdbook #20, Spring 1985). "What devil vision was this? A priest committing suicide - the most unforgivable of all sins!" Confessional letter of Father Máirtín, 23, parish priest to a village community on Inis Deisceart, a tiny island off the west coast of Kerry. The young man is tormented both by his lust for Máire, an attractive, semi-dressed girl his own age who keeps house for him and lives in sin with a sixty-year-old farmer, and a recurring vision of a robed, skull-headed predecessor drawing a razor across his own throat. Deathstone: (Peter Crowther [ed.], Winter Chills #1, Jan. 1987). Stricken by a mysterious illness, Fergus Finnucane, 48, the sightless, internationally acclaimed composer moves to a small Georgian mountain in remotest Southern Ireland on the insistence of doting wife, Catherine, a woman twenty years his junior. How lucky he is to have her! The mansion, built on the site of an Abbey — itself raised on the ruin of a Pagan temple — comes with seven foot menhir in the garden. According to Father Sheldon, parish priest, the ancient stone is said to "subsume all things evil to itself." Certain persons in Finnucane's life may soon discover the horrible truth of this.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 6, 2022 9:58:06 GMT
The Samhain Feis: (Alan Ryan, [ed.], Halloween Horrors, 1984). According to Old Mr. Flaherty, little Mike Fantoni's supposedly imaginary playfriend is, in reality, Sean Rua, County Clare's most demonic bogeyman, Stuff and nonsense, of course, or so Katy tries to convince herself ahead of their flight home to New York to confront husband, Marco, the boy's abusive father. The Mongfind: (W. Paul Ganley [ed.], Weirdbook #25, Autumn 1990). "The bean sidhe is the woman of the fairies whose shrieks and moans portend a death." Think this might be my favourite of the lot. Ballyporeen, Wexword, 1658. Tom Sindercombe, a private in Cromwell's army, pays dearly for war crimes. Left for dead after an ambush, Sindercombe had been taken in and cared for by farming couple, Donal and Finuala O'Derrick. When Finuala hears the banshee cry and warns him that someone will die this night, the Englishman decapitates both she and her husband with a billhook, so he can claim their farm on his impending discharge. A year on, Sindercombe has brought over a bride from his native Suffolk. The former Miss Lucy Hawkins is not much taken with her new home in the wilds. "Oh Tom! It looks such a dismal place!" Stick around, Lucy and you'll be proved right. Not for nothing is the property to become notorious as "The House of Detestable Horror."
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Post by dem bones on Sept 10, 2022 10:23:49 GMT
Both the below original to this volume.
Amhránaí: July 31st, the feast of Lughnasa. The house producer of a Dublin-based indie company, travels to Gortstrancally, West Cork, to fetch back a troubled, plastic rebel rock singer to record a new album. Lost in the hills, the protagonist stops the night of at Baile an Ghort, "the village of hunger," listening to local musicians and bedding Emer, the most beautiful girl in the district and blessed of the sweetest singing voice, who, despite her youth, is already widowed, her fisherman husband given up for drowned. At dawn, the producer slips out to retrieve his bag from the car, and the village turns to ruins behind him ...
The Dreeador: "No, Doctor, I am not mad. I have seen these things but I do not ascribe them to the supernatural ... I think someone is trying to frighten me away from Coolarrigan for some reason. Even trying to persuade me that I am going crazy."
Following the deaths of his parents from a terrible wasting disease, Sir Giles Michelburne, the last of the line, returns from South Africa to take up residence at the ancestral home, Coolarrigan Castle, only to learn the staff have been paid off and the estate entirely run by a man-servant, the impossibly capable, if decidedly slippery Mr. Finnerty. From the first, Sir Giles, is troubled by the ghosts of his parents foretelling his doom, while the Reverend Forrestal, peddles his tricycle before Michelburne's carriage, urging him to leave. The well-meaning churchman drowns in the river that same night. It transpires that during the Great Famine of the eighteen forties, the family were cursed by Torna, a powerful magician who starved to death with his people while the Michelburne's profited and grew fat. Sixty years on, his Poe-esque vengeance is close to fulfilment.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 10, 2022 16:42:35 GMT
The bulk of the Sister Fidelma/ The Ants legend's short non- Dracula-related supernatural fiction in 256 page paperback. Reading this commentary spurred me to order My Lady of Hy-Brasil and Other Stories, which includes five stories that don't appear in Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror. |
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Post by dem bones on Sept 10, 2022 17:07:24 GMT
The bulk of the Sister Fidelma/ The Ants legend's short non- Dracula-related supernatural fiction in 256 page paperback. Reading this commentary spurred me to order My Lady of Hy-Brasil and Other Stories, which includes five stories that don't appear in Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror. Wouldn't mind a copy, either! Have read a couple of them. the Singing Stone, in an issue of Jones & Sutton's Fantasy Tales and The Hungry Grass in some wretched Count Dr*c*l* Fan Club publication or other. One more from the excellent Aisling. Left til last, as I've developed an aversion to pretty much all things Cth*lh* Myth*s. Turns out this is very much in sympathy with the rest of this excellent collection, the Mythos trappings kept to barest minimum. Daoine Domhain: (W. Paul Ganley [ed.], Weirdbook #28, Autumn 1993). "They were the Evil Ones who dwelt in Ireland long before the coming of the Gael. Always they have battled for our souls, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. They are the terrible people. They have but a single eye and a single hand and a single foot. They are the terrible ones, the Deep ones. The Daoine Domhain." In 1928, Daniel Hacket, Irish-born American, returns to Inishdriscol for the first time since infancy, boarding at the cottage where a Captain Pfeiffer vanished in mysterious circumstances nine years earlier. The villagers treat him kindly, albeit with reticence, particularly when he questions them concerning Pfeiffer and local legends pertaining to the Formorii, "the dwellers beneath the sea." A little girl among the travelling community warns Hacket to leave the island before the feast of the Fires of Bile, when next the community must sacrifice a chosen one. This proves easier said than done. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 22, 2022 13:49:59 GMT
Reading this commentary spurred me to order My Lady of Hy-Brasil and Other Stories, which includes five stories that don't appear in Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror. Wouldn't mind a copy, either! Have read a couple of them. the Singing Stone, in an issue of Jones & Sutton's Fantasy Tales and The Hungry Grass in some wretched Count Dr*c*l* Fan Club publication or other. One more from the excellent Aisling. (Donald M. Grant, 1987) Illustrated by Duncan Eagleson My Lady of Hy-Brasil (Ireland) The Hudolion (Wales) The Hungry Grass (Cornwall) The Singing Stone (Brittany) The Kelpie's Mask (Scotland) The Imshee (Isle of Man) If you like the stories in Aisling, then this collection is well worth reading, too. "My Lady of Hy-Brasil" appears in both. "The Hudolion" is a bit slight, but the other four tales make for a creepy tour of Celtic lands. I think "The Hungry Grass" is my top pick. The illustrations are an added bonus. |
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Post by dem bones on Nov 22, 2022 15:52:19 GMT
I think "The Hungry Grass" is my top pick. I still find it incredible that he gifted The Hungry Grass to the Count Dracula Fan Club for one of their in-house publications. Far as I'm aware, that remains the story's only appearance outside My Lady of Hy-Brasil. The Singing Stone is from the Winter 1986 issue of Stephen Jones & David Sutton's Fantasy Tales. Wonder which publication reached the wider audience (and I'm not being flippant)? |
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