Peter Haining (ed.) – The Wild Night Company

[dem bones]

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Wild Night Company: Irish Tales Of Terror (Sphere, 1971; originally Gollancz, 1970: reissued as Irish Tales of Terror, Bonanza / Crown, 1988)

Foreword – Ray Bradbury
Introduction – Peter Haining

Giraldus Cambrensis – The Man Wolf
Traditional – Teig O’Kane And The Corpse
Daniel Defoe – The Friendly Demon
Charles Maturin – The Parracide’s Tale
T. Crofton Croker – The Soul Cages
J. S. Le Fanu – Wicked Captain Walshawe Of Wauling
Lady Wilde – Legends Of Witches, Fairies And Leprechauns
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Charlotte Riddell – The Banshee’s Warning
William Carleton – The Legend Of Finn M’Coul
George Moore – Julia Cahill’s Curse
W. B. Yeats – The Crucifixion Of The Outcast
A. E. Coppard – The Man From Kilsheelan
F. Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
James Joyce – Hell Fire
Lord Dunsany – Witch Wood
William Hope Hodgson – The House Among The Laurels
Shane Leslie – The Coonian Ghost
Elliott O’Donnell – The Haunted Spinney
H. P. Lovecraft – The Moon-Bog
Sinéad de Valera – The Fairies’ Revenge
Ray Bradbury – A Wild Night In Galway

Blurb:
The Best of Irish Fantasy
ghosts demons fairies leprechauns witches banshees & spirits
22 bewitching stories of Irish magic and mystery stretching from the 12th century to the present day, by a distinguished cast of authors.

First of Haining's several Irish themed supernatural/ horror/ fantasy anthologies (The Leprechaun Kingdom, Great Irish Stories of the Supernatural, Great Irish Tales of the Unimaginable (aka Great Irish Tales of Fantasy and Myth, Great Irish Tales of Fantasy), Great Irish Tales of Horror, possibly more?

Giraldus Cambrensis – The Man Wolf: (Topographia Hibernica, C. 1188. Extract from Chapter XIX: Of the prodigies of our times, and first of a wolf which conversed with a priest). A priest's prayer lifts a curse on a community whereby, every seven years, two of their number - a male and a female - are compelled to throw off their human shape and live as wolves in the wild. Should they survive their term, they may return home and their place taken by the next luckless couple. A warning to the despised English invader to beware "turning to our whoredoms."

Lady Wilde – Legends Of Witches, Fairies And Leprechauns: (Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms & Superstitions of Ireland, 1888). "The Sidhe often strive to carry off the handsome children, who are then reared in the beautiful fairy palaces under the earth, and wedded to fairy mates when they grow up.
The people dread the idea of a fairy changeling being left in the cradle in place of their own lovely child; and if a wizened little thing is found there, it is sometimes taken out at night and laid in an open grave till morning, when they hope to find their own child restored, although more often nothing is found save the cold corpse of the poor outcast."

The Horned Women. The spirit of the well instructs a woman how to banish the twelve horned witches who have invaded her home. The Fairy Race. Dark side of the Sidhe, who camp in a ring beneath hawthorn trees, there to make music, dance, and hate the human race, whose infants they abduct for sacrifice to the Devil. The Leprechauns. "Merry, industrious, tricksy little sprites" who mend shoes for the cobbler, stitch cloth for the tailor, and, should they take a shine, guide you to buried treasure. Torture them over a fire, however, and they've been known to turn vindictive.

Sinéad De Valera - The Fairies' Revenge: (The Stolen Child & other Fairy Tales, 1961). The Sidhe take unkindly to ten-year-old Nuala stealing a white violet from the fairy ring. Saintly elder brother Conn intervenes, persuades the Queen to lift the curse by running a dangerous errand on her behalf.

Shane Leslie - The Coonian Ghost: (Shane Leslie's Ghost Book, 1956). The Murphy's house in Brookeborough, Co. Fermanagh, early 1940s. Three Catholic priests confront poltergeist activity in a room shared by three girls aged 9-13. The spirit, Protestant, extraordinary communicative, is prone to angry outbursts, hisses when asked if he originates from Hell, and refuses to leave without an almighty struggle. Early suspicions of a hoax prove unfounded. Well authenticated case. Episode also notable for spectacular haunted bedsheets interlude.

[dem bones]

"O cowardly and tyrannous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit!".

W. B. Yeats - The Crucifixion of the Outcast: (The Secret Rose, 1897). Cumhal, a wandering minstrel, takes exception to the excuse for hospitality afforded him at the Abbey of the White Friars - a damp cell, flea-ridden blanket, stale bread, fouled water courtesy of #TorySewageParty, etc. When the vagrant bitterly reproaches his hosts in verse, the Abbot, concerned his "blasphemous" song could prove popular with the poor, has the brothers nail Cumhal to a cross.

George Moore - Julia Cahill's Curse: (The Untilled Field, 1903). "He said dancing was the cause of many a bastard, and he wanted none in his parish."
When Julia defies Father Madden in refusing to have a husband inflicted upon her, the priest causes her to be cast from the village, none among her family or friends daring to side against a man of the cloth. The young woman is only spared the horrors of the poor house by the charity of a blind lady who gives her a roof. Julia curses the parish that every year a roof will fall in, and a family go to America. Two decades on, it is all but a ruin. There is little love on show for Priests, Monks and Friars in these stories.

Traditional [Trans. Douglas Hyde] - Teig O'Kane and the Corpse: (W. B. Yeats [ed.], Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, 1888). O'Kane senior turns a blind eye to his son's gambling, drinking and idling, but when Teig "ruins the character" of sweetheart, Mary, the old man threatens disinheritance unless he takes her for his wife. When Teig stubbornly refuses, the fairy folk intervene, strapping a corpse to his back and having him drag it from churchyard to churchyard until it finds a burial place to it's liking.

Daniel Defoe - The Friendly Demon: (Extract from The Friendly Demon, or The Generous Apparition, 1726). The ghost of a sinful acquaintance protects a butler from the goblins bent on his abduction, even provides him a potion to cure his fits. The bishops insist that no good ever came from heeding the devil's advice. The ghost's good deed is in vain.

[helrunar]

Those all sound really good. Perhaps the collection should have been titled Why I am not a Christian (just my little joke).

cheers, Hel

[dem bones]

Lord Dunsany - Witch Wood: (Atlantic Monthly, March 1947, as Jorkens in Witch Wood). A clump of hazel wood, 100 yards long, slightly less in breadth, yet the poacher insists any who attempt to cross it after dark will become hopelessly lost until sunrise. The woodland was cursed by an old woman evicted from her hovel by the Bad Lord Monaghan. The irrepressible Jorkens, debunker of fanciful myths that he is, puts the legend to the test. "My theory that I knew my way, my knowledge that I was in a little grove, my belief that I could cross it in three minutes, all had to go by the board, and I had to acknowledge the fact that I was lost in a forest."

Elliott O’Donnell – The Haunted Spinney: (Charles Lloyd [ed.], Shudders, 1932). St. Meave, Cornwall. A husband is wrongly convicted of the brutal murder of his wife on a woodland path. Some weeks later, the narrator, who witnessed the killing, returns to the scene at the request of an old friend, Frank Widmore, a member of the New Occult Research Society ....

Ray Bradbury – A Wild Night In Galway: (Harper's Magazine, Aug. 1959). A nerve-shredding, whiskey-fueled 110 mph drive to a dog track in the middle of nowhere. Probably missed something, didn't find story interesting enough to reread.

[helrunar]

I've still never read any of those Jorkens stories. I should remedy that, one of these days. 

cheers, Hel

[Michael Connolly]

Sept 1, 2022 17:15:23 GMT helrunar said:

I've still never read any of those Jorkens stories. I should remedy that, one of these days. 

cheers, Hel

Apart from "The Sign" in August Derleth's Night's Yawning Peal, I've been very disappointed by the Jorkens stories that I have read. vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/3279/august-derleth-nights-yawning-peal

[dem bones]

Charlotte Riddell - The Banshee's Warning: (London Society, Christmas 1867). "He had lived at an awful pace ever since he came to London, at a pace which only a man who hopes and expects to die young can ever travel".

Contemporaries of Hertford O'Donnell, the brilliant young Irish surgeon, despair of the sinful and profligate ways that will surely bring his early demise. Since O'Donnell callously abandoned his family and sweetheart without so much as a goodbye, he has fast made a success of his career, but his heart is eaten away with bitterness for the upper classes, in particular those "indebted for their elevation more to accidents of birth, patronage, connection or marriage than to personal ability." Deliverance arrives in the unlikely form of the grey-haired, hand-wringing, wailing apparition which followed him overseas and now haunts his Gerald Street house.

Loved the sequence where-in the author details as many instances of banshee legend she can recall, but story sabotaged by an obscenely feelgood ending stuffed with all-friends-again miraculous reconciliations, understanding and tolerance from slighted, abandoned fiancée, etc.

T. Crofton Croker - The Soul Cages: (Fairy Legends & Traditions of the South of Ireland: Pt II, 1828). Jack Doherty, hard-drinking fisherman, devout Catholic and all round rascal, strikes a friendship with Coomara, a brandy-loving Merrow, or merman, who keeps warm the souls of dead fishermen by locking them inside lobster pots. Jack, wary of offending his well-meaning pal, takes it upon himself to somehow accomplish their release.

J Sheridan Le Fanu - Wicked Captain Walshawe: (Dublin University Magazine, April 1864: Madam Crowl;'s Ghost, 2008). The abominable old sinner is cursed by Molly Doyle, ferociously Catholic maid-servant to his late wife, Peg O'Neill, that on his own death his soul shall pass into a candle and not know release until it has burnt the way down.