Dr W. Y. Evans-Wentz

This book contains some hundred tales and legends from Ireland, Britain and France, most of them as told and retold over a hundred years ago: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries was first published by Froude in London in 1911, based on the Oxford doctoral thesis of the American Walter Y. Evans-Wentz. The core of the work is the doctor's ethnographic fieldwork. Here much introductory material is placed at the back. Titles are added to tales here, so you can peruse the stories more conveniently.

Evans-Wentz' work consists mainly of many hundred tales told to him and written down by him as he travelled about in several countries of Western Europe. He has furnished many comments and added material about his informers, the tale-tellers. He also records in what places he wrote down his stories and impressions of the storytellers' settings as well.

The fairy stories told to Evans-Wentz go largely unchanged here, but several dubious and passé commentator notions are dropped now and then. What is more, such omissions from the circumferential material go unmarked for the sake of readability and brevity in telling the stories. They are quite a reading experience. The updating has been modest when it comes to wording and layout. Some pictures have been added.

The Collector and Author

The famous anthropologist Dr. Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz was born on February 2, 1878 in Trenton, New Jersey. He received his B.A. and his M.A. at Stanford University. Afterwards he travelled extensively, and in 1907 he began to journey through Brittany, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland to interview people who had encountered fairies. Evans-Wentz recounts reports in a book that is excerpted below.

Later he lived in India and Sikkim and became a Buddhist monk. He was a pioneer in the field of Tibetan Buddhism. He edited four marvellous volumes on Tibetan Buddhism, published by Oxford University Press.

The scholar passed away in 1965.

From His Dedication

At Oxford in November 1911, Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz dedicated his book on fairy lore among others to "A.E., "whose unwavering loyalty to the fairy-faith has inspired much that I have herein written," and "William Butler Yeats, who brought me at my own alma mater in California the first message from fairyland, and who afterwards in his own country led me through the haunts of fairy kings and queens."

~ೞ⬯ೞ~

From a Preface

During the years 1907–9 this study first took shape. Since then I have re-investigated the whole problem of the Celtic belief in fairies, and have collected very much fresh material.

The scope of my original research,

now it includes all of the Celtic countries.

Those to whom the credit for it really belongs are my many kind friends and helpers in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, and many others who are not Celts.

They have given me their best and rarest thoughts. . . .

W.Y. E. W.

Jesus College, Oxford All Saints' Day, 1911.