New Book Of Irish Tales

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

New Book Of Irish Tales

AN Irish writer who has the gift of story-telling is Pat Mullen. Those who have read his "Man of "Aran" and "Hero Breed" will agree. He lias now added to these two delightful and exciting hooks a third "Irish Tales" (Faber and Faber), which is no less delightful and exciting, and still more, amusing. The tales are twelve inl; number. Traditional fantastic stories, told in his hearing by born story-tellers, as he sat during the long winter nights " by a roaring peat fire in the Island of Aran, and are retold in his own manner t . in English. One of them, he was £ assured by the narrator, had been t handed down in his family for centuries, Z and" had never been written before iin • • any - language. ; Samuel Lover wrote " legends nnd stories of Ireland over a * century ago, but Mr; Mullen's tales are Z of a different class.. They are .different,.,. J. even, from the ballad literature and n legends of the Scottish Highlands and a Borders. With their kings, princes, f princesses,'monsters, giants and wizards r are more akin to the legendary ■j-' tales of Albania. If they were told* at Z the ingleside with anything like the 2 "aliveness" with which Mr. Mullen » retails tliem, and the' air r»f unstudied " simplicity and iiaivenees with-which : he Z invests them, those who heard them 2 must have listened spell-bound.