The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

Across Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man, belief in fairies connects local stories with ideas about spirits and the dead. W. Y. Evans-Wentz gathers oral testimony and written sources in this 1911 study, combining folklore with anthropology, religion and psychology. His contributors include scholars and people whose accounts preserve beliefs associated with particular places. The book moves from these living traditions to older Celtic writings and interpretations of ancient monuments.

Fairy musicians, hidden palaces and the Tuatha De Danann give the discussion its narrative detail. One passage considers Aillén, whose music sends listeners to sleep before he brings fire to Tara, alongside other stories of supernatural performers. Evans-Wentz also explores the Otherworld and beliefs about rebirth. Readers interested in Celtic folklore can follow both the collected material and the author's speculative effort to explain it, with his claims about spiritual experience forming part of that historical perspective.