Essay: Celtic Fairy Tales

The reading unit I chose this week was Celtic Fairy Tales because I have always had an interest in Celtic traditions and reading these stories gave me more insight on tales that have been passed down for generations. I wish there were more stories that talked about specific Celtic tales like the origin of the Celtic knot or the Claddagh Ring. Regardless, the short stories within this unit were still great to read because they had some spiritual tales as well as real life situations. An example of a story that was spiritual was the story of The Horned Women, which was about a woman who lived alone in a village. She allowed these witches who came into her door one by one because she thought one of the villagers called upon them and the witches got confused on the houses. The weird thing about the witches, however, was that they all had horns which seemed to range from the first witch that went into the home had only one horn. With each witch that came in, the more horns they had. So the last witch had twelve horns because she was the 12^th witch to walk into the house. The witches casted a spell on the woman of the house to do their bidding. When they commanded the woman to bake a cake, she went to the well to fetch water and the spirit from the well broke the spell and got rid of the witches. The story that seemed the most realistic was Beth Gellert, which is about a Prince who had a favorite dog. One day, the Prince went hunting and all his dogs went with him except for his favorite, Gellert, because he wouldn’t come to him when he called for the dogs. When the Prince returned from hunting, he saw Gellert with blood all over him so the Prince looked in his child’s room to see blood everywhere, which made him believe Gellert killed his son. In anger, the Prince killed his dog but then looked under the crib and found his son and a dead wolf. After he realized Gellert killed the wolf to protect the son, he was torn apart inside and then buried him outside the castle walls so people could visit his grave.

Trinity Knot (2005).