Magically Delicious

When I was in second grade our class did a play. My teacher insisted that I was the Irishman—or Irish girl who danced a jig because my name was Colleen and I had a streak of red in my hair. A lot of genealogy has never taken me back to the emerald island but I think that we all occasionally feel a wee bit Irish. Irish music speaks to our souls and Irish stories resonate with us as if we have heard them before. Dreams of Gold is retold in the modern story Acres of Diamonds. We all search the world over for treasure and happiness only to eventually find it is our own backyard. Usheens Return to Ireland has images of Rip Van Winkle. The Birth of Finn MacCumhail is Homeric. We sense Odysseus and Beowulf in the wings. And smile as we hear strains of O Brother Where Art Thou in the back of our mind. The Man Who Had No Story teaches us that we all have a story to tell.

Jane Yolen in Favorite Folktales From Around the World relates the following story. The famous philosopher William James had just finished a lecture when an older woman came up to him and said that he was wrong, the earth did not revolve around the sun. He asked the lady how the earth moved? She said, “The earth sits on the back of a turtle”. So he asked and what does the turtle stand on? And she said, "on the back of another turtle". James continued relentlessly, so what does that turtle stand on? The old woman drew herself and said, “It is no use Mr. James, it is turtles all the way down.” Ms. Yolen then explains, it is the same with literature; it is stories on the back of stories all the way down.

Irish Folktales speak to us because we have all looked at a rainbow and hoped for a pot of gold. The King of Ireland's Son like Finian’s Rainbow features "a little green man" coming to the hero’s aid. Since we all were raised on “pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers” these Irish Tales remind us of a magical isle where fairies and leprechauns and druids and heroes still live.