Reading Notes: More Celtic Tales, Part B
In the first story, a farmer needs someone to plough his fields. A mysterious man shows up and offers to do the job for a fair price. He has an odd way of going about his work and then tries to scam the farmer out of his crops. I like the mystery of the man and still don't entirely understand him. I also like that he tried to trick the farmer, but that he was not able to do so in the end. I might turn this story around where the farmer is the one in the wrong.
The next story is of a nice humpbacked man. The fairies like him and remove his hump. Another humpbacked man hears of this, but he is not kind so the fairies give him another hump instead of removing one. I'd like to write this as a story of a kind person with a physical deformity who saves the life of a surgeon- like pushing him out of the way of a moving car. The surgeon would repay this person by fixing their deformity.
The following story is about a boy who runs away from home and lives with beings similar to fairies in the forest. He takes an object from their land into his own, and is never allowed to return after that. I could do a rewrite about a child of a starving family. A fairy takes pity on her and allows her to enter the fairy world for as much food as she wants, on the condition that she cannot bring anything back with her to the human world. She passes between the two worlds at will, but can't stop herself from bringing food back for her starving siblings. After this, she can never return to the fairy world and she greatly regrets her descision.
In the final story, a boy finds out his step mother wants to poison him so his half-brother might have the throne. The two brothers decide to run away from her together. They both end up being kings. I like the idea that they stood by each other until the end. The younger brother could've let his half-brother be poisoned or he could've stayed behind when the other one fled.
Image Information: Hunchback, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Bibliography: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, link to the reading online.
The next story is of a nice humpbacked man. The fairies like him and remove his hump. Another humpbacked man hears of this, but he is not kind so the fairies give him another hump instead of removing one. I'd like to write this as a story of a kind person with a physical deformity who saves the life of a surgeon- like pushing him out of the way of a moving car. The surgeon would repay this person by fixing their deformity.
The following story is about a boy who runs away from home and lives with beings similar to fairies in the forest. He takes an object from their land into his own, and is never allowed to return after that. I could do a rewrite about a child of a starving family. A fairy takes pity on her and allows her to enter the fairy world for as much food as she wants, on the condition that she cannot bring anything back with her to the human world. She passes between the two worlds at will, but can't stop herself from bringing food back for her starving siblings. After this, she can never return to the fairy world and she greatly regrets her descision.
In the final story, a boy finds out his step mother wants to poison him so his half-brother might have the throne. The two brothers decide to run away from her together. They both end up being kings. I like the idea that they stood by each other until the end. The younger brother could've let his half-brother be poisoned or he could've stayed behind when the other one fled.
Image Information: Hunchback, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Bibliography: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, link to the reading online.
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