Customer Reviews

The Good People: New Fairylore Essays

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Little serious work on the fairy faith has been done in recent times, but this collection of scholarly essays makes up for the lack. As is often the case in this fascinating area of folklore, a few of the essays make you marvel at the enduring and oddly consistent character of the accounts. It gives me a wee chill to read recordings of interviews with Scottish schoolchildren done in the 1970s, and realize that they repeat notions noted among Welshmen by Sir John Rhys fully three-quarters of a century before. An excellent, entertaining and scholarly book that should be in the collection of any folklorist interested in the fairy faith.

Most books on fairylore are collections first published in the nineteenth century or draw primarily from the author's imagination. Those wishing to know more must fall back on scholarly journals that may not be readily available to most readers. This book makes such studies available in an affordable form that you will reread many times. The studies in this book reflect beliefs and attitudes among people of the late twentieth century in communities of maritime Canada as well as Celtic countries. What is most illuminating is the consistency between recent attitudes and those collected earlier.

Peter Narvez has written a book for those of us who are Celtic and for those of us who wish to see the Other, be it fairy or alien, in a different, perhaps more complete, way. The book is comprehensive to the date of its publication. It offers a number of points for consideration or additonal study. While some essays are stronger than others, and some are clearer than others, in the main, "The Good People" is a wonderful treatment of the Otherworld as it is known in the non-UFO community. Along with folkloric treatments of the Other, Vallee's "Passport to Magonia" and Thompson's "Angels and Aliens," it should be mandatory reading for all of us who are concerned that the debate on extraordinary experiences and alien encounters is too narrow, too full of heat with little light, and too parochial.

This excellent book is a collection of essays from folklorists and academics regarding the persistence of fairy faith beliefs in the Celtic lands, their diaspora, and related cultures both ancient and modern. The contributions have been well and thoughtfully selected to present a diversity of views and studied regions, so there's likely to be something in there of interest to most people familiar with the genre. There's plenty of discussion of Celtic lore as carried across the ocean, both as cultural curiosity (Canadian Celts using fairy terminology to describe the tangles in their horses' manes, but no longer believing in actual beings) and as living practice (down to a discussion of why some Irish fey could cross the ocean with immigrant families, not being rooted in the soil, and others couldn't). Plenty of the studies are from the original Celtic nations, and there are also excellent comparisons of Celtic and Norse approaches to resident land-spirits; Asatru folks are likely to find that essay of interest. It's solid scholarship which still reads well to the layperson -- I'll be buying a lending copy as well as keeping a reference copy for myself.