Meeting the Other Crowd (Hardcover)

by Eddie Lenihan (Author), Carolyn Eve Green (Author) "EVERY COUNTY TRIES to make out that it has the best o' this and the best o' that..." (more)
Key Phrases: fairy wind, fairy path, fairy fort, Good People, Biddy Early, Other Crowd (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
*Starred Review* During folklore's first and greatest period, the end of the nineteenth century, such gifted writers as Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats wandered the Irish countryside, gathering the oral vestiges of a great tradition. Publishing their gleanings later, sometimes altered in transcription, they garnered an audience eager for tales of heroes, fairies, and gods. Such compilations as theirs remain major sources of Irish mythology. One of the best-known seanachies, or traditional tale spinners, in Ireland today, Lenihan is an Irish-speaking schoolmaster in the very area where Gregory and Yeats gathered their tales. He discloses that, despite the arrival of fax, Internet, and cell phone, the old tales persist. His fresh collection includes some famous motifs, such as the "fairy blast" that steals away people and things, but also such regionally specific figures as Biddy Early, the White Witch of Clare--a historical figure around whom myths have accrued. Lenihan focuses on the "other crowd" of the title: the fairy people, who are the diminished remnants of old gods, still able to affect the world of humankind. This is not quaint fluff but the powerful, sometimes disturbing lore of a world parallel to and occasionally intersecting ours. A major contribution to its field, the book is also compulsively readable, not least because Green, an audio producer, has helped capture the torque of Irish speech in Lenihan's storytelling. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"… powerful, sometimes disturbing lore … A major contribution to its field, the book is also compulsively readable …" -- Booklist (starred review)

"…rich and absorbing narratives … free of the New Age cant that has infected so many contemporary accounts of traditional folklore." -- Kirkus Reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; 1ST edition (February 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585422061
• ISBN-13: 978-1585422067
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,153,910 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enter the Authentic Realm of the Good People, March 25, 2003

By	Frank MacEowen (California-Georgia-Ireland) - See all my reviews

A wonderful, potent, enspirited, and true-to-essence treatment of an often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misrepresented subject: the faery folk. Lenihan is an authentic seanachai (storyteller) in the Irish traditions, but even more he is one who undoubtedly has a profound relationship with the life-affirming powers known as faery. Thanks to Carolyn Eve Green's mastery of the written (and spoken) word, we are invited into the world of Irish story, not as mere tales, but as maps into the Otherworld. In Ireland sacredness is inseparable from story, and story is inseparable from place--both the places named and seen in ordinary reality, and those places that border our world, that are inhabited by intelligent and powerful beings. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the Gaelic visionary traditions and the "co-present dimension of faery" this book will serve as an ample introduction to these enlivened cosmologies. For others who think the faery people are little gossamer-winged sprites, think again. Meeting the Other Crowd takes us into the faery world. Ultimately, this book is a profound contribution to understanding the transpersonal realities of the primal Irish and primal Celtic traditions in general. Where the classic work by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, was essentially an outsider cataloguing an ethnological record of belief, Meeting the Other Crowd offers us the perspective and perceptions of an insider--a living practitioner who knows quite well that the realm of faery is real, and alive, and capable of initiating the human being into a profound reality of spirit and connection to earth.--...

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reason to believe!, January 28, 2004

By	Tom Knapp "Rambles.NET editor" (Lancaster, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Eddie Lenihan is a national treasure of Ireland.

The folklorist is obsessed with the collection and sharing of Ireland's old stories. Realizing that the old ways -- sharing stories over a peat fire or a pint -- are in danger of extinction in modern Ireland, Lenihan moves mountains to find tales before they're lost and forgotten in the wake of television and technology. Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland is Lenihan's latest effort to share and preserve those tales.

Worth the cover price alone is Lenihan's lengthy introduction, which discusses Ireland's vanishing oral tradition, as well as ancient and modern perceptions of fairy stories. Ireland may be a player in the international field of the 21st century, but that doesn't mean the people there -- even the younger generation -- discount entirely the lore that forms the bedrock of their society. And maybe, just maybe, there is still good reason to believe....

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful bridge ..., June 19, 2004

By	Steph (MA, USA) - See all my reviews

I read this book straight through, because I couldn't bear to put it down! Mr. Lenihan has a great talent for capturing the ideas and "brogue" of the people he hears stories from, and his reviews of each story really make you think. I found this book to be fascinating, informative, and yet at times chilling. (I certainly wouldn't want to read these stories to my children at bedtime!) It offers a great deal of insight to the lives of the Good People, as well as into the lives of the past Irish, may their knowledge and stories ever be preserved.