A review by ehays84
Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

4.0

What an interesting and fun read. In addition to giving me lots of insight into Celtic life through the stories of the people, this book is very interesting for the notes on each story that the author provides. What you end up seeing is truly how diverse and interspersed are European (and really even Indo-European stories). Many are so old and in so many different versions, that it is impossible to tell where they started. It is quite likely though, that many Celtic ones spread east not west due to the large impact of Celtic Christian monks spreading around Europe from roughly the 500's to the 900's. I love delving into bits of history that are on the edge of our understanding, and this book helped do that. This book is also readily available online (use internet archive) and someone has even done a free audiobook version of it through librivox.