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A review by katiemoten
Lady Gregory's Complete Irish Mythology by Lady Augusta Gregory
3.0
This is a difficult book to read. I suspect it's bought by many people as a gift on a trip to Ireland, and then never read. The reason it's hard to read is because it's written almost as if it was translated directly from Irish, and I suspect it was, at least in part. It has a very lilting quality, very old-fashioned. If you're familiar with the Irish language (I am), then you can recognise that the speech pattern and the order of the words are very similar to how one would speak in Irish. It does have that very lilting, song-like quality, like I said, and you get into the rhythm, eventually, but it isn't an easy read.
So I can't say I recommend it as an anthology of Irish myth, at least not for non-Irish people. There are anthologies of Irish mythology that are much easier to engage with for people who want to know the stories, but don't want to deal with the difficult style.
Gregory's collection was written at a time when the Irish were trying to reclaim their culture, and she collects all the old legends here that every Irish child encounters when they're small, and, despite the difficulty, the language is beautiful, so this is an important book. I think it's more one for scholars than the general reader, though.
Aside from this collection not being the best for general readers, I wouldn't recommend this edition. There's a lot of text per page and quite narrow margins.
So I can't say I recommend it as an anthology of Irish myth, at least not for non-Irish people. There are anthologies of Irish mythology that are much easier to engage with for people who want to know the stories, but don't want to deal with the difficult style.
Gregory's collection was written at a time when the Irish were trying to reclaim their culture, and she collects all the old legends here that every Irish child encounters when they're small, and, despite the difficulty, the language is beautiful, so this is an important book. I think it's more one for scholars than the general reader, though.
Aside from this collection not being the best for general readers, I wouldn't recommend this edition. There's a lot of text per page and quite narrow margins.