The Fairy Maiden, A Welsh Fairy Tale
Author of Legendary Stories of Wales, Collection Written by E. M. Wilkie, Published by Pook Press, 2013
Tuesday’s Tale June 28, 2022
Today is a fairy tale day. The fantasy genre is a delicious side dish of supernatural mysteries, which has been my main meal here at Reading Fiction Blog. We love fairy tales, even as adults, because they explore breaking the bonds of culture and transport us into other worlds of magic and endless possibilities. That childhood desire to fly like Peter Pan or discover your prince at a stunning ball like Cinderella. I like what W.B. Yeats has to say about fairy tales.
For me as a child, fairy tales were not my escape from reality; they were reality in thousands of ways. The wicked witches, the mad enchantresses, the evil queens, and pixie dust, wizards, and magical realms. All wonderfully real in some far away world at a time beyond me.
Come into the fairy tale again and experience the dream existence.
An enchanting quick read, this short story is a charmer and so refreshing. This Welsh fairy tale is about a man named Tom who steals a maiden from her circle of dancing folk fairies on a river bank. Once upon a time …
This is a tale of the still, hot days in summer when the dust lies thick and soft on the roads, and muffles the footfall of horse and man, and powders the hedge-plants, and turns the roadside grass grey.
This story is featured in Legendary Stories of Wales – Illustrated by Honor C. Appleton, on Amazon.com.
This book contains 57 classic Welsh tales ‘told through the ages’ – including those inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome, the Celtic past, King Arthur, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante, George Eliot, and many more. As Wilkie informs his reader… ‘many of them are well known… some are out-of-the-way tales… and a few, probably, have never been written down before.’
Listen to a famous Welsh fairy tale The Fisherman and the Mermaid read by David Reid, on YouTube (8 minutes). Delightful!
Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above for more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 250 short stories by more than 150 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ fantasy, and mainstream fiction.
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I’ve read a few Welsh folk tales (or retellings of them), but not The Fisherman and the Mermaid. Off to listen!
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