Cornucopia of Kelpies! (A Dictionary of Fairies - Katharine Briggs)

Name: vhart

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Product:	A Dictionary of Fairies - Katharine Briggs
Date:	30/12/00 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: some real delights and interesting tales lurking within the entries. The illustrations.

Disadvantages: sometimes the language can be a little dry.

Want to know your Ferrishyn from your Gwyllions? This is the book then.. It is a dictionary of fairies, unsurprisingly, as that it what it is imaginatively named!

Listing all fairy types, folk tales, literary references of these 'extra' inhabitants of the British Isles (because she does concentrate almost exclusively on Celtic/Anglo-Saxon mythology and folklore), Briggs provides what is both an academically astute and well-researched, but also, entertaining dictionary.

This book is illustrated, and the entries range from short descriptions to longer ones which incorporate stories and legends, and a complete version of the Scottish Ballad of Tam Lin.

Because of the dictionary form, it is a very easy book to dip in and out of, and not a book to read straight through, from cover to cover.

It never fails to furnish me with surprises or amusing new 'happenings'. It is a mixture of folklore and fantasy, there being entries covering Herne the Hunter, Morgan Le Fey and the Lady of the Lake, but also Oberon and Titania, and of course Robin Goodfellow and Rumpelstiltskin!

Some of the more interesting entries, (to me, anyhow) regard some of the more elusive fairy-types, the afore-mentioned Ferrishyn being Manx fairies who have fairy horses and fairy hounds for their own fairy hunts, and the Gwyllion, some of my favourites, who are the evil mountain fairies of Wales!

There are thousands of entries, some more delightful than others, some amusing, some amazing, some surprising.

It's a little gem of a book, if you are interested, not just in folktales and superstitions, but in the cultural heritage and history of the British Isles.

Summary: