The Wishing of Biddy Malone

My sister, Abigail, is an awesome Irish dancer.  Even when she was a baby we used to joke that she had "springs on her feet"!  She started dancing at Caitrin Academy when she was little and has competed all over the US and Ireland.   I bought this book for her years ago.  It's technically not on our bookshelf, but Abigail is letting me borrow it for this post.

The Wishing of Biddy Malone

It has fairies, Irish lore, a fiery determined girl, and a sweet love story.  Perfect for my sister! 

To be sure, Biddy Malone loved to sing and dance.  But her singing was like a rusty gate in a wild west wind, and when she danced, her great dundering feet fell over each other, which was terrible considering Biddy Malone always wanted the best for herself.  So whenever she made a mistake, she kicked and screamed something awful, her temper being a fine fierce thing.

One day Biddy stomps out of the house in a rage and finds herself in the woods at "the soft hour between day and night, when shadows played games with the eyes."  She's in a faerie village and she meets the faerie prince who gives her three wishes. 

Biddy's wishes are "to sing as sweetly as a thrush and dance as lightly as a deer" and to quell her temper with a "loving heart".

As she grows she works hard.  With no help at all from the wishes, Biddy went on singing and dancing. She made her own magic from the faerie music within her, until her voice was oh so pure and her feet oh so nimble that her performance was something to behold.

Later, as a young woman, she visits the faerie village again and learns the value of all her practicing. To be sure, if her talents had been given to her for nothing, they would have been worth just that. It was all her hard work that had made her singing and dancing her own. And she finds the love that had been planted in her heart all those years ago.

Irish Fairy Tales

We love fairy tales in this house (well, maybe not Henry so much).  So it should come as no surprise that we have a good collection of fairy tale books.  I even have them divided on the bookshelves based on region- French ones, English ones, Scandinavian, etc...  Here are our Irish ones, just in time for some Saint Patrick's day reading. 

Joseph Jacobs was a folklorist (among other things) who collected the folk and fairy stories of the British Isles in the late 1800's. We have two cheap Dover editions that share a couple of the same stories but the illustrations are different in each. 

More Celtic Fairy Tales

Joseph Jacobs

illustrated by John D. Batten 1968

Favorite Celtic Fiary Tales

Joseph Jacobs

illustrated by Thea Kliros 1994

The Irish Fairy Book contains stories and poems by the likes of W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kennedy, Alfred Tennyson, Douglas Hyde, and Samuel Lover.  In the preface Alfred Perceval Graves writes, "The truth is that the Gaelic peasant, Scotch and Irish, is a mystic, and believes not only in this world, and the world to come, but in that other world which is the world of Faery, and which exercises an extraordinary influence upon many actions of his life."

The Irish Fairy Book

Alfred Perceval Graves

illustrated by George Denham

Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland was first published in the late 1800's as two books and is a collection of stories sought out by W.B. Yeats.

These folktales are full of simplicity and musical occurrences for they are the literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain and death has cropped up unchanged for centuries:  who have steeped everything in the heart; to whom everything is a symbol.

Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland

W.B. Yeats

Away with us, he's going,

The solemn-eyed;

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hill-side.

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast;

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,

To the woods and waters wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than

he can understand.

The Big Wave

To mark the anniversary of the tsunami in Japan, here's an appropriate book, wonderfully written by Pearl S. Buck.

The Big Wave

Pearl S. Buck 1947

It tells the story of a tsunami that hits a small town in Japan and how it affects two boys afterwards.  Kino lives on a farm, terraced into the side of a mountain.  He loves the view he has looking down to the fishing village and "broad blue ocean" beyond. 

His friend Jiya lives along the shore but he sees the ocean in a different way:

"The sea is our enemy," Jiya replied.
"How can you say that?" Kino asked.  "Your father catches fish from the sea and sells them and that is how you live."

Jiya only shook his head.  "The sea is our enemy," he repeated.  "We all know it."

Kino's father explains how they must live with danger from both the land and the sea.

"Do you mean that the ocean and the volcano cannot hurt us if we are not afraid?"  Kino asked.

"No," his father replied, "I did not say that.  Ocean is there and volcano is there.  It is true that on any day ocean may rise into storm and volcano may burst into flame.  We must accept this fact, but without fear.  We must say, 'Someday I shall die, and does it matter whether it is by ocean or volcano, or whether I grow old and weak?'"

Kino's father tells him, "Enjoy life and do not fear death- that is the way of a good Japanese."

One day, the distant volcano erupts. 

Under the deep waters of the ocean, miles down under the cold, the earth had yielded at last to the fire.  It groaned and split open and the cold water fell into the middle of the boiling rocks.  Steam burst out and lifted the ocean high into the sky in a big wave.  It rushed toward the shore, green and solid, frothing into white at its edges.  It rose, higher and higher, lifting up hands and claws.

Jiya is saved by being sent to Kino's farm high on the mountain, but the village, Jiya's house and his family are all swept away.  Kino's parents take Jiya into their family and Pearl S. Buck gives the father's words such sweet wisdom.

"Yes, he will be happy someday," his father said, "for life is always stronger than death.  Jiya will feel when he wakes that he can never be happy again.  He will cry and cry and we must let him cry.  But he can not always cry.  After a few days he will stop crying all the time.  He will cry only part of the time.  He will sit sad and quiet.  We must allow him to be sad and we must not make him speak.  But we will do our work and live as always we do.  Then one day he will be hungry and he will eat something that our mother cooks, something special, and he will begin to feel better.  He will not cry any more in the daytime but only at night.  We must let him cry at night.  But all the time his body will be renewing itself.  His blood flowing in his veins, his growing bones, his mind beginning to think again, will make him live."

After so much destruction Kino asks, "Father, are we not very unfortunate people to live in Japan?"

"To live in the midst of danger is to know how good life is," his father replied.

"To live in the presence of death makes us brave and strong.  That is why our people never fear death.  We see it too often and we do not fear it.  To die a little later or a little sooner does not matter.  But to live bravely, to love life, to see how beautiful the trees are and the mountains, yes, and even the sea, to enjoy work because it produces food for life- in these things we Japanese are a fortunate people.  We love life because we live in danger.  We do not fear death because we understand that life and death are necessary to each other." 

Kino and Jiya grow up and indeed live their lives, even rebuilding again along the sea.  So in remembrance and honor to the Japanese victims of the 2011 tsunami:

"He cannot and he should not forget them,"  Kino's father said.  "Just as he lived with them alive, he will live with them dead.  Someday he will accept their death as part of his life.  He will weep no more.  He will carry them in his memory and his thoughts.  His flesh and blood are part of them.  So long as he is alive, they, too, will live in him.  The big wave came, but it went away.  The sun shines again, birds sing, and earth flowers.  Look out over the sea now!"

Atlas of Remote Islands

After our latest trip, my heart is set on traveling.  It's incredible to think of all the places in the world we've never been (and will never get to).

Atlas of Remote Islands

Judith Schalansky 2010

I've taken this book to bed many nights and it's a good one for dreaming. Judith Schalansky picks out various islands around the world, some tiny and obscure, some tropical and exotic. There's a map on one side (which I love) and her curious and imaginative descriptions on the other.

The Underwater Alphabet Book

My husband and I are back from 4 days in Saint Martin.  It was truly a tropical paradise!  One of the best things we did was snorkel in the bright clear water.  We saw so many colorful fish and giant black sea urchins that made me think of underwater mines. 

(What we woke up to every day!)

The Underwater Alphabet Book

Jerry Pallotta

illustrated by Edgar Stewart 1991

We read this book a lot when Madeleine and Henry were little. There were so many interesting things to learn and take with us when we went to the aquarium.  It's written in a conversational way and filled with facts, you forget it's actually an alphabet book.

Cranford

Anyone who knows me knows I have a weakness for 19th century literature, especially the British novels by Dickens, Trollop, Collins, Bronte, Thackery, and Hardy (just to name a few!).  So of course I love the BBC adaptations and best of all I have a teenage daughter who loves to watch them with me (yay!).  Lately we've been watching "Cranford" based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell.  It's simply wonderful, there's no other way to put it. 

Cranford

Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell

(our antique copy)

Madeleine tried the novel (twice) but it's slow and though she loves other classic literature, it's just not quite her speed.  I however, loved the book.  It's sweet and funny and sad, and just a lovely "escape" from the 21st century.  It's a series of stories that follow the inhabitants of a quaint little town called "Cranford".  Most of the main characters are older spinster ladies concerned with lace and bonnets, their pet dogs and all sorts of gossip.  I consider it good Victorian "fluff" reading.

I love the part where dear Miss Matty relates her fear of getting into bed at night:

She owned that, ever since she had been a girl, she had dreaded being caught by her last leg, just as she was getting into bed, by someone concealed under it.  She said, when she was younger and more active, she used to take a flying leap from a distance, and so bring both her legs up safely into bed at once; but that this had always annoyed Deborah, who piqued herself upon getting into bed gracefully, and she had given it up in consequence.  But now the old terror would often come over her, especially since Miss Pole's house had been attacked (we had got quite to believe in the fact of the attack having taken place), and yet it was very unpleasant to think of looking under a bed, and seeing a man concealed, with a great, fierce face staring out at you; so she had bethought herself of something- perhaps I had noticed that she had told Martha to buy her a penny ball, such a s children play with- and now she rolled this ball under the bed every night; if it came out on the other side, well and good; if not she always took care to have her hand on the bell-rope, and meant to call out John and Harry, just as if she expected men-servants to answer her ring.

Grandpa Green

My father-in-law recently passed on a bunch of family pictures that had been saved on a CD.  So I spent an afternoon scrolling through them and watching the history of my husband's family unfold.  There was his great grandmother as a young woman at the turn of the century, his 95 year old grandma as a plump baby.  The pictures changed from black and white to the washed out colors of the 50's and 60's.  I watched as toddlers grew to adolescents and long-limbed gawky teenagers became brides and grooms.  Then my husband and his brother appeared as bowl-haired towheads, and my mother-in law was so young and pretty. 

The family business celebrated 50 years, there were grandchildren, then great-grandchildren, and faces who disappeared from the pictures all together.  Eventually my skinny 20 year old self appeared with baby Madeleine next to that young blue-eyed man I fell in love with.  I could look at these pictures a dozen times a day and lose myself in the stories and nostalgia, the history of a family that I am now a part of and that my children are tied to.  I can't help but think of our own family photographs- Disney World, birthday parties, camping trips, that will continue this line of snapshots for the children's children and so on and so on...

Grandpa Green

Jane Smith 2011

In Grandpa Green a young boy relates the memories his grandfather tells him.  The images are cleverly related in the topiary.  It's one of those books (like Someday and Roxaboxen) that clutch my heart.