An Irish proverb tells us. “A tale is more precious than the wealth of the world,” and judging from the richness of their storytelling traditions, the Celts have always believed this. In In fairy tales, as in music, the romantic artistry of the Celts came to full flower. In this wonderful collection of fairy tales from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, The Isle of Man, and Brittany, we meet heroes and villains, princes and paupers, enchanting creatures and magical mermaids. Each story has been retold by Neil Philip and display a common Celtic heritage in their love of extravagance and poetry, their quick wit and their daring sense of adventure.

Here, retold much as they were around Celtic peat fires a hundred years ago, are the enthralling tales of ‘Fair, Brown, and Trembling’, ‘The Brown Bear of the Green Glen’, and ‘The Ship That Went to America’. Some of the stories give familiar tales a Celtic twist: ‘Duffy and the Devil’ is a comic Cornish take on the Rumpelstiltskin story; ‘The Black Cat’ is a dark and mysterious Breton Cinderella. Others seem new and strange: the doomed love of ‘Lutey and the Mermaid’, or the mystic rapture of ‘The Little Bird’. Perhaps most riveting of call is the Irish tale of ‘The Soul Cages’, in which a fisherman makes friends with one of the sea-people, Coomara, and uses that friendship to free the souls of drowned sailors, kept by Coomara in lobster pots in his house beneath the waves. Illustrated in watercolor and gold by acclaimed artist Isabelle Brent, these tales are full of Celtic magic.