{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat01_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat01_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat01_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/celt/flat/flat01.htm","summary":"This is an Irish folk tale in the tradition of fairy lore, likely from the early 19th-century collection of Thomas Crofton Croker or a similar compiler of Munster folklore, set on Knocksheogowna (\"The Hill of the Fairy Calf\") in Tipperary. The story recounts how the fairy queen of the hill terrorizes a farmer's herdsmen with grotesque shapeshifting apparitions to reclaim land her kind had used as a dancing ground, driving cattle mad and making the hill untendable. A fearless piper named Larry Hoolahan, emboldened by drink and bravado, volunteers to face the fairy and defeats her not through prayer or magic but by refusing to be frightened \u2014 he simply keeps playing his pipes and, when she turns into a white calf, rides her across the Shannon and back. The fairy, impressed by his nerve, grants him permanent immunity and offers him a boon, which he never bothers to claim, content to pipe and drink at the farmer's expense for the rest of his days. The tale's distinctive quality is its comic, unheroic hero: Larry wins not through virtue or cunning but through cheerful indifference to terror, and his reward is essentially a comfortable idleness \u2014 a wry celebration of Irish rascality over solemnity.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Legend of Knocksheogowna","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":1681}