{"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_flat03_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat03_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat03_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/flat03.htm","summary":"This is an Irish fairy tale in the oral folklore tradition, likely drawn from Thomas Crofton Croker's *Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland* (1825). It follows two hunchbacked men who each visit a fairy mound at Knockgrafton: Lusmore, a gentle basket-weaver, spontaneously completes an incomplete fairy melody with musical instinct and good timing, and is rewarded by having his hump magically removed. A second man, Jack Madden, attempts to replicate the reward deliberately but ruins the fairies' song by clumsily adding extra words out of greed and impatience, and is punished by having a second hump added to his own. The tale operates as a moral fable contrasting authentic, unselfish participation with calculated imitation: Lusmore succeeds because his contribution is genuinely musical and spontaneous, while Madden fails because he acts purely for personal gain and disrupts rather than enhances. A distinctive element is the story's specificity \u2014 real Irish placenames, the fairy cap plant (foxglove/lusmore), and the Irish-language days of the week in the fairy song give it a grounded regional texture unusual even within fairy-tale conventions. The ending is unusually grim: Madden dies under the weight of both humps, and his story becomes a warning against seeking out fairy music at all.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Legend of Knockgrafton","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":1894}