{"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_flat08_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat08_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat08_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/flat08.htm","summary":"This is an Irish fairy tale in the oral folk tradition, collected and annotated in the manner of 19th-century antiquarian folklore compilations. It follows a changeling plot: fairies attempt to steal a healthy infant near Tracton, County Cork, but a neighbor named Norah Buckeley intercepts the child as it is handed out a window by unseen hands and unknowingly foils the substitution. The story resolves briskly when Norah reveals she has the real child, the changeling vanishes before it can be beaten and abandoned at the crossroads, and the family is reunited. Distinctive features include the folk belief that eddies of dust signal fairy processions \u2014 and the courtesy of dropping a curtsy to them \u2014 presented matter-of-factly as local custom. The appended notes ground the tale geographically and comparatively, linking its motifs to parallel accounts from Scotland and the Isle of Man, and adding miscellaneous local history entirely unrelated to the narrative (a dissolved abbey, a Baron's monument, a rare mineral found at the site). The overall effect is of a lightly supernatural neighborhood anecdote preserved alongside the scholarly apparatus typical of antiquarian folklore collection.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Two Gossips","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":748}