{"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_flat22_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat22_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat22_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/flat22.htm","summary":"This is an early nineteenth-century Irish sketch \u2014 likely from a periodical or folklore collection \u2014 combining travel writing, local legend, and comic misadventure in the tradition of antiquarian storytelling popularized by writers like Thomas Crofton Croker. The narrator visits Ballinatotty Castle in County Tipperary and learns the local legend of the O'Brian chieftains, culminating in the story of Donough, a man of extraordinary brutality who murdered his wife Aileen (Ellen of the yellow hair) by throwing her from the castle's window or battlements. The narrator then falls through the castle's rotting floor into a cellar full of bats and is revived by a peasant girl named Honny and his guide John Grace, who cheerfully blame the accident on the Phooka \u2014 an Irish supernatural being to whom peasants attribute all accidental falls. The appended notes explain Phooka folklore in earnest, including the belief that the creature blights blackberries after Michaelmas. What makes the piece distinctive is its tonal range: it moves fluidly between genuinely dark legend (mass murder, femicide), physical farce (the narrator fleeing a terrier, crashing through floors), and warm affection for the rural people who rescue him \u2014 all anchored by rendered vernacular dialogue that gives the peasants considerably more personality than the narrator himself.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Haunted Castle","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":1539}