{"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_flat46_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat46_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat46_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/flat46.htm","summary":"This is an Irish folk tale \u2014 a literary rendering of an oral tradition from County Cork \u2014 following a blacksmith named Robin Kelly who rescues a nobleman's son from an underground giant's kingdom. The story centers on young Philip Ronayne, a prodigy who vanishes at age seven, and the dream-vision that sends Robin to the Giant's Stairs at Carrigmahon, where he must identify the boy among hundreds of identical child-pages held by the giant Mahon MacMahon. The tale blends comic realism (Robin's shrewd, cautious personality, his plough-iron as weapon) with gothic atmosphere \u2014 grotesque rock-faces, a petrified giant, a hall of eternally frozen children \u2014 in a way characteristic of 19th-century literary treatments of Irish fairy-lore. Distinctively, the story frames faery abduction as a form of labor indenture (\"seven years' service\"), and the rescued boy's lifelong skill in metalwork suggests he genuinely absorbed the giant's craft, giving the supernatural a grounded, transactional logic rather than pure menace. The closing verse signals the tale's melancholy awareness of its own endangered tradition \u2014 these are stories the peasants of Munster (\"Momonia\") no longer tell. Anyone interested in Irish folklore, fairy-abduction narratives, or the 19th-century project of preserving regional oral tradition (comparable to Croker's *Fairy Legends*) would find it rewarding.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Giant's Stairs","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":2290}