Folk Tales of the Isle of Man — Part 1
Part One opens a new shelf: three tales from Sophia Morrison's Manx Fairy Tales (1911), collected on the Isle of Man and written down at Peel from the tellers who kept them — a wife too lazy to spin who must guess a giant's name, a farmer who follows his own cows into the Fairy Hill and comes home with the fairies' silver cup, and two humpback cobblers, one of whom earns a straight back from the fairy host and the other a second hump.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In this part:
- The Lazy Wife — she will do nothing but sit in the corner of the chiollagh warming herself, and "Traa dy liooar" — time enough — is all her husband can get out of her; with one coarse ball spun and the weaver a week away, she bargains with the Giant up the mountain to spin her wool, if only she can learn his name before the week is out.
- The Silver Cup — Colcheragh's fine cows come home tired and milkless, and a night hidden in the cow-house straw shows him why: the Little Fellows loose the yokes and gallop the herd to the Fairy Hill; he follows them in, refuses the feast, seizes the stirrup cup of carved silver, and runs for the churchyard with the whole Mob Beg at his heels.
- Billy Beg, Tom Beg, and the Fairies — Tom Beg, lost in a grey mist on the mountain, is set to take the fairy password — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday — and is paid with a straight back; Billy Beg goes the next night to earn the same wage, and adds one word too many.
The tales:
00:45 — The Lazy Wife
11:27 — The Silver Cup
19:34 — Billy Beg, Tom Beg, and the Fairies
What is not read: two tales stand held for a ruling and are not read or touched — The Buggane of Glen Meay Waterfall and The Fairy Child of Close ny Lheiy. Excluded by name from this shelf and not read: The Buggane of St. Trinian's, Tehi Tegi, The Witch of Slieu Whallian, King Magnus Barefoot, and Joe Moore's Story of Finn MacCooilley and the Buggane. The rest of Morrison's collection has not been screened for this shelf and is not read here; no completeness for Manx Fairy Tales is claimed.
Source: Sophia Morrison, Manx Fairy Tales (London: David Nutt, 1911). Morrison (1859–1917) collected these tales on the Isle of Man; the reading copy is the Project Gutenberg plain text (No. 51762), public domain in the USA. The tales are read as printed, Morrison's light Manx dialect words standing as she printed them. Narrated by Magnolia. Opening and closing theme: Golden Monologue — with a short instrumental separator between stories, and no music under the narration.
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