• yesman@lemmy.worldOP
      40·
      21 days ago

      For starters, Irish faeries are not like tinkerbell. They like to play pranks. Like kidnapping babies and replacing them with mimics. The creature we’d recognize as the Headless Horseman is Irish folklore, as well as the whole concept of Halloween. Bram Stoker, an Irishman need not have borrowed from Eastern European traditions, because the Irish had a bloodsucking undead monster too.

      • ctry21@sh.itjust.works
        34·
        21 days ago

        It was fun growing up in the countryside and things like banshees and fairies being taken as a fact of life. I had a childhood friend that would come in to school saying she heard the banshees howling during the night and then woke up to find out a relative had died.

        There was a news report that resurfaced a few years back, accessible here, about the Housing Executive in Newry trying to get a fairy tree chopped down to build houses, and even after trying to bribe the workers with £200 no one would touch it and they had to build around it instead. And another where some builders halted work in the Mournes once they realised they were inside a fairy ring, 3 of them went on to suffer accidents that they attributed to revenge by the fairies, the foreman apologised to the fairies, and even the reporter was too worried to step inside the ring. We were told the legends too, like Tír na nÓg or Finn McCool, but I think it’s amazing how much of the superstition and old mythology has persisted through the years, even after the country becoming Christian and even now as it becomes more secular.

      • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zipEnglish
        9·
        21 days ago

        For starters, Irish faeries are not like tinkerbell. They like to play pranks

        So… exactly like Tinkerbell? She was constantly “pranking” (read: trying to murder) Wendy throughout the story.

    • dustycups@aussie.zone
      3·
      21 days ago

      For example:

      The Leanhaun Shee (fairy mistress) seeks the love of mortals. If they refuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take their place. The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away. Death is no escape from her.

  • grue@lemmy.world
    20·
    21 days ago

    So you’re saying that Irish fairytales are funny parodies that are better than the German originals?

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
      30·
      21 days ago

      One Irish one I remember is where a man with a hump on his back meets some of the other folk and they tke his hump and throw it onto the horizon where it becomes a hill. He thanks them and they become annoyed with his gratitude and pick up a bigger hill and give him a bigger hump than ever.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        5·
        21 days ago

        There’s a Japanese one where an old man with a wen dances for some drunk ogres and they take his wen to make him come back the next day (because wens are a sign of luck for them). The next day another old man in the village sees that the first guy has gotten rid of his wen so he makes him explain how, so the second old man goes and tries to entertain the ogres but he sucks at dancing, so the ogres have had enough of him and tell him to get lost and give him the wen back, so that guy ends up with two wens.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobutori_Jiisan

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    20 days ago

    Here in Estonia we have a meat company called Maks ja Moorits which is pretty dark when you think about it. Don’t wanna know how their sausages are made.

  • Rusty Shackleford@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    Malgré leurs prétentions capricieuses d’être les arbitres du goût et du plaisir épicuriens, la sauvagerie impitoyable des Européens ressurgit toujours au premier plan, même après un examen superficiel de leur passé de dépravation sanguinaire qu’ils présentent comme leur folklore et leur histoire.