This comprehensive collection of folk hero tales builds on the success of the first edition by providing readers with expanded contextual information on story characters from the Americas to Zanzibar. Despite the tremendous differences between cultures and ethnicities across the world, all of them have folk heroes and heroines—real and imagined—that have been represented in tales, legends, songs, and verse. These stories persist through time and space, over generations, even through migrations to new countries and languages. This encyclopedia is a one-stop source for broad coverage of the world's folk hero tales. Geared toward high school and early college readers, the book opens with an overview of folk heroes and heroines that provides invaluable context and then presents a chronology. The book is divided into two main sections: the first provides entries on the major types and themes; the second addresses specific folk tale characters organized by continent with folk hero entries organized alphabetically. Each entry provides cross references as well as a list of further readings. Continent sections include a bibliography for additional research. The book concludes with an alphabetical list of heroes and an index of hero types.

Experience the whimsy, charm and magic of the Celtic imagination in this captivating collection of timeless stories that have enchanted generations of youngsters and adults. Among the eight popular tales included here are "The Fate of the Children of Lir," a haunting narrative of four children turned into swans by a wicked stepmother; "The Shepherd of Myddvai," in which a beautiful woman, risen from the sea, orders her husband-to-be to observe certain rules; and "Beth Gellert," a touching tale of a brave dog that dies after saving a child's life. Five additional stories include "The Tale of Ivan," "Morraha," "The Story of Deirdre," "The Llanfabon Changeling," and "The Sea-Maiden."

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Celtic Folk and Fairy Tales" by Various. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Last year, in giving the young ones a volume of English Fairy Tales, my difficulty was one of collection. This time, in offering them specimens of the rich folk-fancy of the Celts of these islands, my trouble has rather been one of selection. Ireland began to collect her folk-tales almost as early as any country in Europe, and Croker has found a whole school of successors in Carleton, Griffin, Kennedy, Curtin, and Douglas Hyde. Scotland had the great name of Campbell, and has still efficient followers in MacDougall, MacInnes, Carmichael, MacLeod, and Campbell of Tiree. Gallant little Wales has no name to rank alongside these; in this department the Cymru have shown less vigour than the Gaedhel. Perhaps the Eisteddfod, by offering prizes for the collection of Welsh folk-tales, may remove this inferiority. Meanwhile Wales must be content to be somewhat scantily represented among the Fairy Tales of the Celts, while the extinct Cornish tongue has only contributed one tale. In making my selection I have chiefly tried to make the stories characteristic. It would have been easy, especially from Kennedy, to have made up a volume entirely filled with "Grimm's Goblins" la Celtique. But one can have too much even of that very good thing, and I have therefore avoided as far as possible the more familiar "formul " of folk-tale literature. To do this I had to withdraw from the English-speaking Pale both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laid down the rule to include only tales that have been taken down from Celtic peasants ignorant of English.