The Mouth of the Night: Gaelic Stories

by Iris MacFarlane, John Lawrence, J.F. Campbell

Iris Macfarlane retells 14 stories originally collected by John F. Campbell over 120 years ago, when he took a walking trip around the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Campbell collected these stories in their original Gaelic, and translated them into English in his own work: Tales of the West Highlands. Macfarlane explains in her introduction that she has retranslated the stories, trying to alter as little as possible, but of necessity softening them so that the stories could now reach children.

146 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1973

Reviews

[Beverly]

Excellent selection of very entertaining stories. It was interesting to read how different the folklore of the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides was from the stories that the Grimm Brothers compiled. There were a few similarities here and there; but the folklore motifs of many of the stories were new to me. "The Three Shirts of Cannach Cotton" was the most familiar; as it was very similar to Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans and the Grimms Brothers' The Six Swans. The flying ship in "The Ship That Sailed on Sea and Land" was familiar from the Russian The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. But there were elements unfamiliar to me in the other stories. One example: in "The Sharp Gray Sheep," a poor princess turned out to herd sheep by the step-mother, is taken care of by a gray sheep, who brings her food.

[Charlotte]

Good stories, and though it was interesting to see how many of these translated from the Gaelic echo Grimm's stories, this took away some of the freshness and magic.

[Moitoi]

How do i open to read a book?