Donegal Tales

Here are twenty delightful Irish tales for children, written seventy years ago by Anne Casserley, writer and teacher, who spent her childhood summers in County Donegal, the mountainous northwest coast of Ireland. There she learned first-hand the rural life and folklore of the County and became in time the talented and inventive storyteller of the world of Donegal.

Her stories recall rural Ireland in a timeless time before cars, radios and electricity. On the wild mountainsides above the fertile valley farms, stray animals, domestic and wild, and a few odd folks lived together in a world of their own where the Leprechaun and the Fairies were everyday neighbors. This is down-to-earth fantasy where animals and people talk, not in dialect, but in unmistakable Irish accents; gregarious, hospitable, full of human faults and virtues.

Donegal Tales are read-aloud stories for children six to nine and wise, funny and beguiling reading for readers of all ages. They are truly literature, rich in language and depiction of character, not Dick and Jane prose nor aimless whimsy. Meet Brian, the orphan from the valley who lives with the black pig Roseen and Katty the turkey-hen, his boisterous friend the Young Donkey, the Kerry Cow and Kerry Calf, Rogureena Rua the fox, the miserly scheming Leprechaun, the tender-hearted Clogmakers Wife, the intrepid but tactless Little Black Lamb, and many other charming, eccentric creatures and folks.