



Produced by Barbara Watson, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)









    FAIRY LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS OF THE SOUTH OF IRELAND.

    BY

    T. CROFTON CROKER.


    A New Edition.

    WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
    AFTER DESIGNS OF THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS.


    "Come l'araba Fenice
    Che ci sia, ognun lo dice;
    Dove sia, nessun lo sa."--METASTASIO.


    Philadelphia:
    LEA AND BLANCHARD.
    1844.




PREFACE.


The erudite Lessing styles a preface "the history of a book." Now,
though there can be no necessity for a preface in that sense of the
word to the reprint of a work of mere whim, which has been nearly ten
years before the public, yet a few words are requisite to prevent the
present condensed and revised edition from being considered an
abridgment.

However compact may be the mode of printing adopted, the act of
compressing into one volume the three in which the "Fairy Legends"
originally appeared, involved to a certain extent the necessity of
selection, perhaps the most difficult of all tasks judiciously to
perform; but the following statement will show the system proceeded
on.

Forty tales descriptive of Irish superstitions now appear instead of
fifty. All superfluous annotations have been struck out, and a brief
summary at the end of each section substituted, explanatory of the
classification adopted, and in which a few additional notes have