All Articles By Kim McNamara-Wilson
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Irish Faerie Folk of Yore and Yesterday: The Changeling
Admit it. We’ve all had the misfortune of meeting a child who just didn’t seem quite right. Willful and mischievous? Ill-behaved and undisciplined? A “bad seed” perhaps? Of course, we smile politely and pretend we don’t notice…but we keep an eye on them while we’re there, nevertheless. It could all be simply the fact that the child is very, very spoiled… Or…could the little brat actually be a Changeling? Up till now in this series, we’ve floated along toward Halloween on a wind of other-worldly, fairytale, nightmarish...
read moreIrish Faerie Folk of Yore and Yesterday: The Sluagh
So you’ve read of the Dullahan, who takes your life when your time is up. And you now know of the Dearg-Due, who takes your blood if she has the chance. But what about the thing that takes your soul, whenever it pleases? Nearing Halloween, or Samhain, it seems easier to let your mind wander to darker things. Cooler nights, blustery winds, dry leaves breaking from the trees and rustling in the dark. Shapes and forms manifest where before there were only shadows. And it is out of those shadows, and a westerly wind, that the Sluagh (also...
read moreIrish Faerie Folk of Yore and Yesterday: The Dearg-Due
You’ve probably heard of the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” No one wants to be on the receiving end of one of those. People native to our beloved Ireland are probably familiar with the legend of the Dearg-Due. One of the most tragic and frightening cases of “a woman scorned,” her legend is still whispered at grave sites. Rocks are still placed over graves in small towns and hamlets because of her. She is a vampire. Not the first, not the last, but threads of her grim tale have been sewn into the fabric of all...
read moreIrish Faerie Folk of Yore and Yesterday: The Dullahan
Oh sure enough, there be no snakes in Ireland to be afear of, but that doesn’t mean the woods are altogether safe. Yer familiar with such classics of Irish folklore as the Leprechaun an’ the Banshee, but have ye ever laid eyes on the Dullahan? Ye’d know if ye had, that’s a fact. (I can only keep up that Irish-Americanized-accented writing for about a paragraph…and I’m sure that’s also about how long you can bear reading it. So that works out just fine). Depending on the dialect of the speaker, it can be pronounced...
read moreMust Be Something in the Irish Water…or the Guinness?
At first glance, he appears as quiet and unassuming as his name. Peter Browne. Average height and weight. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Initially, the thing that stands out is his shoulder-length blonde hair, which falls slightly in his face, almost adding to that shy and inconspicuous demeanor by giving him a place to hide. His eyes might even look wary, careful. Once you get to know him a little, though, it’s like opening a veritable treasure box. The eyes behind the blonde curtains of hair are not wary, so much as stealthily...
read moreThe Happy Accident: Stumbling Upon History in Southwest Ireland
Few things can produce a panic in me as getting a flat tire… in a rental car… in the middle of nowhere…in a foreign country. But sure enough, that was the predicament in which my husband and I found ourselves on our first trip to my Mother’s homeland of Ireland.
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