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'Attractive and deeply informative book' Sunday Tribune 'One of the first feelings that come to mind upon opening the pages of Irish Trees: Myths, Legends and Folklore is ... at last!' Wild Ireland 'An exhaustive compendium' Irish Examiner 'Excellent book with super illustration' Bray People
Product Description
Ireland was once so heavily wooded it was said a squirrel could travel from Cork to Killarney without touching the ground. So it is no surprise that in ancient Ireland mythology and folklore were an integral part of the general knowledge about each tree. This book gathers together the myths, legends and folklore associated with the native Irish trees. The folklore has two main themes: the tree as a marker of important places such as a royal site or holy well, and the role of different trees as sources of magical power in folk customs and superstitions. Many themes are common to different trees, such as fertility, magical power and the tree as a link between this world and the spiritual. Early Irish poetry is littered with references to trees and this book contains the most important of them in the original Irish and in translation. The creators of the Irish alphabet, Ogam or Ogham, named the letters after trees. The link between each letter and its tree is demonstrated in this book. The ancient Celts also had a lunar calendar of thirteen months, and this book features an ogham tree calendar linking the trees to the different months of that ancient calendar.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Lots of scholarship, some excessive speculation
5 Mar 2004
Format:Paperback
There's tons of original source material in there, drawn from the Dindsenchas, the Acallam na Senórach, and the Book of Ballymote, as well as from many other reliable historical sources. But I found much of the first 200 pages of the book really frustrating, because the author makes these guesses about what should be where and what trees should be associated with what letter of the ogham alphabet. There was a mix of "oh, cool, I'd never seen that bit of folklore" and "what an interesting association, that tree never struck me like that" side by side with "what crack are you smoking?" and "where did that come from? I want a citation!". Yet the author has obviously done their research, and done it well and thoroughly, so it's not just fluffbunny Paganism running rampant, bibbling about Atlantis crystal spirit power all the way.
I loved the full page color illustrations; I think they really added to the sensory experience of the book. Mac Coitir does eventually explain "this is why I think Nion is wild cherry and not ash", et cetera, but that section is practically the last thing in the book. By that point, I've already had 200 pages to get all outraged at the apparantly arbitrary and unsubstantiated associations. If the explanations had come first, or at least been mentioned ("later we will explore..."), it would have saved me a lot of outrage. [grin] He explains his reasoning well, but with rather more speculation than I'm comfortable with. He's obviously steeped in scholarship and not afraid to dive into Old Irish linguistics, and that rocks. He constructs plausible theories for language shift and alphabet development. He cites sources I haven't read already, and my Amazon wishlist is suddenly bigger. [grin] That rocks too. But I think that on some of these associations, he's really reaching, and the answer should be "I don't know" or "we don't have enough evidence" or even "this is my pet theory" rather than "This is how it should be/is/was!". Helloooo, Graves!
His biggest sin is perhaps an understandable one -- when the extant body of Irish evidence is lacking, he turns to other cultures. It's a very strong temptation... but I was somewhat annoyed at "here's what the Greeks thought of the pine tree, here's what the Norse had to say about the ash". Those cultures have their own rich traditions, but they don't necessarily bear on Celtic symbolism. If I wanted a book on cross-cultural tree folklore, I would have gotten one. (I own several, in fact.)
Although I don't agree with all of his conclusions, I loved the last 40 pages of the book for its in depth exposition and exploration of Old Irish, modern Irish, botany, and folklore. Lots of interesting little finds in there, and a thousand jumping off points for further research. Now if only he'd told me why he thinks Ogham is a result of the Latin alphabet... I've heard that theory aired before, but would like to see some support for it. I now have lots to think about, and he sent me diving for my dictionaries a lot, but there are also places that I so strongly disagree with him.
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