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Keltski mitovi i pripovjetke
Mitske invazije Irske, mistična kraljevstva, ratnici, divovi, stvorenja iz podzemlja i magije, fantastični su sastojci keltske legende. Budući da su pričali vlastite priče na drevni način, usmenom predajom, razumijemo tradiciju ovih ponosnih ljudi kroz zapise njihovih smrtnih neprijatelja, Rimljana, ali oni ipak napreduju, tako svijetli i jaki i danas. Na ovim stranicama pronaći ćete priče o divovima, drevnim čarolijama, duhovima i vilama, o narodu mora i drveća. Sve glavne legende o irskim invazijama, Ulsterskom ciklusu i Fenijskom ciklusu nalaze se uz priče o Mabinogionu i tajne priče škotskog naroda i bajki. Od tragedije djece Lira do dolaska Finna Maca Cumaila, Guslača Gorda do Lisice.
728 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2022
142 people are currently reading
1653 people want to read
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 5, 2023
Great book for discovering more about Celtic myths & folklore!
November 8, 2019
Overall this book was decent. It is definitely a book I would suggest buying if you will have no prior knowledge of Celtic mythology or fairytales and you want something that is a broad overview to get yourself acquainted with everything. However, if you’re someone that already has exposure to Celtic mythology, you’re going to find a lot of repeats in this book that you may not be interested in. Personally, I had already read a lot of the myths in this book and some of the included works are more like childhood fairytales than anything else. It does include some interesting work, such as the Mabinogi and the Ulster cycle. However, the addition of some of the more childish works dull down the quality of everything else. It is still comprehensive and a good choice for newbies though. Overall, I was just a little underwhelmed.
May 9, 2019
Half the stories I enjoyed. The other half dragged on. It depends on the manner of story telling that was utilized in the era the story was told. Some eras I enjoyed. Others not. This is definitely more of a reference book of older tales and is not made to resemble this era. More an original text telling and all that entails.
September 18, 2018
While I appreciate the stories themselves, the versions in this book are very dry stuff. If there's ever an audio book version I'll try again, but for now this is relegated to a reference book.
October 12, 2024
The first half of this book was actually pretty neat but the rest was really boring
April 14, 2020
Wow. Now THAT is what we call a slog. Long, slow, painful. Don't be deceived by the title. There's nothing epic about this book. In fact, it was a dream come true for me when some of the stories were only two pages long because it meant less time spent in whatever boring adventure lay next in my path. Took me a week to finish, and it's a week I want back.
Few problems with the myths themselves:
-Ok first of all. In every single story in that book (and there are a lot) there was at least one woman who was the "fairest in the world." In some cases there were like six in the same story who one after another were the "fairest woman he had ever seen" or the "fairest maiden in all the world." It got to the point where it was both comical and obnoxious at the same time. The only other type of woman in these myths was "an old crone." So apparently you are either exceedingly beautiful or an old hag. Nothing in between.
-A few of the myths were actually really good and profound. The ones about ghosts in particular (shame it was like 10 out of 500 pages) were actually really well crafted and I can see how many of them lay the foundations for modern horror. And most of them were ok, but really only a few I actually turned the page and was like "I'm glad I read that."
Ok now the actual editing of the myths.
-The book itself does not lend leniency to its main problem in the slightest. It's long, tedious, and boring, and part of the huge problem was that each page had a solid mountain of text. Each page took me anywhere from 3 to 4 minutes to read (and while I'm not the fastest reader, I'm not slow) and that only heaped more pain onto the reader. It was like I would look up at the clock and 5 minutes had gone by and I was still on the same page. I know maybe it was a publishing decision to make the book more digestable (which is desperately needed), but it made it worse.
-Some of the divisions between myths just don't make sense. There's one about a brownie in the witch section, and the entire "origin and didactic legends" is completely misleading. About half of them have no clear point as to what they're trying to get at in the first place, and the ones that blatantly label the "origin" which came out of the tale is often completely inconsequential and strange. Also, despite its name, there are no creation myths here. That's what I was looking forward too but no, there's actually none. I'm positive the Celts had them, but no, this book is awful.
-There's a whole part of this book labelled "the Mabinogian" which is the most boring piece of literature I have ever consumed in my life time. If the rest of this book, in all its tiredness and badness, was placed at a 10, this section would be placed at a 0. Not only are the tales extremely long, tedious and boring, and sorely without narrative purpose, but the translation used by the editors was only from a nineteenth century British noblewoman. Her translation had long solid blocks of dialogue without any sort of cuts between them, to the point where constantly saying "said he" "he said" without any pointer as to the name of the person speaking made me give up and just go to the next paragraph.
She also used almost Shakespearean prose and dialogue, which is extraordinarily dry and in many place very difficult to understand. The editors seemed to lazy to actually make a modern translation, or at least modernize the noblewoman's, so we're met with this solid trash pile. I completely glazed over this section because literally anything I thought about was more interesting than what was happening. Though the rest of the book wasn't quite as bad as this, it still wasn't "epic" in any sense of the word.
-The most glaring error, and worst problem with this book is the complete lack of Celtic mythology. Considering the title, this is a grievous mistake. Old Celtic mythology is one of the most interesting set of myths and gods in the world, with Cernunnos and other gods. But this book seems to take place in the Christianized era of the Celtic regions, which is fine, because a lot of Celtic mythology comes from there. But the complete lack of older, pagan religion in this book is awful.
Don't get me wrong. I love myths. I grew up on Rick Riordan and know a lot about Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. I love it. It interests me so much. But this book was poorly handled, used very bad translations, was badly organized, written very dryly, and cut out an extremely important part of Celtic mythology.
Don't be fooled by the cover. Yes, it looks nice. The whole book looks wonderful and I'll keep it on my bookshelf because it looks really pretty (and I paid 20 dollars for it). But don't expect anything "Epic" to come out of this lopsided hunk of sleep-inducing literature.
Few problems with the myths themselves:
-Ok first of all. In every single story in that book (and there are a lot) there was at least one woman who was the "fairest in the world." In some cases there were like six in the same story who one after another were the "fairest woman he had ever seen" or the "fairest maiden in all the world." It got to the point where it was both comical and obnoxious at the same time. The only other type of woman in these myths was "an old crone." So apparently you are either exceedingly beautiful or an old hag. Nothing in between.
-A few of the myths were actually really good and profound. The ones about ghosts in particular (shame it was like 10 out of 500 pages) were actually really well crafted and I can see how many of them lay the foundations for modern horror. And most of them were ok, but really only a few I actually turned the page and was like "I'm glad I read that."
Ok now the actual editing of the myths.
-The book itself does not lend leniency to its main problem in the slightest. It's long, tedious, and boring, and part of the huge problem was that each page had a solid mountain of text. Each page took me anywhere from 3 to 4 minutes to read (and while I'm not the fastest reader, I'm not slow) and that only heaped more pain onto the reader. It was like I would look up at the clock and 5 minutes had gone by and I was still on the same page. I know maybe it was a publishing decision to make the book more digestable (which is desperately needed), but it made it worse.
-Some of the divisions between myths just don't make sense. There's one about a brownie in the witch section, and the entire "origin and didactic legends" is completely misleading. About half of them have no clear point as to what they're trying to get at in the first place, and the ones that blatantly label the "origin" which came out of the tale is often completely inconsequential and strange. Also, despite its name, there are no creation myths here. That's what I was looking forward too but no, there's actually none. I'm positive the Celts had them, but no, this book is awful.
-There's a whole part of this book labelled "the Mabinogian" which is the most boring piece of literature I have ever consumed in my life time. If the rest of this book, in all its tiredness and badness, was placed at a 10, this section would be placed at a 0. Not only are the tales extremely long, tedious and boring, and sorely without narrative purpose, but the translation used by the editors was only from a nineteenth century British noblewoman. Her translation had long solid blocks of dialogue without any sort of cuts between them, to the point where constantly saying "said he" "he said" without any pointer as to the name of the person speaking made me give up and just go to the next paragraph.
She also used almost Shakespearean prose and dialogue, which is extraordinarily dry and in many place very difficult to understand. The editors seemed to lazy to actually make a modern translation, or at least modernize the noblewoman's, so we're met with this solid trash pile. I completely glazed over this section because literally anything I thought about was more interesting than what was happening. Though the rest of the book wasn't quite as bad as this, it still wasn't "epic" in any sense of the word.
-The most glaring error, and worst problem with this book is the complete lack of Celtic mythology. Considering the title, this is a grievous mistake. Old Celtic mythology is one of the most interesting set of myths and gods in the world, with Cernunnos and other gods. But this book seems to take place in the Christianized era of the Celtic regions, which is fine, because a lot of Celtic mythology comes from there. But the complete lack of older, pagan religion in this book is awful.
Don't get me wrong. I love myths. I grew up on Rick Riordan and know a lot about Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. I love it. It interests me so much. But this book was poorly handled, used very bad translations, was badly organized, written very dryly, and cut out an extremely important part of Celtic mythology.
Don't be fooled by the cover. Yes, it looks nice. The whole book looks wonderful and I'll keep it on my bookshelf because it looks really pretty (and I paid 20 dollars for it). But don't expect anything "Epic" to come out of this lopsided hunk of sleep-inducing literature.
November 21, 2018
Rating: 4 / 5
When reading any anthology, it's hard for me to go in order, even though I do admit trying to with this collection of stories. Unfortunately, I must mark it down as "temporarily abandoned" for now, as I did not read every single story in the work.
But, from those that I did read, they are first-rate by way of storytelling, though it's kind of hard to judge, since no one person made up any of the stories, but they were collected together over time. Granted, someone put together the stories in this book and translated some of them to suit modern English, but even with that, the plots themselves are not modern, and a lot of the tropes and archetypes used are definitely of the fairy tale variety--they go so far back though, that it's hard to judge them as being anything other than themselves.
For instance, the story of "The Tragedy of the Children of Lir" is more or less a version of "The Wild Swans" fairy tale that we know of, but with a few changes suited to the culture and time period in which they were written. Maybe it's the original inspiration to the story, maybe it's just a coincidence of a popular trope being used twice, but in any case, it works.
All in all, very little to judge, though I am taking one star off for the minuscule text--I know they were trying to fit in as much as they could probably, but this text is even smaller than mass paperback text, which makes it rather tiring on the eyes. I probably won't be able to read this book without a magnifying glass later on in life, but anyways, that's more a formatting issue than a story issue.
When reading any anthology, it's hard for me to go in order, even though I do admit trying to with this collection of stories. Unfortunately, I must mark it down as "temporarily abandoned" for now, as I did not read every single story in the work.
But, from those that I did read, they are first-rate by way of storytelling, though it's kind of hard to judge, since no one person made up any of the stories, but they were collected together over time. Granted, someone put together the stories in this book and translated some of them to suit modern English, but even with that, the plots themselves are not modern, and a lot of the tropes and archetypes used are definitely of the fairy tale variety--they go so far back though, that it's hard to judge them as being anything other than themselves.
For instance, the story of "The Tragedy of the Children of Lir" is more or less a version of "The Wild Swans" fairy tale that we know of, but with a few changes suited to the culture and time period in which they were written. Maybe it's the original inspiration to the story, maybe it's just a coincidence of a popular trope being used twice, but in any case, it works.
All in all, very little to judge, though I am taking one star off for the minuscule text--I know they were trying to fit in as much as they could probably, but this text is even smaller than mass paperback text, which makes it rather tiring on the eyes. I probably won't be able to read this book without a magnifying glass later on in life, but anyways, that's more a formatting issue than a story issue.
April 14, 2019
This book is kinda boring and dry to read. I was expecting a fun read but the way it’s written leaves me reaching for a different book. Definitely more of a reference book.
September 17, 2023
I feel like the Flame Tree collections have a great idea, but are very limited to public domain sources. Despite feeling very incomplete, you can tell this volume wants to be complete and gets pretty close for a single book. We have the entire Mabinogion, excerpts/chunks from the other three Celtic cycles, and a lot of fairy tales... BUT important stories are cut out of the different cycles. The Cattle Raid of Cooley is drastically undercut with some background and one battle presented, but no conclusion to the story. The Mythic Cycle (my personal favorite of the bunch) is limited to four stories. Likewise, the fairy tales are all taken from three books, with Stingy Jack (the origins of the Jack O'Lantern) being absent. Despite these limitations and feelings of incompleteness, this is still a great introduction of Celtic myths. The fae are showcased very well in the stories (namely changelings, the selkies, and a few kelpies) as well as being shown all four branches of Celtic mythology, one being presented in its completeness. In short, this wants to be something great, but either due to budget or something else I would need to research, it falls short of the 'completeness' it strives for. I'm just slightly annoyed because it is *so* close. Final disclaimer is this reads super dry (as per most mythical sources). Despite the older language, it is still a fun read, especially once you get to the fairy tales in the latter half of the book.
January 21, 2023
Very informative and organized, and I like the extra background information the author gives at the beginning of each section, but it was incredibly dull. It reads like a text book. This makes it almost unbearable to get through a single page. And there’s 475 of them.
Here’s the shortest paragraph from a random page I just opened up to:
“And Arthur sat within the carpet, and Owain the son of Urien was standing before him. “Owain,” said Arthur, “wilt thou play chess?” “I will, Lord,” said Owain. And the red youth brought the chess for Arthur and Owain; gold pieces and a board of silver. And they began to play.”
RIVETING.
I will say that the later stories are better than the earlier ones. I like The Brownie the best. It caught my attention because it’s title was The Brownie and then I enjoyed it because I didn’t feel physical pain attempting to read it. And it taught me a lot about Brownies, which are a creature that can turn invisible, and not a chocolate dessert.
Here’s the shortest paragraph from a random page I just opened up to:
“And Arthur sat within the carpet, and Owain the son of Urien was standing before him. “Owain,” said Arthur, “wilt thou play chess?” “I will, Lord,” said Owain. And the red youth brought the chess for Arthur and Owain; gold pieces and a board of silver. And they began to play.”
RIVETING.
I will say that the later stories are better than the earlier ones. I like The Brownie the best. It caught my attention because it’s title was The Brownie and then I enjoyed it because I didn’t feel physical pain attempting to read it. And it taught me a lot about Brownies, which are a creature that can turn invisible, and not a chocolate dessert.
July 29, 2021
I enjoyed reading most of the stories (honestly the only reason why this isn’t a 2 star review), but there was a lot of name dropping and heavy wording that had me really confused on what the author was talking about. Some of the names/battles/eras made me confused as well since I had no idea what they were.
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May 12, 2025Celtic Myths & Tales is a comprehensive anthology that delves into the rich tapestry of Celtic mythology, folklore, and legends. Curated by Jake Jackson, this volume offers readers a journey through the mythic invasions of Ireland, mystical kingdoms, warriors, giants, creatures of the underworld, and magic
December 21, 2024
This book claims to be a collection of Celtic Tales, yet with all these talking animals there is no mention of Larry Bird? So many Kevins but none of them are Garnett or McHale!
In all seriousness, this was an impulse buy at Barnes & Noble this summer and reading it was such a treat.
In all seriousness, this was an impulse buy at Barnes & Noble this summer and reading it was such a treat.
March 1, 2020
3.5 stars. Some interesting stories, but the Mabinogion has one of the most boring stories i've ever read(it actually spends 2.5 pages listing dude son of dude)
July 24, 2021
This book was very good for the research purposes I bought it for, but it is very dry and not an easy read.
If you like folk tales, especially Celtic ones, then you will probably like this.
If you like folk tales, especially Celtic ones, then you will probably like this.
December 18, 2021
A brilliant book covering a mythology I’ve always been interested in, but didn’t know where to start! I highly recommend the book to those starting Celtic Myths.
May 19, 2023
Genuinely couldn't put it down until I finished it. Some really cool stories which I'll definitely revisit!
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July 17, 2023...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2024
Drawn from several sources without any attempt to homogenize the spellings, etc. Still a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar.
August 5, 2024
I think I would’ve enjoyed it better if I read it aloud to someone. I believe these tales were first told and passed down through spoken language. I think it’s easier to read them aloud.
September 4, 2024
took me forever but i did enjoy it
May 10, 2025
didn't even finish it, can't recommend. the whole series of these books is bad. they didn't bother to edit it, adapt it or even check what they were publishing.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews