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It Rose Up: A Selection of Lost Irish Fantasy Stories
I cannot remember my father or my mother; oh, wretched that I am!
Had I either? My memory goes back three months – no further.
Every day, I live those three months over and over again.
A mystical battle between foreign gods and local saints is unleashed as idols are mistaken for garden ornaments; an ambiguous wizard spies on his neighbours from an invisible tower; a cursed duelling pistol influences its owners to commit suicide.
Edited and introduced by Jack Fennell, this collection of lesser-known works of classic Irish fantasy – with strange combinations of occultism, electricity, magic and playfully Biblical archetypes – illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked.
Had I either? My memory goes back three months – no further.
Every day, I live those three months over and over again.
A mystical battle between foreign gods and local saints is unleashed as idols are mistaken for garden ornaments; an ambiguous wizard spies on his neighbours from an invisible tower; a cursed duelling pistol influences its owners to commit suicide.
Edited and introduced by Jack Fennell, this collection of lesser-known works of classic Irish fantasy – with strange combinations of occultism, electricity, magic and playfully Biblical archetypes – illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked.
280 pages, Paperback
Published February 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 10, 2022
Good solid anthology of Irish fantasy stories. The fact that it is a selection of "lost" stories means that less well-known authors prevail over the big names. A slight gripe for me was that many of the stories drew from Irish myth and folklore, which to me felt like they were a step removed from "true" fantasy even if the folkloric stories were original tales rather than retellings. And for all that, two of the most entertaining stories are folkloric ones - Tomás Ó Máille's "Mac Dathó's Pig" (set among the Ulster cycle of mythic tales) and Mícheál Ó Gríobhtha's "The Mule" (in which a man with a magic mule finds himself listening to a a fairy folk radio broadcast camogie match between ladies of the Sidhe.
Interestingly, both "Mac Dathó's Pig" & "The Mule" were originally published in Irish and translated by the editor, Jack Fennell. My own Irish is terrible but I would be interested in seeing the Irish originals as some of the translation choices were interesting. "Mac Dathó's Pig" is mostly written in the kind of lofty heroic style familiar to anyone who has read translations of Irish heroic tales, yet there are occasional lurches into more contemporary and unheroic turns of phrase that look too deliberate to be accidental. "The Mule" meanwhile has a series of great puns for the fairy ladies playing camogie, which in a footnote Mr Fennell says follow the Irish originals as much as possible. Some of the puns only work in English and would have been meaningless when the story was originally published in 1937 ("Rowdy Yeats"), so it would have been nice to have the original names in a footnote.
Of the non-folkloric stories, Dora Sigerson Shorter's macabre "Transmigration" is very effective, evoking to some extent the obsessiveness of Poe while calling to mind a particular one of Lovecraft's later stories. The horror is all the more effective here for being set in urban Dublin.
Interestingly, both "Mac Dathó's Pig" & "The Mule" were originally published in Irish and translated by the editor, Jack Fennell. My own Irish is terrible but I would be interested in seeing the Irish originals as some of the translation choices were interesting. "Mac Dathó's Pig" is mostly written in the kind of lofty heroic style familiar to anyone who has read translations of Irish heroic tales, yet there are occasional lurches into more contemporary and unheroic turns of phrase that look too deliberate to be accidental. "The Mule" meanwhile has a series of great puns for the fairy ladies playing camogie, which in a footnote Mr Fennell says follow the Irish originals as much as possible. Some of the puns only work in English and would have been meaningless when the story was originally published in 1937 ("Rowdy Yeats"), so it would have been nice to have the original names in a footnote.
Of the non-folkloric stories, Dora Sigerson Shorter's macabre "Transmigration" is very effective, evoking to some extent the obsessiveness of Poe while calling to mind a particular one of Lovecraft's later stories. The horror is all the more effective here for being set in urban Dublin.
January 15, 2025
“That night, on the Plain of Adoration, Aodh heard the howling of the demons, and in the high places of the gods, the mournful chanting of the queens.”. Jack Fennell, after the success of A Brilliant Void, is back as editor on another Tramp Press collection, the final Tramp book of 2021 (so, yes, I’m all caught up again!), It Rose Up, a selection of lost Irish fantasy stories. The collection truly endeavours to capture the wide variety of fantasy writing, both in time (stretching from the earliest story in 1752 to the most recent in 1937) and in genre: high fantasy or low, fantastical worlds or the hidden corners of ours, the unknown or the hiding-in-plain-sight. There are stories of strange voyagers; of talking dogs and the devil; of “a frisky mischievous being” known as the Pooka — resembling “a sturdy pony, with a shaggy hide”, it comes to stand for the consequences of seeking out the mysterious. There’s a fin-de-siècle tale of degeneration, a lamentation over the perceived end of patriarchy, and nods to Orientalism urging caution with fantasy. There are moral tales, like Dora Sigerson Shorter’s fascinating ‘Transmigration’, as well as overtly political stories rooted in horror, such as TG Keller’s ‘The Wizard’. A pair of Charlotte McManus stories, years apart, offer wildly different tastes of the genre, from a kind of mythic neo-pagan prehistory of Ireland to a story about a cursed pistol and national belonging. As well as mermaids and dragons, Fennell offers up the 20th century Irish antihero Avengers, an exploration of miracles and the mundane, and a meta-commentary on folklore; and, personally, I enjoyed the 1919 story ‘The Park-Keeper’ by Hugh A MacCartan, which was so evocative of Machen even before the emergence of Pan. With some stories translated from the Irish by Fennell himself, It Rose Up is a delightful, creepy spread of the best, sadly-neglected Irish fiction out there.
June 8, 2022
I bought this book on my vacation to Ireland while on a little day trip to Clifden. I found Clifden to be superbly beautiful and made me feel really connected to nature, and so I bought this mystical book on a whim.
Out of the collection of 16 stories, I’d say I enjoyed 13 of them — which I count as a success.
Some of my favorites included: The Magic Spear, A Voyage to O’Brazeel, and Lanterns in the Twilight. The Magic Spear probably being my favorite of the whole collection, as I was immediately engaged and loved it from beginning to end. I’d also like to give an honorable mention to The Three Tasks, even though I found it be slightly gruesome at times, I thought it was an incredibly engaging story and I quite enjoyed it.
Some of the stories were quite dark and spooky in nature. For instance, What is A Ghoul, and Transmigration I found to be particularly alarming. Though of course I understand the imagery that was being implored with said stories.
As an American, I thought this collection was really great and I quite liked being able to read a little bit about the authors that was at the end of the book. I’m very thankful my impulse lead me to grab this book at the Clifden bookshop.
I would definitely recommend reading this book. Fantasy fiction stories are things I typically don’t gravitate towards, but I’m glad I did in this case! It made me miss Ireland tenfold.
Out of the collection of 16 stories, I’d say I enjoyed 13 of them — which I count as a success.
Some of my favorites included: The Magic Spear, A Voyage to O’Brazeel, and Lanterns in the Twilight. The Magic Spear probably being my favorite of the whole collection, as I was immediately engaged and loved it from beginning to end. I’d also like to give an honorable mention to The Three Tasks, even though I found it be slightly gruesome at times, I thought it was an incredibly engaging story and I quite enjoyed it.
Some of the stories were quite dark and spooky in nature. For instance, What is A Ghoul, and Transmigration I found to be particularly alarming. Though of course I understand the imagery that was being implored with said stories.
As an American, I thought this collection was really great and I quite liked being able to read a little bit about the authors that was at the end of the book. I’m very thankful my impulse lead me to grab this book at the Clifden bookshop.
I would definitely recommend reading this book. Fantasy fiction stories are things I typically don’t gravitate towards, but I’m glad I did in this case! It made me miss Ireland tenfold.
September 10, 2022
A Voyage to O’Brazeel 4.5*
The Three Tasks 4*
The Pooka 4.5*
What is a Ghoul? 4.5*
The Sea’s Dead 4*
The Mandrake Venus 3.5*
The Mockers of the Shallow Waters 4*
Transmigration 3*
The Vision of Aodh A.D. 432
The Magic Spear 4*
The Park-Keeper 4*
Mac Dathó’s Pig and What Came After 3.5*
The Inhabitant in the Metal 4*
The Wizard 4*
Lanterns in the Twilight 4*
The Mule 3*
The Three Tasks 4*
The Pooka 4.5*
What is a Ghoul? 4.5*
The Sea’s Dead 4*
The Mandrake Venus 3.5*
The Mockers of the Shallow Waters 4*
Transmigration 3*
The Vision of Aodh A.D. 432
The Magic Spear 4*
The Park-Keeper 4*
Mac Dathó’s Pig and What Came After 3.5*
The Inhabitant in the Metal 4*
The Wizard 4*
Lanterns in the Twilight 4*
The Mule 3*
June 11, 2023
This was fun!
One of the things I appreciated the most are the little blurbs before each story, telling you more about the author or where the story comes from or if it had originally been written in Irish.
One of the things I appreciated the most are the little blurbs before each story, telling you more about the author or where the story comes from or if it had originally been written in Irish.
October 28, 2024
We should be making all of these into movies right now.
September 12, 2022
a really enjoyable collection, naturally, like all short story collections, there were some i enjoyed more than others, but i found the stories to be overall to be really interesting and it is great to see irish fantasy by irish authors celebrated.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews