The Sin Eater, The Washer of the Ford and Other Legendary Moralities

by Fiona Macleod, William Sharp

An edition combining The Sin Eater (1895) and The Washer of the Ford (1896) with four added tales not in the first editions - including the remarkable weird fantasy "Ahaz the Pale" about an Amazon warrior. This omnibus includes some of the best Macleod weird tales. "The Washer of the Ford" is a winnower of souls; "The Harping of Cravetheen" is one of the most grotesque heroic fantasies ever written; "The Dan-nan-ron" regards the musical power to control the moods & will of others; "Green Branches" is a tale of a murdered brother's ghostly return; "Sin-Eater" regards Celtic magic; and many other great tales. A Scottish poet and man of letters, William Sharp (1855 - 1905) wrote a series of well-regarded novels representative of the "Celtic Twilight" school popularized by William Butler Yeats under the nom-de-plume Fiona Macleod, a pseudonym that Sharp never publicly acknowledged. Sharp even composed a fictional biography of Macleod for publication in "Who's Who" and exchanged correspondence with such notables as George Meredith, Robert L. Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Dante G. Rossetti, sometimes as William Sharp, and sometimes as Fiona Macleod. In part two of this memoir, compiled by Sharp's wife from his diaries and letters, the story of his dual-identity is made public and explained for the first time.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Gothic

460 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

Fiona MacLeod was a pseudonym used by the Scottish writer William Sharp (1855 - 1905) from 1893. In the biography Sharp constructed for Fiona Macleod, she is identified as a Highland cousin with a knowledge of Gaelic. The Gaelic deployed in her writings seems to have been derived from Mary Mackellar's Tourists Hand-book of Gaelic and English Phrases for the Highlands (c.1882).

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiona was actually William Sharp, a late adherent of the Pre-Raphaelites, member of the Golden Dawn, and an enthusiastic participant in the Celtic revival. The stories here are an eccentric lot, overwritten in the manner of their time. Some of them are mildly anti-Christian (in favor of pagan traditions) while others skew closer to a pantheistic view of the old gods and the new. A few are excellent and strange while others revel in martial cruelty in a style that Robert E. Howard might well have admired. The edition I read is a very cheap e-book and I imagine there are better ways to read this work if one is inclined to it.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sin eater has that wonderfully gothic sense of foreboding; but the rest feel like reheated myths and stories. Good around the camp fire, unremarkable for the reader now - we have much better troubling story tellers than this. I appreciated the Celtic tones and textures.

“The English may trample down the Heather, say the shepherds of argyll, but they cannot trample down the wind”

“By the shores of this mournful water”

[Gwyndyllyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Sharpe aka Fiona Mcleod is one of the faery seers who wrote based on his experiences and on his research. This is some seriously powerful stuff and it is sublime (terrifying in its beauty).