Niallus J Toner

When I was a Boy at School Niallus J Toner

A ten-year-old boy spends a week in the home of his grandmother where he is exposed to the wonderous world of an unchanged life-style of self-sufficiency and barter in rural Ireland in the mid, 1900s. Each evening he is entertained, amazed, sometimes frightened, but never deterred from listening to the yarns spun by the local storytellers (scéalaithe) around the glowing hearth. Stories of fairies, banshees, and ghosts are narrated and retold to a receptive, and uncritical audience. Stories that have been formed and reformed from Celtic mythology. Stories that although pagan in origin, have a moral theme. The experience is new and educational to the boy, who looks forward to relaying his new found knowledge to his school friends.