Description:

This book was written by the Marchioness of Londonderry, Edith Helen Vane-Tempest Stewart (1878-1959), a political hostess and writer who was a supporter of the Suffragette Movement, and was heavily involved in Conservative and Unionist politics (Urquhart). As she notes in the Foreword, the Marchioness wrote these stories as letters to her daughter while she was away in Spain, and they were later typed and published. The stories interact with Irish myth and legend to various extents throughout and the author notes that ‘they do not pretend to be in the least accurate’. The author also acknowledges her use of Ella Young’s Celtic Wonder Tales ‘notably in Chapters II. and XX.’(vii-viii), which were suitably written for very young children. The book received some degree of prominent attention at the time of its publication, as a 1928 review in The Times recommended the book not only to ‘“Ulster parents”’, but ‘to all who wish to give their children easy glimpses of the beautiful Celtic wonderland’ (Moulton 181). Many of the illustrations are in colour and each have distinctly ‘Irish’ overtones, as figures such as ‘an Dagda Mor’ and ‘Cuchulain’ [sic] are depicted, in addition to leprechauns, and a trip to the land beneath the waves is also developed in a colour illustration. Many of the illustrations are contributed by the famous illustrator and watercolour artist Edmund Brock, and by the Marchioness’s daughter, Margaret. The first story in the volume ‘Mary and Robin Stewart and Their Friends’, introduces the child characters who appear throughout the stories. The first story places the children firmly in a lineage of the Scottish Stewart family but equally firmly within the landscape and culture of Ireland, and Ulster in particular. Most of the stories are based on various adventures the children undertake with the Magic Inkpot: they go under Loch Stangford (31), into the ‘Sidh’ (24), and to ‘Mananaun’s Isle under the sea’ (148). A sequence of two related stories, ‘The Ink-Pot Arranges a Boar-Hunt With Cuchulain’ and ‘The Dragon’s Cave’, reveal an interesting invocation of the figure of Cuchulain. Cuchulain is at first depicted in typically heroic terms (45), and the children go on a boar hunt with him. In the following story, there is a mixing of storytelling traditions as the children meet dragons, including the Stewart dragon, and afterwards have ‘a real tea party – ices and lemonade’ (60) with Cuchulain.
[Ciara Gallagher].
Urquhart, Diane. “Stewart, Edith Helen Vane-Tempest- , marchioness of Londonderry (1878–1959).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edn, Jan 2008. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/45461].
A Celtic Fairy Tale”. The Times, 12 Dec. 1928 qtd. in Mo Moulton, Ireland and the Irish in Interwar England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Author:

The Marchioness of Londonderry. Illustrations by Edmond Brock and Lady Margaret Stewart

Place of Publication:

London

Publisher:

Macmillan and Co., Limited

Date of Publication:

1928

Price:

n.p.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

208p., [12]p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 22 cm.

Category:

Literature

Subject Keywords:

Myth and Legend, Ireland, Folklore, Retellings, Intertextual References, Illustrator

Library holding:

Junior Special Collection - SPD