Irish Folklore by Nina Oram
I am delighted to welcome Irish based writer Nina Oram to the Quoyloo Quill. Nina's books are bulging treasure chests of Celtic folklore, some of which are not too far removed from Orcadian folk legends.
When Babs offered me the chance to talk about my writing and Irish mythology and folklore, I was thrilled and honoured. I thought it would be so easy, after all, my trilogy and many of my stories are immersed in Ireland’s rich tradition, and yet the more I tried to put my thoughts down, the more elusive they became. It was like unpicking a knot.
My YA Dark Fantasy Trilogy started with a trip to the Carrowkeel Tombs, five neolithic tombs perched on top of a hill in County Sligo in the province of Connacht. Being able to sit inside stone walls that had been built millennia ago, listening to the wind shriek past, was for me, sublime. Evoking, as it always does, that strangely wonderous feeling of having connected with something magical. But old magic. The magic of the crow, stone and bone.
Remembering it, made me realise that although inspired by folklore and legends, all my stories come from a place. Somewhere I’ve been. It could be the whole place, or a small part of it. The tiniest, most fleeting, of, glimpses. It could be something as innocuous as a lamp post. The way it looks, or feels. It just grabs me. Takes hold of me and makes me imagine.
And so in the YA Trilogy, important things happen to Jasmine in the places I’ve been, the places I love. Her power is unlocked by her own visit to the Carrowkeel Tombs. Ellyllon, the dark druid, chases her and Malachy on the shores of W B Yeats’ Lough Gill and she meets Granuaile, the Pirate Queen, overlooking the stunning Clew Bay, and falls prey to the machinations of the old, twisted druid, Drendas, on the shores of the beautiful Killiary Fjord in Connemara. And the final, climatic scene in the third book, takes place in Oweynagat, “the Cave of the Cats”, part of the neolithic settlement of Rathcroghan, in my own County Roscommon.
Sometimes, as a writer, you come across a piece of folklore or history that fits. That has the same feel as the place. Often it’s folklore that is connected to the place or the country, because in my mind, the two are intrinsically linked, although not always. My short story, ‘Coiste Bohar, (The Silent Coach)’, is set in a pub in Cork. But based on the legend of The Dullahan, the version I use, is the headless coach driver that comes from County Donegal. And ‘Fishcoat’, who extracts a dreadful payment from the town of Wexford for the fish it catches, borrows from Finnish mythology and transposes it onto the Irish God, Lir. Whereas in ‘Night Carrion’, the Sluagh descending from the hill of Knocknarea in County Sligo to feed on the weak and the dying; it was all there, in one place.
Like I said, Ireland has a rich tradition and is full of places that make my imagination flow. But I think all countries are. You just have to go look for them. To let them in, and feel them.
Nina's books are published by Luna Press Publishing and are available from Luna Press, Amazon or can be ordered through all bookshops.
https://www.lunapresspublishing.com/shop
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