Bloody Irish

Merlin Publishing
Horror
Trade
2002
186 pages
$14.95 USD
ISBN 1-903582-19-9

When I chose this book, I thought it would be about legends themselves. You know, stories pulled out of old records and folk tales, sometimes told as stories, sometimes told as little snippets in the text as the author describes the state of the vampire in Ireland past. Instead, we have four very distinct short stories that feel more like amalgamations of legends wrought together to form original tales than something you can point at and go, "This is a real Irish folktale."

To quote from the introduction: "The majority of them are based on old stories that I have heard up and down the country ... In most tales, true locations and proper names have been disguised, and some of the facts have been modified for various reasons. They all may have some base in reality, and they all may reflect older beliefs that we can not presently understand."

That is not to say that this book is not well worth reading. The four stories are very well executed. The feel of the setting is marvelous, Irish down to the bones, yet just a tiny bit sinister. It gives you a feel for Irish rural life and people, yet brings just a little bit of darkness to the picture, shadows where evil things peer out at the reader.

"Beside the Fire" tells the story of an English tourist whose curiosity about the Irish countryside may well lead to his doom. One day, he goes into a cottage, in an abandoned village that he was well warned away from, and gets cut when he touches a shadow on the wall. As the story progresses, his dreams show us why the village is abandoned and why the villagers avoid the sinister family that owns it.

"The Way Through the Wood," introduces us to another person who treads where she should not. Sinead has come to live with her Aunt and stumbles across a mystery. Several girls have gone into the woods and disappeared utterly. While the police think that the cause is more mundane, a man warns Sinead other wise. He says that it is after her next.

"The Withered Hand" is probably my favorite story. In it, Daniel meets his old college friend, Richard Farrant, who wants to show him an antiquity that he is certain Daniel has never seen before. It turns out to be the hand of Lady Alice Killigrew, a witch of great power and cruelty. This piece, which takes place in a decrepit house, is extremely creepy to me. When I went to bed after reading it, I heard the scrabbling of claws and wondered if it was caused by the squirrels seeking shelter from the cold, or a much more horrifying reason.

In "Miss O'Hare," the young narrator of the story tells of a plague that swept his village, a plague that seemed connected to a sleek gray cat. It warns that looks are deceiving, in more ways than one.

We learn a lot from these stories. First, that people tell you not to venture somewhere for a solid reason, that it's always handy to keep something once possessed by a person of piety in a pocket or dresser drawer, and that vampires are not always tall, gaunt and pale. In fact, they are not always human in form.

An intriguing and atmospheric book

four out of five headstones
Cindy Lynn Speer, GWN Reviewer3-3-03