Croker - Flory Cantillon's Funeral - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

February 26 is the international "Tell a Fairy Tale Day", also it's time to get ready for any Irish storytelling during the month of St. Patrick, so this is a wee bit earlier than my usual Saturday posting.  Added to that, this story is probably one of the spookiest tales of the merfolk, both mermaids and mermen.  I needed also sea songs as part of what I was working on and this fit the bill, but that song they sing in this story is most likely the Requiem song of "Dies Irae" -- which translates as "Day of Wrath."

Enjoy!

 

Back in March of 2014 I posted another story that would pair well with this story, a long-time favorite of mine, "The Wonderful Tune" also collected by Thomas Crofton Croker.

Have fun with both!
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  


At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.    

There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  He has just loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so one can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression he likes by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

He also loaded to his server the doctorate thesis of Prof. Dov Noy (Neunan) "Motif-index of Talmudic-Midrahic literature" Indiana University, 1954, as a PDF file.

http://folkmasa.org/motiv/NOY_%20Dov_%20Motif-Index_of_Talmudic-Midrashic_Literature.pdf

in the hope that some of you would make use of it.

You can see why that is a site I recommend to you.

Have fun discovering even more stories!