Irish Folklore Quotes

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jeremiah Curtin, an Irish-American who had learned Irish, traveled throughout the Irish-speaking enclaves in Connacht and discovered hundreds of previously unrecorded stories. He recorded them in their original language and greatly advanced the study of Irish folklore. At ~ Ryan Hackney

For no matter whether the fairies are seen metaphorically or as real beings inhabiting their own real world, a study of them shows us that those who came before us (and many of that mindset still survive) realized that we are
no matter what we may think to the contrary
very little creatures, here for a short time only ('passing through,' as the old people say) and that we have no right to destroy what the next generation will most assuredly need to also see itself through.
If only we could learn that lesson, maybe someday we might be worthy of the wisdom of those who knew that to respect the Good People is basically to respect yourself. ~ Eddie Lenihan

I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since. ~ Michael Scott

Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?"
"He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained.
Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was
a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die. ~ John Irving

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

I see myself as part English and part American, with a dash of Irish thrown in, and a pinch of Italian from my mother's ancestry. ~ Allegra Huston

This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Because they were, like me, Irish Catholic, their nuptials were distinguished by mediocre food, free-flowing liquor, pre-Riverdance-style step dancing, and their own peculiar strains of Gaelic piety. ~ Maureen Corrigan

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
From an Irish headstone ~ Richard Puz

My version of an Irish exit has an air of deception to it, because it includes my asking loudly, "Where's the bathroom?" and making theatrical looking-around gestures like a lost foreign tourist. But then, instead of finding the bathroom, I sneakily grab my coat and leave. ~ Mindy Kaling

The people are beginning to fear that the Irish Government is merely a, machinery for their destruction; that, for all the usual functions of Government, this Castle-nuisance is altogether powerless; that it is unable, or unwilling, to take a single step for the prevention of famine, for the encouragement of manufactures, or providing fields of industry, and is only active in promoting, by high premiums and bounties, the horrible manufacture of crimes! ~ John Mitchel

Books of the sages of the ages reflect upon in stages; like honey their words on the tongue give due savour."
{Source: A Green Desert Father} ~ Richard Mc Sweeney

You are a different kind of Irishman, Goll," was all she said.

"Every Irishman is a different kind of Irishman," said Goll. ~ Charles Brady

Get a raven's heart, split it open with a black-hafted knife; make three cuts and place a black bean in each cut. Then plant it, and when the beans sprout put one in your mouth and say -
"By virtue of Satan's heart,
And by strength of my great art,
I desire to be invisible."
And so it will be as long as the bean is kept in the mouth. ~ Francesca Speranza Wilde

That settles it," said Mr. Trapwood. "We're going back to the pension. We're going to pack. We're going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hellhole."
Mr. Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the São Gabriel Mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the color of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari River.
There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn't been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.
"They're good men, the Brothers," a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner's son. "They take in all sorts of strays--orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner's lad might be, it'll be them."
Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray.
The Brothers' mission was on a swampy part of the r ~ Eva Ibbotson

So go love someone that wants to love you back. Whoever that lad is will be one lucky person. ~ Alisa Mullen

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth. ~ Anna Friel

A clover that sprouts four leaves, rather than three, is a mutation and is considered 'lucky' according to Irish mythology. Why? According to Celtic lore, each leaf of clover represents something special. One leaf represents faith, one hope, one love and, and , if a fourth leaf is present, that's luck. ~ Leslie Le Mon

As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week. ~ George J. Mitchell

My, you do like to dominate ~ JoAnne Kenrick

She was brought up strict Irish Catholic ... Protestants were evil, monstrous people and somehow probably contagious, and Katie grew up fearing them, praying to God she'd never see one. ~ Lisa Genova

Irish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary ... ~ Bernadette Devlin

This was especially true of the Irish in Ireland in relation to the British, who for centuries treated them as an inferior race. Note, however, that their skin color was indistinguishable from that of those considered to be "white". If anything, the skin of most people of Irish descent is "fairer" than that of others of European heritage. But their actual complexion didn't matter, because the dominant racial group has the cultural authority to define the boundaries around "white" as it chooses. ~ Allan G. Johnson

I gave away the Irish dancing, which is pivotal. It's just so silly and fun and nice to do because it kind of lifts the energy for us, right at the point where the energy could start to take a nose dive. ~ Katherine Shindle

Up and down' is Irish for anything at all
from crying into the dishes to full-blown psychosis. Though, now that I think about, a psychotic is more usually 'not quite herself'. ~ Anne Enright

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. ~ Heather R. Blair

Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by E. Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment, the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on the other hand, lacked some of the all-important tone. There being so relatively few Anglo-Saxon Catholics in the United States, the 'S' [sic] was arguably surplus to requirements as well. But then the acronym AS would scarcely do, either. And it would raise an additional difficulty. If 'Anglo-Saxon' descent was the qualifying thing, which surely it was, then why were George Wallace and Jerry Falwell not WASPs? After all, they were not merely white and Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, but very emphatic about all three things. Whereas a man like William F. Buckley, say, despite being a white Irish Catholic, radiated the very sort of demeanor for which the word WASP had been coined to begin with. So, for the matter of that, did the dapper gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, Tom Wolfe. Could it be, then, that WASP was really a term of class rather than ethnicity? Q.E.D. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The three things Aristotle couldn't understand: the work of the bees, the coming and going of the tide, and the mind of a woman. - Irish Triad ~ Dorien Kelly

Katie appeared as a ghost and cradled him in her arms and carried him, a frail dying version of her old husband, to heaven. The radio which was powered off suddenly comes on and played their song Follow Me. Nobody could see her only Ronan and he smiled and says "I knew you would come back for me love ~ Annette J. Dunlea

Some evidence seems to exist that an idea prevailed that in the fairy sphere there is a reversal of the seasons, our winter being their summer. Some such belief seems to have been known to Robert Kirk, for he tells us that 'when we have plenty they [the fairies] have scarcity at their homes.' In respect of the Irish fairies they seem to have changed their residences twice a year: in May, when the ancient Irish "flitted" from their winter houses to summer pastures, and in November, when they quitted these temporary quarters. ~ Lewis Spence

Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history. ~ Fiona Shaw

There is no place for secrets in sisterhood. ~ Erin Forbes

Without an old country link and a strangling church like the Italians, or the Irish, or the Poles, without generations of the American forebears to bind you to American life, or blind you by your loyalties to its deformities, you could read whatever you wanted and write however and whatever you pleased. Alienated? Just another way to say 'set free.' A Jew set free from Jews - yet only by steadily maintaining self-consciousness as a Jew. That was the thrilling paradoxical kicker. ~ Philip Roth

Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns. ~ James Connolly

The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever ... because they already live in a dream world. ~ Sigmund Freud

It was after midnight by a mile when I slid off the bar stool at O'Malley's and began to walk home. O'Malley's is an old Irish pub and though I wasn't Irish, nor did I drink like a lot of other newspaper reporters I knew, I stopped by for a Coke nearly every evening. I liked listening to other reporters - and cops, who also frequented O'Malley's - shoot the breeze and relate old stories that hadn't been completely true the first time they'd been told.

O'Malley's was just somewhere to go which made every guy sipping a beer or doing shots feel a little less alone in a city like Los Angeles. Some of them still had wives, but you could tell they were lonely. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been hanging around a bar at that hour; they'd have been finding solace in soft flesh and perfume. Maybe their wives would have been finding some solace too, and more of them would have stayed married. Most of those guys, cops and reporters alike, were working on their second or third marriage. I didn't think they were working hard enough, but maybe that was because I didn't have anyone to go home to. ~ Bobby Underwood

Oh, the Irish were building the railroads down through Mexico, through Chihuahua. They finished the railroads when they finished out in the West Coast, and they went down and put the trains into Mexico. ~ Anthony Quinn

By the way, I do enjoy fairytale endings, in case you misunderstood me." He glanced at her and smiled. "I like it when good wins over evil ... when the knight defeats the dragon and saves the fair maiden ... and when the woodsman saves Little Red Riding Hood. I like it when they say, 'And they lived happily ever after' ...
Just because I'm a man doesn't mean that I don't have a romantic bone in my body." Rick gave a curt nod. "Men can be romantic, too. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

I read and learned and fretted more about Canada after I left than I ever did while I was home. I absorbed anything I could on topics that ranged from Folklore to history to political mainifestos ... I ranted and raved and seethed about things beyond my control. In short I acted like a Canadian. ~ Will Ferguson