New book explores Limerick's enchanted lake and fairies of Lough Gur

As a follow-up to last year’s bestselling collection of ghost stories called Haunted Ireland, Enchanted Ireland is a collection of magical tales, one from every county in Ireland. This hardback book is beautifully illustrated by Canadian artist, Julia Iredale and contains a map for you to visit each of the 32 featured locations.
Limerick’s story is set at Lough Gur, renowned to be an enchanted lake and the domain of fairies. But these fairies aren’t cute little sprites who live in toadstools. They do not have wings or flutter about sprinkling fairy dust. They do not have adorable names like Silvermist or Tinker Bell. They are the Sídhe, descendants of the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race of magical gods who once ruled Ireland but were driven underground by the Milesians or Celts. Now they live in the many fairy forts or mounds dotted across the country. They can be troublesome, fierce and vengeful, and are not to be trifled with.

READ MORE: A Limerick nautical pioneer: The daring life of Lady Ernestine Hunt
In the story ‘Seán Ó hAodh and the Fairy Ball’, Seán is playing his uilleann pipes on the shores of Lough Gur, when he is approached by a fairy princess. He recognises her immediately as Áine, Queen of the Fairies, for whom the nearby parish of Knockainey (Cnoc Áine) had been named after. He also had heard stories about locals who had run-ins with Áine and had come to untimely ends. So, when the Queen of the Fairies asks Seán to play his pipes at a dance, he immediately agrees.
Áine takes the piper in her carriage to a magnificent palace where he plays all night for a legion of spritely dancers.
Only as it nears morning, does Seán notice the fish swimming past the windows. He realises then that the palace is under water and is probably the fairy palace of Lough Gur.
When Áine gives him a drink to quench his thirst, he falls asleep and awakes back on the shores of Lough Gur, where he first met the fairy queen. At his feet is a purse which he hopes is a sparán na scillinge, a purse that never runs out of shillings. This proved to be the case, and over the years, whenever Seán put his hand in for a coin, there was always one there. Though the purse never ran out of money, Seán was always careful not to be greedy because he knew the fairies could take away as easily as they gave.
This story was recorded by a child from Grange, Kilmallock, who collected it from a musician called James Butler in 1937–1938, as part of the Schools’ Folklore scheme to preserve local folklore.
More than 50,000 schoolchildren from 5,000 schools collected folktales, local history and other material as part of the scheme. The collection is held in UCD but can be viewed online at www.duchas.ie.
The thirty-two stories in Enchanted Ireland range from some of Ireland’s oldest tales like the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann, right up to more modern tales from the last century and features many well-known stories like ‘The Children of Lir’ as well as the exploits of Fionn Mac Cumhaill and Cúchulainn.

A teacher in County Meath by day, Kieran Fanning writes by night, and is fascinated by legendary old tales, especially from Ireland. Enchanted Ireland was published by Gill Books on October 9 and available in all good bookstores.