Write a commentJohn Farrelly with his new book 'Farrelly's Field Guide to Irish Faerie Folk'. Photograph: Columba O'Hare/ Newry.ie
Sure there's no better time than Halloween to highlight a new book from extremely talented local author, artist and illustrator John Farrelly.
'Farrelly's Field Guide to Irish Faerie Folk' was published 21 October and is already available at all good bookshops. In the book Farrelly allows his mind to run riot with the sheer range of characters, some traditional like the banshee but many more encompassing a wide range of Irish wee-folk mythology. The stories are incredibly well thought out and indeed unsettling betimes. It's not a book aimed at children, though older children would certainly enjoy. Tourists and visitors would most definitely love it.
Explaining in wonderful colour 'apparently' how the book came about, Farrelly talks of helping his Uncle Kevin to clear out an old house that belonged to his Great Grand Uncle Fantasius, near a prehistoric cairn in a remote part of south Armagh "so remote in fact that Google Earth shows it as a sort of brownish-grey smudge that you could easily mistake for a clump of trees"
John Farrelly looking over his new book Farrelly's Field Guide to Irish Faerie Folk
The foreword goes "I'd only met my great-granduncle Fantasius once, when my father visited him the year before he died. I was five. I don't remember much about him other than a great big, bushy beard and bright green eyes that shone over the top of it. He seemed kind and a little wild. But I do remember he took a liking to me and spent most of that afternoon teaching me the longest place name in the world, somewhere called: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu in New Zealand. He had been there in 1938, just before the Second World War."
Of course Great Grand Nephew Farrelly left the house with a musty box filled with Great Grand Uncle Fantasius' writings and drawings ... and hence this book!!!
Farrelly explains "The old box sat forgotten on a shelf in my garage until just last year, when I found it while looking for something else, as is always the way. In it, amid copious mouse droppings, were dozens of yellowing pages, filled with handwritten notes and pencil sketches. I was taken aback by many of the drawings, which seemed to depict what I can only describe as mythical creatures. The accompanying notes, dated between the early 1890s and the late 1960s, were all written in the same hand."
Farrelly is well known locally for his cartoons and caricatures. He has already published three books on The Vikings, The Celts and The Normans in the Deadly Irish History series. This latest book is inspired by medieval bestiaries, blending real and mythical creatures. The idea originated from a love of drawing monsters, not in a small part spurred on by the comic 2000ad's eye popping illustration of a warp spasm.
Farrelly pitched the idea multiple times before publisher O'Brien Press decided to go for it. The book, aimed at tourists rather than children, features creatures like the Leanan Sídhe, which feeds on creativity, and the Devil, portrayed as a trickster. It also includes the Fear Gorta, a personification of famine, and the Marbh Bhéo, an Irish vampire type.
The Leanan Sídhe
One of the characters in the book is the Leanan Sídhe. Farrelly explains "What she would do is she would find a an artist or a musician or somebody like that and she would feed on their creativity. She would inspire them by being their muse but then she would feed on the the creative energy that came out of them until there was nothing left of them but a husk. WB Yeats had written about it"
The Leanan Sídhe
"If you see, she's digging her fingers into him. This illustrates where he goes over to a piano in a pub where Fantasius was supposed to meet him and plays this tune, and everybody in the pub just stops and listens to it, and there's a 'what the hell did we just hear' and he doesn't see him again, and he's found dead in his Garret, slumped over his latest composition"
The Devil
Another story documents an encounter with the Devil by Fantasius in a swanky hotel lobby in Dublin, where the Devil signs a contract in his own blood.
"I spotted himself making a deal with some poor fool in the lobby of a swanky hotel in Dublin. I could easily perceive his dark aura, and he knew, I knew who he was for he winked at me before placing a well manicured finger at the spot where the wretch was to sign away his soul, in his own blood, of course."
An Fear Gorta
Then there is the Fear Gorta "This guy's like the personification of famine and hunger. He would wander the roads looking for alms or food and if you turned him away, you'd be cursed with bad luck but if you give him something, even if you're you didn't have much yourself you'd have good luck." explains Farrelly.
Marbh Bheo
The Marbh Bheo
The Irish vampire the Marbh Bheo also gets a shout in "during the Irish great hunger, there were those who drank blood out of sheer necessity, desperate, starving people, literally the living dead, would make their way through a field under cover of darkness, open a vein in a cow's neck and drain a pint or so of blood into a jar and then they'd seal the wound with a wooden clip called a Twitch and the blood would be mixed with meal, herbs, turnip, wild mushrooms, milk, nettles, or even grass to make a black pudding of sorts. Euphemistically, it was called a relish cake."
Farrelly though makes the point "the true blood drinkers were not those poor wretches, but the ones who owned the cattle and the fields in which they stood for that land belonged to the hated landlords who continually raised their tenants rents, burned them out of their homes and bled them dry, more mercilessly than any rapacious Marbh Bheo"
Currently Newry Library has an exhibition of some of the illustrations from Farrrelly's book which will continue for the next week.
People can get the book at O'Brien Press from Amazon or from Waterstones and all good bookshops.
If anyone wants a signed copy, they can contact John Farrelly at capwondercartoons@gmail.com or ring him on 07985301960. The book itself is £14.99. Postage and packing (within UK & Ireland) is an extra £5.
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