“The Child That Went With the Fairies”. - My Favourite Short Story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 1870

1814 to 1873, Born and died in Dublin

Sheridan Le Fanu (he is descended from Huguenots driven from France to Ireland in the 16th century)   

I have featured his work in all previous ISSM events and this month I decided to reread one of my favourite of his short works, “The Child That Went With the Fairies”, 1870.

Joseph Sheridan le Fanu (1814 to 1873, Dublin) is at the very least the best 19th century writer of ghost stories.   He also created the first lesbian vampire, Carmilla.  He is a really great writer and almost everyone who reads one of his works goes on to read lots more. I certainly have.  He is descended from 17th century French Huguenots.  Among his most famous longer works are Uncle Silas and The House by the Church Yard.

He seems to be the first author who made use of lesbian vampires in his stories.   He was a very prolific writer of horror, gothic, and mystery fiction.  

He had an interesting life that you can read more about here.    I was also very happy to see that almost all of his novels and a  lot of his short stories can be found online on the web page of the library of the University of Adelaide.    His  work is considered to have strongly influenced the work of Bram Stoker, also from Ireland, the author of Dracula.

A a deep seated belief in the supernatural seems to be an element in the Irish Short Story.    Alongside the beliefs sanctioned by The Church is vast structure of  beliefs in  fairies, witches, evil omens, leprechauns and much more.    This supernatural world is imposed on the mundane one we appear to live in.    Historians tell us that such belief structures are often found among the powerless peoples in colonized countries as a form of coping with their frustration with their situation.   

Le Fanu's prose style does not at all feel old fashioned or arcane to me.   Much of the history and pain of the common Irish country people is wonderfully shown in "The Child That Went With the Fairies”. 

The story is short and beautifully told and you can read it if you want in just a few minutes so I will not say much of the plot.   The story is very Gothic, very atmospheric and very scary.    A mysterious carriage, more beautiful than anyone has ever seen,  is passing through the village.   When young Billie comes out to see it, a beautiful women beckons him into the carriage with an apple.    As the children look into the carriage they see a horribly ugly woman with face that would scare the devil sitting next to the beautiful woman.   Billy gets in the carriage.   His mother is driven to great despair as she fears Billie is lost forever.     Once and a while he seems to appear at the door to her hut, her other children say they have seen him briefly in the village.    Then he disappears for years.   One day the mother returns and sees him in her house for sure.   He is dressed in the worst rags,  is filthy dirty, and looks starved.   As the mother rushes to him, he disappears  never to be seen again.    I think this story is in part about how parents tried to cope with the starvation of their children in the great Irish famines of the 19th century in which millions died.    

Mel u

"The Dream" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1848) A story by the best 19th Century writer of Paranormal Stories

Event Resources  Everyone Is Invited to Join Us for Irish Short Story Month Year Four

Ways to Participate-do a post on your blog and let me know about it-I will keep a master list and I will publicize your post and blog.

If you are an Irish author and would like to be featured, please contact me.   There are several options open.

If you would like to do a guest post on my blog on anything related to Irish short stories, contact me.

"Hi Daddy"-Carmilla

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week. 

Joseph Sheridan le Fanu (1814 to 1873, Dublin) is at the very least the best 19th century writer of ghost stories.   He also created the first lesbian vampire, Carmilla.  He is a really great writer and almost everyone who reads one of his works goes on to read more.   Last year during Irish Short Story Week I posted on "The Child Stolen by Fairies" which really should be must reading for anyone who likes paranormal short stories.  (I have also posted  on two of his Ghost stories and I have posted on his simply marvelous novella, Carmilla-there is additional background information on le Fanu in these posts.)   He is descended from 17th century French Huguenots.  Among his most famous longer works are Uncle Silas and The House by the Church Yard.

Le Fanu was in many ways doubly an outsider in Irish culture, he was of French ancestry and he was a Protestant.   Some say you can see this influence in his works.  

Le Fanu often uses a framing device as part of his narrative structure, as do many writers of short fiction from his era, in which the narrator of the story is telling it to another person.  

I said last year that among the prevalent themes of the Irish Short Story are an obsession with death, the weak or missing Irish father, and the great impact on alcohol on Irish society.   I have read a number of East Asia short stories and these themes are not found nearly as much as they are in Irish stories.  "The Dream", not a top level Le Fanu story but very much worth reading, exemplifies all of these themes.  In a way the failures of the Catholic priest as depicted in this story also can be seen as part of the theme of the weak father.   

"The Dream" opens with a young girl at the house of a priest, begging her to come give her father last rights (the priest is relaying the story as if he were telling of a dream he has had).  He knows the father as a man who has neglected his family to spend the little money he makes drinking with debauched friends.  When the priest gets to the home, which is very well depicted in all its near famine era squalor, the local doctor is there.  He signaled the priest the man has little time left.  In fact he dies before the priest can say last rites.  As he prays with the family the man suddenly has an expression of total horror on his face and has come back to life.   The doctor tries to explain it but cannot.  The man tells a story of being at giant table in what appears to be the anteroom of Hell.  I don't want to tell too much of the story but he is allowed one more year of life.  During this year he gives up drinking (drinking was viewed then and still largely is, in Ireland and elsewhere as a sin of weakness, not an illness), returns to the days when he worked hard and uses no money for himself, fixes up the house and begins to pay his debts.  I will stop the story here.  

You can easily find this collection, which includes "The Dream" online.  

Please consider participating -Ruprecht