The Wonderful Tune
Encyclopedia
The Wonderful Tune is an Irish fairy tale
collected in Fairy Tales and Traditions of the South of Ireland. Andrew Lang
included it in The Lilac Fairy Book.
Ruth Manning-Sanders
included it, as "The Magical Tune", in A Book of Mermaids
.
came dancing up out of the sea and persuaded him to marry her and live in the sea. He promised his old mother to send, every year, a piece of burned wood to Trafraska to show he was alive and well.
His mother died soon after the wedding, but the piece of burned wood drifted ashore every year for more than a century.
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
collected in Fairy Tales and Traditions of the South of Ireland. Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
included it in The Lilac Fairy Book.
Ruth Manning-Sanders
Ruth Manning-Sanders
Ruth Manning-Sanders was a prolific British poet and author who was perhaps best known for her series of children's books in which she collected and retold fairy tales from all over the world. All told, she published more than 90 books during her lifetime. The dust jacket for A Book of Giants...
included it, as "The Magical Tune", in A Book of Mermaids
A Book of Mermaids
A Book of Mermaids is a 1968 anthology of 16 fairy tales from around the world that have been collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders. It is one in a long and notable series of such anthologies by Manning-Sanders, who was perhaps the pre-eminent collector of fairy tales in the latter half of...
.
Synopsis
Maurice Connor, a blind man, was the finest piper in Munster, and knew a tune that when he played, it forced everyone to dance. One day at a wedding by the sea, he drank a great deal of whiskey, and foolishly began to play that tune. Everyone, and every creature down to the crabs, scallops and oysters, began to dance. A mermaidMermaid
A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...
came dancing up out of the sea and persuaded him to marry her and live in the sea. He promised his old mother to send, every year, a piece of burned wood to Trafraska to show he was alive and well.
His mother died soon after the wedding, but the piece of burned wood drifted ashore every year for more than a century.