Irish Fairy

Best Loved Irish Legends brings together some of Ireland’s most loved folk stories for a younger audience. Stories from long, long ago, part of an ancient oral tradition, handed down from generation to generation and written down by the Christian monks of medieval Ireland.

Ireland, 1911. After encountering a faery in the woodlands near his home in Tralee when he is a child, Professor Emmet Brehon spends his life pursuing the belief that faeries are more than just elements of mythology. While teaching Irish mythology and folklore at a university in Dublin, he receives a note from a stranger who claims to know where faeries can be found.

The four children of King Lir are happy when their father marries again. Aoife, their new stepmother is very kind to them. But, in her heart, she is jealous of the children and uses her secret magic powers to cast a spell on them, changing them from children into swans. They spend long years on lonely lakes and frozen seas, until one day the spell is broken, and they are human again. Though everyone they loved is long gone, they know they are home at last.

Pirate Vixen: A Test of Fate brings the listener back onboard the Red Dawn ship with Captain Ariella; this time, she is not only battling the wicked, but also her own wills.

Fernando Greythorn and Captain Ariella of the Red Dawn have enough passion for each other to burn down any enemy ship that strikes them. The pirate couple unites as one they also double their fleet, making this duo the most badass pirate crew to ever sail the high seas; however, not everything is what it seems in this peaceful love story. They take on some of the most fearless, merciless, and hungry pirates they’ve ever went up against, and it's not only pirates they face this time.

"My Irish grandfather, Thomas Lawrence Downey, was a great storyteller. I never tired of sitting on his knee - and later, when I was a bit too big, sitting at his feet with one of my baby sisters on his knee - listening to his wonderful tall tales. Among the stories I loved the best were the ones about the Irish - and the Downey family in particular. In those tales, I'm afraid, 'dramatic flair' and artistic liberties took over for fact. But as any good storyteller knows, to embellish is to make the tale interesting, especially to a young Tomie."

A dramatized, abridged performance of Alice in Wonderland with Eva Le Gallienne, Bambi Linn, and Margaret Webster.