I promised a picture post, and it isn’t that much of one, and it isn’t even my picture (google image search from this flickr account), but it’s worth a thousand words nonetheless.
This was a book I used to read at my grandmother’s cottage. Debates have been had about what happened to it. My uncle says he gave it to me about fifteen years ago. I don’t think that happened. My mother thinks it did happen, but I put it in a box with some old textbooks and that box was thrown out during one of my parents’ renovations since they thought the box was my sister’s and my sister said to chuck it. I still don’t think any of this happened. My uncle did give me a puzzle he said I always used to do, which I’m pretty sure I’d never seen before in my life. That puzzle I have no clue where it ended up. I think that’s what everyone else is thinking about when they’re thinking about this book. Maybe one of my cousins has the book and is wondering whatever happened to the cat puzzle they liked.
Then I couldn’t remember what the book was called. I remembered the story (a Fin McCool one) and I remembered the publisher (Scholastic) but frustratingly didn’t remember the name. Then the nice people at librarything Name that Book forum helped me out, then a search of alibris, and blammo – I have my own copy again (and also twenty less dollars for a picture book that cost twenty cents or something to buy and I could have had for free if my family could come together and actually remember what happened to their copy in the first place).
And after all that – it only sort of holds up. Why doesn’t Fin’s wife have a name when she does all the thinking? Wikipedia tells me she actually has a name – Oona. Why doesn’t she have a name in the story? Why is she just referred to as Fin’s wife? It bothers me. But I read the story to Tesfa anyway because at least the wife is the smart one in the story and I liked the story when I was a kid.
So there’s a picture post for you. Sometimes books from the 1960s about Irish legends are not as awesome as we remember them to be.