The Welsh Fairy Book

The Welsh Fairy Book

Definitive treasury of more than 80 traditional Welsh tales includes such favorites as "Elidyr’s Sojourn in Fairy-Land," "Pergrin and the Mermaiden," "The Cave of the Young Men of Snowdonia," "Goronwy Tudor and the Witches of Llanddona," "A Strange Otter," "Nansi Llwyd and the Dog of Darkness," "The Bride from the Red Lake," "Lowri Dafydd Earns a Purse of Gold," and many more, sure to delight fairy tale lovers of all ages.

Does what it says on the tin, really. Which is why I picked it up on the App Store for my iPod about a year ago.¹

This review may very well end up a mash-up of my reviews of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tales from Wales. You have been warned.

Of course, I enjoyed this book because I love old stories and myths, I have an obsession with faeries, and this book was formatted in such a way that it was easy to pull it out of my pocket and read a story or two when I was waiting in line for something or on my fifteen minute break at work. The stories themselves were all sorts of fun with ridiculous violence, tricks, riddles, and general fae silliness. And we got to see some of those stories that end by announcing their ending or by stating that there was no point to the story so it’s going to stop, which is always fun. Some of the stories did seem to repeat themselves after a bit, but there were over eighty stories in there, so all is forgiven.

The digital format was alright. It wasn’t set up to turn pages like the Sherlock Holmes book. This was more like traditional digital media where you have to scroll up or down as you read. Most of the time, I didn’t have a problem with this, but in some of the long stories it made it difficult to find my place again after a few weeks of not reading from it. Also, the screen rotates with the tilt of the device, which I didn’t notice much, but occasionally it did rotate while I was reading because I leaned a little too far and it was a bit annoying to have to fix it.

There was another problem with this book, but it was one that I found amusing rather than a nuisance. Something funny must have happened with the copying of the text because, occasionally, there are question marks instead of letters. Usually vowels, but sometimes consonants or spaces. I don’t know how this happens, but I laughed every time I ran into someone d?ncing merrily along or who found a c?ve in the bushes.

If that sort of thing annoys you, I wouldn’t recommend the app format of this book. However, if you would like to read this book, it is available in print form or for free online. Either of those should be free of stray question marks.

And I’d definitely recommend it if you like faerie stories.





¹Don’t judge. It’s 99 cents at the time. You can’t beat that kind of price.