31st October 2013.

Brenda Ennis. The Secrets of the Sleeveen.

Launch talk.

Halloween, the eve of Samhain, Samhain was the greatest festival in the ancient Celtic calendar. It, not Imbolc or New Year, was the start of the Celtic year. And then - as now - the year opened with a bang. Not just bonfires and fireworks and feasting, but with the meeting and mingling of the real world with the otherworld. On the eve of Samhain, the sidhe, or the fairy forts opened up and spilled their populations out into this world. It was the night when you were very likely to meet a member of the fairy host, or a ghost, as you walked along your ordinary little road. It was a dangerous night and a magical night.

Samhain is the ancient festival which has survived most successfully into modern times. It became christianised as the feast of all souls - souls as they wander around the earth being suitable substitutes for the fairies of old. Its ghosts and fairies survive in the dressed up, masked children who are wandering around tonight, playing trick or treat, celebrating the end of harvest with bags of mini mars bars and maltesers, and a few apples and nuts in remembrance of times past. In the recent Irish past, the folklore past, Samhain was the start of the storytelling season. In the long nights after Samhain people would gather around the fire and listen to the seanschai entertaining them with fenian tales and adventure tales and tales of wonder. Just as we today are likely to stay by the fire with a good DVD, or go to a cosy theatre to see a good play, or curl up with a good book beside the fire, in the dark winter nights.

So it is wonderful and magical that on this night, Holloween, the eve of Samhain, we welcome to the world this new book, The Secret of the Sleeveen, by Brenda Ennis. I think of the sidhe, or the fairy fort, as the repository of the Irish imagination. It is the part of our minds which visualises a world which can be like the one our bodies live in, or completely different, or anything at all. A world made of images and words, rather than of physical things. In The Secret of the Sleeveen, Brenda Ennis brings us on a magical tour of this otherworld, as imagined by the Irish in the past. With her heroine, Aisling, an observant, adventurous, and curious little girl, an Irish Alice, we move from her grandparents house in Eamhain, along Foxglove Lane and Fairy Hollow to Coill na nPucaí, and through the veil that separates reality from fantasy right into fairyland. There, guided by her Virgil, in the form of a fairy man with Noname, Aisling encounters many of the key characters in Irish fairylore and mythology: Partholon and Cú Chulainn, evil Queen Maebh and beautiful Aodaoin, King Iubhdan and Queen Bebo, and many many others.

Brenda creates a world which is full of wonder. Using Aisling as her eyes, she introduces us - and her young readers - to the wonders of Irish mythology and folklore. The book is full of humorous juxtapositions of the modern and and ancient, fantasy and reality:

A little magpie flew in through one of the windows carrying in its claws ruby and sapphire earrings, and in its beak a bar of Cadbury's chocolate. Facthna explained that this was the magpie's busiest season, with the Wexford Opera Season in full swing, hotel windows open and jewellery on display.'

'Do you mean the brooch is stolen?' Aisling asked.

'Yes,' answered Fachtna.' (p. 45)

Brenda's style is humorous and good humoured. Although there are dark dangerous moments in the world of the sidhe, on the whole she creates a sparkling, glittering, very attractive picture of this place:

'The ground was embedded with sapphires, emeralds and rubies. She jumped from stone to stone. Noname tapped the wall with his blackthorn stick. Instantly am army of flowers sprang out.'

There are also many descriptions of delicious food, very appropriate to a book which is set on Holloween, the feast of the end of the harvest.

What distinguises this book, though,above all, from the many many books for young people inspired by Irish folklore and Celtic mythology, is that it is mainly accurate. How can you be accurate when you're writing about fairies and people who can transform themselves into monsters or cats or dogs? We folklorists know how! It is accurate in that the names of the fairies and monsters, of the places they inhabit, even of the strange things they are liable to do, largely reflect faithfully the actual oral tradition, or, in the case of the mythology, the Old Irish literature. The names are also rendered correctly as Gaeilge, which is very gratifying, and means those who read the book learn them - it is a challenging enough book, for that reason, but why not? The sparkling texture of the book, all those rubies and diamonds, reflects accurately the world of the fairytale. The real fairytales do a strong line in gold and silver, diamonds and sparkly things in general, and Brenda gets that in this book. I think it may be partly thanks to the good advice from Dr Kelly Fitzgerald, from UCD, that this is the case. Also, although it is an entertaining romp, a brilliant fantasia, it has a good many little educational nuggets, although not too many. You heard the reference to the Wexford Opera Festival (and it's interesting that it is, of course, Samain when such a festival takes place. The activities of our new seasons follow in the footsteps of the old. )

'Have you seen the true Tara Brooch?'

'Yes, I saw it in the Museum.'

'That's only a replica, made in our workshop in the early Christian period, and found by a child on Bettystown beach in 1850. The Vikings probably dropped it as they headed home with their loot.'

Some people don't like real information in works of the imagination, but I do, and I did, also, when I was a child.

It's important, that we retell our old stories, the great classics, the myths, in new forms, so that each generation will become familiar with them. Brenda Ennis has written a wonderful book which will introduce the young people of today to the old stories, in a language they understand.

The writing in this book, and its story, are wonderful. But so is its form. The illustrations by Thomas Ryan are out of this world - witty, clever and beautiful. They deserve, actually, a bigger format - maybe an exhibition? I love them. And another wonderful and unusual aspect of the physical book is the typeface - in the chapter headings, the old Gaelic alphabet is used, those sweet fs and gs and esses, the script in which people of my age actually learnt to write. I was in the very last generation, the very last year or two, that made it to school in time to have this special experience. The lettering looks beautiful and to my eyes very friendly, partly because it was the first script I wrote in, I suppose - but I think, objectively, those rounded letters have a special beauty which many people appreciate. They are softer on the eye than many typefaces.

It is just another reflection of the care and love which has gone into the creation of this great book. The Secret of the Sleeveen.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne.