Books like Legends of the Celts

Delaney's collection of Welsh and Irish legends is a pretty quick, easy read and a good intro into the colorful, bizarre world of Celtic legends. He provides some nice historical prefaces that never become too academic or pedantic, and in the longer stories- the Cattle Raid of Cooley and Tristan and Iseult, his storytelling powers reveal themselves to be considerable. Some of the shorter tales, however, are a bit on the perfunctory side, and could have stood a bit of embellishment in character and stakes, not to mention clarification. Additionally he drops a number of stories that would provide narrative context for some of the ones he keeps- Finn Macool, for instance, is almost unmentioned till the last two stories of part one, at which point he seems oddly out of place would strike an unschooled reader as not particularly important. Still, Delaney deserves credit for sticking to the source material while making it as approachable as he can and some of these legends, particularly those surrounding Welsh heroes Pwyll and Pryderi, are beautiful, mystical treats not to be missed.