This book offers a reading of Lady Gregory's early folktale collections, Visions and Beliefs In The West Of Ireland [1920], A Book of Saints and Wonders [1906] and Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish [1900], as a metaphoric means of collective famine expression. The stories are preoccupied with the supernatural infliction of illness, injury and death and the respective desire for a cure. By analysing famine markers within the tales - evident in their concern with consump ...