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Welcome everybody to another episode of the IrishMyths StoryTime podcast.
And for this episode, I’m breaking the rules.
Today’s story…is not an Irish myth.
This is a modern(ish) story.
A story by the great Irish writer Oscar Wilde.
The Selfish Giant was published in 1888 as part of Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales, which is a collection of children’s bedtime stories.
But to be sure, The Selfish Giant isn’t just for children.
The story is, to many, a reflection of the socio-political-economic conditions in Ireland at the time.
Remember, in 1888, the United Kingdom ruled over all of Ireland, and much of Ireland’s land was owned by absentee British landlords who exploited local Irish farmworkers.
According to historian William Edward Vaughan, British landlords extracted 340 million British pounds in rent from the Irish between 1850 and 1870, while only reinvesting 4 or 5 percent of that 340 million back into Ireland during that same period.
The situation came to a head in 1879 when a poor harvest meant tenant farmers couldn’t afford their rents so landlords started evicting them, which in turn led to the first so-called Land War.
The situation came to a head again in 1886 when, in the face of more evictions, Irish politicians adopted a resistance strategy called the Plan of Campaign.
It’s likely Wildes had these events on his mind when he penned the tale of a giant who owns a beautiful garden but lives away from it for several years.
And when said giant returns to said garden and finds children playing in it, he promptly evicts them—even though they have nowhere else to play.
Without giving too much away, there’s also a very clear mythical/folkloric Celtic bend to the story, and, keeping in line with Irish mythology in particular, which was first recorded by Christian scribes, there is an overt reference to Christianity shoehorned in at the end.
And while I’m tempted to go into exhausting detail about how the titular Selfish Giant could be seen as an incarnation of the Holly King archetype, whose wintry reign in the garden can only be thawed by an opposing Oak King archetype, that’s not what I do here on this podcast.
If you want to journey down snowy rabbit holes, go check out my article/YouTube explainer video on the Holly King and Oak King.
This is StoryTime.
And now, your story.
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