Taming the Pooka, Celtic Tales of the Trickster Fairy

Book excerpt: Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic. Perhaps one of the most notorious creatures from the fairy realm is the ever-changing trickster fairy: the Pooka. A shapeshifter, the pooka can take many forms, including invisibility, although it most often appears as a terrible horse with eyes of fire and flaming breath. It can also appear as a goat, goblin, dog, or even a rabbit. Not inherently evil, their main task is taunting: they'll take you on a joyride of terrifying proportions, shake you out of your current frame of mind, knock you out of your stupor with a swift kick. Taming the Pooka includes tales of this monster's mayhem--from such notables as W. B. Yeats and T. Crofton Croker, as well as Douglas Hyde. No one is beyond the cunning of the pooka!