The Islands of Magic: Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Preface as a Frame for Reading

The preface does more than introduce; it shapes expectations. Eells presents the Azores as the “true land of magic” because of volcanic activity and disappearing islands. She includes two skeptical voices—the wise woman and the wise man—who question the authenticity of local folklore. By doing so, she acknowledges the fragility of oral tradition while asserting that magic persists. Readers should note that the preface is not a neutral introduction but a deliberate argument: the tales that follow are presented as remnants of a vanishing world, collected in 1920–1921 during research for the Hispanic Society. This context matters because it explains why the stories may feel filtered through a collector’s lens.

The Water-Nymph’s Palace and Its Details

In the excerpt from “Francisco and the Water-Nymph,” the underwater palace is described with precise, sensory details: it is made of mother-of-pearl, with gardens of jeweled flowers where “each tiny bud … was worth a king’s ransom.” The water-nymph herself is sensitive about her fishtail, covering it with her hair because she lacks feet for pretty slippers. A large fish with a “cushion of seagreen satin embroidered with lovely pearls” serves as a riding horse. These details are not mere decoration; they ground the fantastical in tangible textures and colors. The nymph’s insecurity about her fishtail adds a psychological layer, hinting at longing for human form. Such specificity distinguishes Eells’s retellings from generic fairy-tale summaries.

Francisco’s Return and Its Consequences

Francisco’s departure from the palace is triggered by a sudden memory of his mother, whom he imagines crying until she is blind. He rides the fish home without waking the nymph, and his mother’s eyes are “swollen almost shut” but still shine with joy. She makes him promise never to fish again, so he becomes a hunter. The story then shifts to a courtship plot: Francisco woos a rich man’s daughter but is mocked for offering only birds he killed. The water-nymph, still watching from the shore, gives him a pearl necklace. This sequence shows how the tale intertwines enchantment with domestic and economic realities—a mother’s tears, a hunter’s livelihood, a bride-price. The nymph’s continued presence suggests that magic does not simply end when the hero returns home.

Voice and Structure in the Retelling

Eells’s narrative voice is direct and slightly formal, with occasional archaisms like “philtre” and “tresses.” She uses short paragraphs and frequent dialogue, often introduced with phrases like “These were his words.” The structure of the excerpt follows a classic fairy-tale arc: enchantment, forgetting, remembrance, return, and a new complication. But Eells adds small, concrete touches—the nymph’s embarrassment about her tail, the mother’s swollen eyes, the rich man’s laughter—that prevent the story from feeling abstract. Readers should attend to how Eells balances the marvelous (a palace of mother-of-pearl) with the mundane (a mother’s worry). This tension between wonder and everyday life is a hallmark of the collection, as suggested by the preface’s claim that fairies coexist with fisher folk who see their garments drying on rocks.

Reading The Islands of Magic with attention to its framing and detail reveals a collection that is neither naive folklore nor polished literary fairy tale. Eells’s preface warns that oral tradition is fading, and the stories themselves often hinge on the tension between enchantment and ordinary human concerns—mothers, suitors, livelihoods. The water-nymph’s fishtail and the jeweled garden are not just decoration; they are clues to how these tales imagine magic as both alluring and limiting. Let the specifics guide you: note what is precious, what is lost, and what returns.