Reviews for Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mary Frith the Case of Mary Carleton

The average rating for Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mary Frith the Case of Mary Carleton based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-16 00:00:00 James Killebrew If I were to sing you a song of brave Cuchulain, hero and hound, loyal warrior, beardless boy better than three times fifty men of Ulster, I would surely run out of breath before you yet understood the heart of him, yet knew his many feats and the deeds that drew his name across the rocky ridge of the world in ogham. This book is a contagious classic, better for its aged language and seasoned anachronism, and better still for Lady Gregory's meticulously subtle whittling away of the density of the dialect that preceded this revised version. While the plot seems scattered at first, and the characters too numerous and complex to contain, I promise you that if you push through the pages you will find a past more glorious than the greatest action movie, more soaked in blood and brain, more steeped in righteous rage and honest tradition than any myth we could make today. Lady Gregory, with a careful and keen eye, strung together the old tales, trimming and stitching, binding and blending each, cutting out their contradictions and connecting their time lines until one fluid narrative came together to blanket us with heroes long lost to the laurels of time and battle. And I swear to you by the oaths my people swear by, that you will not find another collection of Western mythos with greater color or creativity, greater attention to detail or divination, than Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster. But trust not the storyteller alone, for the Achilles of Ireland, and a better man besides, Cuchulain, the Hound of Culain, said it best himself, "It is little I would care...if my life were to last one day and one night only, so long as my name and the story of what I had done would live after me." And live they do.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-04 00:00:00 Rod Rogers I grew up in Dundalk (Dún Dealgan, homeplace of Chú Chulainn), I still remember Chu Chulainn's castle a few hundred yards from my home. I also grew up with these legends, and had to study them in the old Irish text which is completely different to the modern Irish language. Lady Gregory's account, while the english is not fantastic, there were many mistakes in the prose, but she did totally captivate the legend that was Chú Chulainn and in doing so, has brought this legend to the masses. The stories themselves bear much resemblance to the Greek legend of Achilles, Chú Chulainn being considered half-god, half-man. The Red Branch Knights like the heroes of ancient Greece, warriors, poets, philosophers, men of honour. I really enjoyed the free flowing text, and I especially enjoyed the ease of which the stories were told, without taking away from the original texts. I would recommend this book to anybody looking to grab a taste of Irish legends and the ways of the people many moons ago.