How joy was found a fantasy

About the book

Hutchison adapts the tale of Finn keeping children for the Big Young Hero into a fantasy about the workings of faith. Finn represents Humanity, while his companions embody qualities including Duty, Obedience, Constancy, Love, Hope, and Truth. Their different abilities make the journey a test of cooperation as well as belief: no single quality can simply replace the others. Verse dialogue and elaborate scene descriptions place the action among islands, boats, and the imaginative landscapes of Highland storytelling. The author's preface explains her freedom in reshaping the narrative, and the volume also prints the folk-tale version she used for comparison. Readers can therefore follow both the allegorical adventure and the transformation of a traditional story into a personal religious meditation.

• Faith and perception
• Interdependent virtues
• Folklore and allegory

Why read it

The included source tale allows a direct comparison between the traditional adventure and Hutchison's symbolic dramatic treatment.

English Frederick A. Stokes text with the 1917 copyright and Macdougall's folk-tale version appended