What bullshιt were you told as a kid? Lies from parents etc.

Some good ideas here for the parents of young children in 2018. Thanks.

I was told loads of ones about síoga, and one always sticks in my mind about this little boy who kept wandering away from the home and then one evening he was out having a poc around and the sliothar went into a bit of scrubland and off with him after it... but he never came back. He had disturbed Na Daoine Maithe and they took him with them as punishment to the Other World.

Like all such tales it had a clear purpose: in this case, to warn us of the danger of straying too far from home. It's also not true at all to think myths are wholly fictional. As Myles Dillon (1900-1972) pointed out decades ago, many of the things recounted in Irish myths and legends were recorded by Roman historians among the Celtic community in France. Furthermore, very many of the legends appear in cultures across the whole planet. Most obviously, Tír na nÓg and the search for eternal youth is almost universal to folklores across the planet.

There's a fantastic repository of tales, myths and legends that were told to kids decades ago, preserved by the Irish Folklore Commission and recently digitalised and categorised on the superb Dúchas website. There are, for instance, 3549 records of the word "Fairies" in that collection alone.